This celebration of the late Stephen Sondheim assembles three generations of big guns from musical theatre – including Broadway legend Bernadette Peters, making her West End debut – to fire a selection of greatest hits at a receptive audience. Devised by Cameron Mackintosh, and focusing on works he has produced, it’s a partial, loving, starry spin through a dazzling back catalogue. Sondheim’s versatility and wit shine through.
When he died in 2021 aged 91, Sondheim had 15 musicals to his credit as composer and lyricist, one uncompleted, and three as lyricist alone. Old Friends features material from at least 10 of them, including Follies, Company, West Side Story, Gypsy, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd. Not bad, eh? Director Matthew Bourne whisks us through the evening so deftly we don’t notice it’s a whistle-stop tour. And there are pleasures, guilty and sublime, at every turn.
