Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends – Reviews

"Old Friends is a five-star celebration of Stephen Sondheim"

"Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga lead a stellar cast through the composer and lyricist’s hits"

"It now returns as a West End show, driven by immense affection for the man and his work and gloriously performed by a stellar cast, including Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga."

"We see Sondheim at his funniest — droll, tart and smart — with that incredible, tight command of lyric and rhythm, but we also see the deep strain of melancholy, regret and understanding of the chaotic human heart that can lift him to Chekhovian heights."

"One of the most moving moments is the act one finale: a soaring ensemble rendition of “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park with George that touches on the way art can lift and preserve ordinary life."

"This is unmissable musical theatre"

"Lightning does indeed strike twice."

"Peters is 75 now, though she looks decades younger, and her voice has undeniably lost some of its gloss, yet she brought a haunting air of wistfulness to the song that even Sondheim sceptics have learnt to love. Later she injected the same conversational intimacy into Losing My Mind and went full vaudeville on that blowsy stripper anthem You Gotta Get a Gimmick."

"Sondheim may have acquired the reputation of being the high priest of well-heeled Manhattan angst, but this show offers a reminder of what fun company he can be too."

"If you care about musical theatre, you cannot miss this show."

"A knockout tribute to the master of musicals"

"Mackintosh's fabulous all-star revue, which returns for a full run with Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, deserves to be a West End hit"

"Gone are celebrity cameos (Judi Dench, Damian Lewis), but in their place is a slicker and more evidently a company endeavour, star names generously trading the spotlight. It’s the musical theatre equivalent of the superhero team-up."

"Broadway icon and key Sondheim collaborator Bernadette Peters is the big draw, making her belated West End debut at age 75. She burrows inside the material, whether conveying Little Red Riding Hood’s bittersweet coming-of-age discoveries or, at the other end of the spectrum, the sophisticate’s gut-wrenching regrets in Send in the Clowns. But multiple performers get their show-stopping moment in Matthew Bourne and Julia McKenzie’s beautifully balanced production."

"However, the revelation is the remarkably versatile Lea Salonga, who got her start as the original Kim in Miss Saigon. Her voice is exquisitely pure – she hits every note smack in the middle – but she also has a knack for dark Sondheimian complexity"

"Peters notes in her introduction that Sondheim wanted as many people as possible to see his work, and I can’t think of a better platform. This “great big Broadway show” deserves to be a great big West End hit."

"Perfectly crafted West End love letter to one of the greats"

"First seen in a one-off event last year, Old Friends now opens in a full production"

"It is a treat. Under the clever direction of Matthew Bourne and McKenzie, it has a drive and a purpose that gives the songs shape and context. The impeccably detailed choreography by Stephen Mear adds a layer of razzle and dazzle, which Matt Kinley’s gleaming set design, filled with George Reeve’s projections and Jill Parker’s stylish costumes all serve to reinforce."

"Many individual songs shine out for the luminosity of their interpretation. Peters, of course, is the absolute mistress of finding new ways into every line – Sondheim said she was one of the few people he knew who could sing and act at the same time. She is making her West End debut at the age of 75, when her voice and breath are frailer than before, but she still reveals a lovely way with lyrics, landing in unexpected and always revelatory places."

"Lea Salonga’s pure voice brings resonance to “Loving You” from Passion, and Bonnie Langford wrests every ounce of humour out of Follies’ “I’m Still Here”"

"It is both a tribute to Sondheim and an exploration of the qualities of curiosity, intelligence, humour and high seriousness that made him a giant of the theatre."

"Old Friends is a stellar tribute to Stephen Sondheim"

"A celebration of the Broadway king’s life, love and creativity at the Gielgud Theatre"

"Old Friends, subtitled A Great Big Broadway Show, is that potentially naffest of theatrical ordeals: a musical medley. But, as an old boy exiting declaimed to an usher, this Matthew Bourne staging is “pure class” — a wake with emotional heft and an ecstatically affirming celebration of life, love and creativity, with all its attendant mess."

"In all, 40 numbers are packed in, including torch songs like I’m Still Here (Langford, earning cheers), Being Alive and Peters’s raspy rendition of Send in the Clowns. Forty! Yet still I missed Finishing the Hat."

"Hitting the heights "

"It's a love-letter, a love-in, a gathering of old friends — and a few younger ones. A one-off farewell gala following Stephen Sondheim's death in 2021 has been superbly restaged as a celebration of his genius by some of his most accomplished interpreters, who tap every drop of nuance from each demi-semi-quaver of his music and each syllable of his lyrics."

"At the end, no one — neither performers nor audience — wanted to go home. Everyone in thrall, still, to Sondheim."

"An all-star tribute to the acid genius of the late composer offers a terrific medley of hits"

"It is hard now to imagine the musical landscape without Stephen Sondheim. Without caustic urbanity and interwoven melancholy. Without music that makes your blood rather than your feet dance. Without rhythms that catch the roll of conversation and, so rarely heard so sharply before him, encircling scepticism and the double take. “Isn’t it nice to know a lot! And a little bit… not.”"

