Review Roundup: What Did the Critics Think of Sondheim's Final Work, HERE WE ARE?

Stephen Sondheim’s final work, Here We Are, is directed by two-time Tony Award-winner Joe Mantello with book by Tony Award-nominee David Ives. It is now open at the National Theatre with an all-star cast including Jane Krakowski and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

So what did the critics think?

Here We Are is at the National Theatre until 28 June

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

Alexander Cohen, BroadwayWorld: At its worst David Ives’ book is a single punchline Monty Python sketch dragged out into an entire musical – that punchline being that the one percenters barely possess a brain cell between them. I suppose an American audience might find their ignorance endearing. Though I can’t speak on behalf of the entire press night audience, I sense from the stony faces around me that the British counterparts just find them grating.

Clive Davis, The Times: Let me be absolutely honest and say that this star rating should come with a health warning. Why? Because the valedictory offering from the late Stephen Sondheim is such a curate’s egg. The musical fantasy that unfolds on the National’s Lyttelton stage is, for long stretches, utterly absorbing. Yet it’s undeniably flawed, too.

Marianka Swain, London Theatre: Just hearing those first few instantly recognisable notes of Sondheim’s score sends shivers down the spine; of course we want more of it. Still, what we do get is typically brilliant: crafted with immense rigour and care, emotionally and thematically rich, every rhyme ingenious, and meaning always allied with form – as when the panicking waiter at the Everything Café sings “I am so sor-ry, mad-am”, with increasingly biting, unhinged emphasis. That’s one of several roles (all overlooked service workers) taken by charismatic livewire Denis O’Hare.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: The actors are vibrant nonetheless, though some are wobbly singers. Paulo Szot, as ambassador of the imaginary South American nation Miranda, has an impressive operatic depth to his voice and Chumisa Dornford-May, who plays the revolutionary Fritz ­– a trustafarian who is given an unconvincing romance with a soldier – is a strong singer, too, while Rory Kinnear is fun as the arrogant Leo Brink.

Sam Marlowe, The Stage: There is an immediate, and fundamental, problem: not only are these shallow idiots – here a bunch of vacuous urbanites in search of a place to have brunch – too thinly drawn to feel properly human, but there’s not a single compelling or convincing relationship between them. Obviously, the piece is highly stylised in an effort to replicate Bunuel’s off-the-wall aesthetic. But – in a slick, soulless production by director Joe Mantello – as theatre, it makes pretty thin gruel, leaving us as hungry and dissatisfied as the show’s perpetually frustrated posse.

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage: There’s no avoiding the fact that in many ways the show is a mess. Yet scene by scene it just about works, thanks to Mantello’s inventive direction. What makes it magical are all the performances, each essentially taking a small part in an ensemble and making it rich. Their timing and their characterisations feel nigh on perfect. Krakowski brings a wide-eyed wonder to Marianne, constantly counting her blessings while Plimpton plays cleverly with the scratchy entitlement and fear of losing status that lie under her brittle façade.

Alice Saville, The Independent: Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello throws body, soul, and a huge amount of cash into making this oddity work – David Zinn’s astonishingly lavish set design magics up an array of rooms that ought to be preserved in the Met, gorgeously gilded and mirrored, melting into each other and then into the bright, blinking white of nothingness when these friends’ meaningless lives melt away. It’s flip, funny, and undeniably stylish. But essentially unsatisfying, too.

Andrzej Lukowski, TimeOut: It’s also important to stress that the cast is preposterously talented: Jane Krakowski is one of the funniest actors alive today, and has a ball here as space cadet Marianne; Martha Pimpton is a hoot as uber-Karen Claudia; US star Denis O’Hare (retained from the show’s 2023 off-Broadway premiere) is wonderful as a succession of servants and waiters; the Brits keep their end up with Rory Kinnear’s fine turn as velour-encrusted main rich guy Leo Brink, while major rising star Chumisa Dornford-May is excellent as Leo and Marianne’s anarchist daughter Fritz. Above all they’re great stage actors who can – by and large – style out the absence of songs in the second half.

Matt Wolf, The Arts Desk: Like so much Sondheim, the show makes demands on an audience - but "not demands you can't meet," as an earlier lyric from the same composer (in Merrily We Roll Along) puts it. There's fun to be had in wordplay about " a lotta latte" that could only come from this composer-lyricist's pen, and the triple rhyme of "duck / luck / fuck" is quintessential Sondheim. More pertinent is the show's embrace of darkness, which Mantello's genius manages somehow to keep as featherweight as Marianne's outfits. (The surpassingly witty designer is David Zinn.) Gazing ominously above, as if waiting for an Into the Woods-adjacent Giant, Ferguson's Paul cowers under the absence of the very Eden blithely insisted upon by Marianne. And the smitten young lovers sing unabashedly of "the end of the world", leaving the more philosophical Bishop to ruminate upon "matter that matters, or not".

Average Rating: 66.7%