If you’ve never heard of this 2008 Stephen Sondheim musical, that’s understandable – it was produced under several different titles during its tortuous journey to the stage. When Sondheim and his Assassins collaborator John Weidman first conceived their show about the rackety real-life Mizner Brothers, in 1999, they named it Wise Guys. Later versions were called Gold! and Bounce.
The final title, Road Show, gives you the episodic flavour of the narrative, as early 20th-century hucksters Addison and Wilson Mizner follow their own interpretation of the American dream. Their series of adventures takes in everything from the Klondike gold rush to the bright lights and seedy stench of New York society, and if the songs aren’t quite classics, they are at least laced with their composer’s classic wit (“You were a gem, they were strictly paste”).
Addison is the supposed protagonist – the “good” brother who tries to do what his dying father would have wanted but ends up collecting souvenirs of his failed enterprises. Sondheim was clearly far more excited by the character of Wilson, a whiskey-and-cocaine-fuelled gadabout who gets the best numbers, and whose charismatic portrayal by Reece Richardson leaves Oliver Sidney’s Addie looking a little underpowered.
For all the escapades crammed into its first half this production only really gets going when Addie, now an architect, meets Hollis Bessemer (Rhys Lambert), a delicate heir with a yearning to build an artists’ colony. As their romance blossoms into a Florida real estate venture, and Wilson shows up just in time to make it messy, the all-too-topical themes of greed, capitalism and corporate lying finally begin to weave together.
The little-known songs are performed beautifully in Amanda Noar’s production, whether they are extolling the virtues of Boca Raton or fighting over Addie’s designs (“Yes, but theirs has a floating gazebo!”). Katherine Strohmaier as the Mizners’ mother wrings a particularly moving performance from the characteristic Sondheim ballad. But after an ending that leaves us in literal limbo, we’re still left wondering what we were supposed to make of Addie, after all. Perhaps the real reason most of us haven’t heard of this Sondheim show is that it’s less than the sum of its adventures.
• At Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London, until 12 January