"Though Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga have top billing, the show is star-crammed, the sequence more artful than its easy fluency suggests. I love having The Ladies Who Lunch (finely snarled by Clare Burt) just after a Sweeney Todd selection, recommending priest pie; Send in the Clowns is, thank goodness, not placed cornily at the end, but embedded in the middle: another flame rather than the full torch."

"It is all Sondheim: no story entwining the songs, no narrator. It is in many ways a trad thing: a medley. And it is terrific."

"Musical big guns pay tribute to the genius of Stephen Sondheim"

"Broadway legend Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga and Bonnie Langford were among those taking the audience on a starry spin through the great composer and lyricist’s dazzling back catalogue"

"Devised by Cameron Mackintosh, and focusing on works he has produced, it’s a partial, loving, starry spin through a dazzling back catalogue. Sondheim’s versatility and wit shine through."

"Director Matthew Bourne whisks us through the evening so deftly we don’t notice it’s a whistle-stop tour. And there are pleasures, guilty and sublime, at every turn."

"Peters, who is 75 with a hayrick of Titian curls, oversells the emotion of Send in the Clowns (from A Little Night Music) and the comedy of I Know Things Now (from Into the Woods). She was nasal and sometimes flat. Who cares: it’s Bernadette bloody Peters, here at last!"

"Sharing top billing is Lea Salonga, who has perfect pitch and a voice so powerful it threatens to leave the first three rows deaf and blind when she does Everything’s Coming Up Roses from Gypsy."

"There’s undeniable emotional force in seeing such experienced interpreters of Sondheim pay tribute, but it’s refreshing too when newcomers like the charismatic Bradley Jaden and the captivating Beatrice Penny-Touré take the focus."

"Bob Dylan won a Nobel Prize, so why didn’t Sondheim?"

"Matthew Bourne and Julia McKenzie’s starry tribute to the maestro of American musicals is slick, sexy and sophisticated"

"If this show were a compilation album, the title would undoubtedly be Now That’s What I Call Sondheim."

"The headliners are two acclaimed Broadway performers, long-time Sondheim collaborator Bernadette Peters and Broadway star Lea Salonga. They are joined by notable musical theatre names from this side of the Atlantic, including Janie Dee, Joanna Riding and the irrepressible Bonnie Langford, for a slick, sexy and sophisticated evening that includes 39 of Sondheim’s greatest numbers."

"... here we have a precious opportunity to study and savour the scintillating – and stubbornly chorus-free – sophistication of each piece."

"The evening isn’t devoid of the occasional outbreak of gurning – “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid” is a key culprit – but these are rare dips in form."

"Old-school stagey charm"

"Lavish blockbuster selection of Sondheim’s greatest hits, led by Broadway stars Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga"

"Some numbers translate better than others to a format in which their context is necessarily abbreviated; equally, while some renditions penetrate, others teeter on the brink of splashy self-indulgence. But what incredible songs these are, their perspicacity, tenderness and wit delivering one fresh astonishment after another as we roll merrily along through this greatest hits compilation album. For all the occasional creak or moment of excess, it would be futile to resist, and joyless to try."

"There’s much, more more, in an evening that offers up its riches like a lavish chocolate box of hard and soft centres. Sondheim fans will savour every mouthful."

"Merrily they roll along"

"A cleverly cast tribute, featuring Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga and Bonnie Langford, reflects on the passing of time with comedy and melancholy"

"Its revival now as a commercial run raises questions about the limits of the revue format more than four decades after Side by Side by Sondheim brought his music to London. There is no narrative, leaving Stephen Mear’s choreography and Matthew Bourne’s staging to provide the through-line, which they do with wit and fluency. But it is akin to peering, Cinderella-like, through the windows at a dazzling ball to which you are denied entry."

"Several sleights of casting are winks to Sondheim connoisseurs, and it’s a credit to his understanding of common humanity they also work well on their own terms."

"There are enough high points along the way to suggest that perhaps it is best enjoyed as a pointillist painting, “made of flecks of light and dark and parasols”."

"This glittering Sondheim tribute revue packs in the classics but doesn’t really capture his genius"

"There is a lot of talent and a lot of classic songs: 42 of them to be precise. It makes for an evening with high highs, but I’m not quite sure if ‘Old Friends’ really feels like a tribute so much as an overstuffed mixtape. Part of the problem is context: Sondheim wrote superb songs, but he wrote astonishing musicals – the genius of his works lay in the complete shows and their audacious concepts, not simply their individual bits."

"And as a tribute it feels like it could offer a greater sense of the man: there’s a photo montage of Sondheim’s life near the end, and a weird video of him and Andrew Lloyd Webber singing a song about Mackintosh… and that’s about it. Surely we could have scrapped a song or two in favour of a bit more reminisce, considering most of the people on stage knew him personally?"

"However, let’s be clear that Sondheim wrote some of the greatest songs of all time, and most of those are featured here."