Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends review, Gielgud Theatre, London

Lea Salonga and Jeremy Secomb in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends

(Image credit: Danny Kaan/Gielgud Theatre)

published 12 October 2023

In the spring of 2022, the impresario Cameron Mackintosh presented a triumphant, VIP-studded, one-night-only tribute to Stephen Sondheim, who'd died the previous year, at the West End theatre that bears the composer's name, said Clive Davis in The Times. Now, that stellar show – featuring 40 of Sondheim's greatest songs – has returned for a three-month run at the nearby Gielgud Theatre. Co-directed by Matthew Bourne and the Sondheim veteran Julia McKenzie, with "tastefully understated" choreography by Stephen Mear, it's a very special evening. "If you care about musical theatre, you cannot miss this show."

Subtitled "A Great Big Broadway Show", "Old Friends" is "pure class", said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times – a moving "wake" for a titan of Broadway, and an "ecstatically affirming celebration of life, love and creativity, with all its attendant mess". The American singer Bernadette Peters, a revered Sondheim interpreter making her West End debut aged 75, gets top billing alongside Broadway star Lea Salonga. But the cast also includes notable British high-hitters such as Janie Dee, Joanna Riding, Bonnie Langford, Gavin Lee and Jason Pennycook. And the material is "glorious", taking in "capering numbers" from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"; "Tonight" from "West Side Story"; and the "grand guignol" of "Sweeney Todd". There are also torch songs such as "I'm Still Here" ("Langford, earning cheers"), "Send in the Clowns" (a "raspy" Peters), and an ensemble performance of "Being Alive".

This production does not have the celebrity cameos (Judi Dench, Damian Lewis) that were a feature of last year's one-off, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph. The result is "a slicker and a more evidently company endeavour". Such is the talent on show, it feels like the musical theatre "equivalent of the superhero team-up". Yet it's more than just a virtuoso display, because while celebrating Sondheim's work, the performers also convey what they, and we, have lost. It's a "great big Broadway show" that "deserves to be a great big West End hit".