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.
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.
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.
| 2023 | Off-Broadway |
The Shed Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
Videos