HERE WE ARE; There They Go — Review
6 / 10
Joe Mantello’s direction is superb; David Zinn’s scenic and costume design, even with a sumptuous budget that could court comfort, feels innovative; Natasha Katz’s lighting is sharp; and Sam Pinkleton’s choreography, if a little hesitant to depart from Sondheim’s mid-century aesthetics, suits the material. Its excellent ensemble is unbelievably well-cast, and receive terrific musical help from Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations and Alexander Gemignani’s additional, fill-in-the-blanks arrangements. But the score is patently unfinished, and its incompletion leaves a yawning gap in the overall piece. In many respects, though, its incompleteness is secondary to its impossibility: it is unlikely that an adaptation of these two films (which happened there) into musical theatre (which is here, in the room with us) could have ever worked, as its radical ambitions are, if not incompatible, at fatal odds with the sentimental form.
