Stephen Sondheim’s ‘cool, and impossibly chic’ (New York Times Critic’s Pick) final work is directed by two-time Tony Award-winner Joe Mantello with book by Tony Award-nominee David Ives.
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".
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.
| 2023 | Off-Broadway |
The Shed Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
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