Caroline Sheen – Sondheim & So Forth – Jermyn Street Theatre

Caroline Sheen made her London Festival of Cabaret debut with Sondheim & So Forth at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London

Caroline Sheen: Sondheim & So Forth at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London, as part of the London Festival of Cabaret.

Star rating: Four stars ★ ★ ★ ★

Caroline Sheen has been gracing the London stage since her West End debut in Grease at the Cambridge Theatre in the late 1990s – a job that saw her cut short her final year of theatre studies. From there, she went to enjoy a number of plum roles in the likes of Into the Woods (Donmar Warehouse), The Witches of Eastwick (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane), Les Misérables (Palace), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Palladium), A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum (National), and the title role in the UK tour of Mary Poppins. She also played Clara in the European premiere of Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza (Leicester Curve).

Yet for all her showbiz experience and connections – her cousin is the actor Michael Sheen, she is married to fellow thesp Michael Jibson, and according to her biography comes from a family that has included a lion tamer and a Jack Nicholson impersonator – Sheen came across in her recent cabaret at Jermyn Street, not as a stagey diva, but as a sweet, demure ingénue. Her halo did slip a couple of times, to be fair –  indeed, in a couple of songs her language was joyously filthy! – but on the whole, she showed us that she is, in the words of Philia from A Funny Thing, “winsome, what I am is winsome, radiant as in some dream come true”.

Sheen’s London Festival of Cabaret debut was entitled Sondheim & So Forth and gave the Welsh singer/actress the chance to share some of her experiences of performing in Sondheim’s shows. Admirably, she also insisted on showcasing some new writing, which made for a much more interesting and personal cabaret. It also revealed her enthusiasm and support for emerging writers, stressing how important it is to nurture the generation following in Sondheim’s footsteps.

Her opening number, however, was a Sondheim classic: ‘Broadway Baby’ from Follies. Way too young to be singing this – she was born in 1975 but looks at least ten years younger – Sheen played it beautifully as a stumbling, wide-eyed fawn aiming for a career on the Great White Way. I’ve heard this song performed countless times, but it was the first time that a younger singer made it really work for me.

Another solo Sondheim, ‘The Boy From…’ (written with Mary Rodgers), gave the Caerleon-born Sheen the chance to show off her fluent pronunciation of “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch”, although she admitted that it was the only word of Welsh that she knew.

Providing the piano accompaniment was Mark Collins, who did an outstanding job tackling some really taxing music. His first big challenge of the night was ‘Look the Other Way’, from Stephen Schwartz’s new show, recently renamed Emanuel and Eleonore, about the legendary theatre producer. With only a vocal line to work from, Collins had to improvise the piano accompaniment, not that you would have noticed from the audience, as it was slickly done.

Other new numbers came from songwriters Georgia Stitt, Stuart Matthew Price, Jason Robert Brown (including, in Sheen’s words, a “really hard” song from his latest show, Honeymoon in Vegas), Adam Guettal (a work-in-progress number from his latest project, Days of Wine and Roses), and songwriting partnership Pippa Cleary and Jake Brunger. It was Cleary and Brunger’s hilarious ‘A Simple Valley Song’ from Jet Set Go! that really brought out Sheen’s naughty Welsh side and showed us that she’s not quite the innocent angel she might first appear.

We were also treated to a couple of numbers from Sheen’s on-stage partner from Sondheim’s Putting it Together, Damian Humbley. First up was the beautiful duet they’d sung together in the show, ‘Unworthy of Your Love’, which was originally written for Assassins. A Carpenters-inspired love song, it has never sounded better than in the hands of these two. The remarkably good Humbley – a performer that we need to see more of in the West End – then raised the roof with a solo ‘Marry Me A Little’ from Sondheim’s Company.

The evening proved that Sheen is one of the best and most respected performers currently working today. Not only does she have a versatile voice – she trained as an alto, as her wonderfully funny closing number ‘Alto’s Lament’ revealed, and has a tone as pure as glacier water – but she also has an incredibly expressive face, a tool every bit as important as her crystal-clear voice when it comes to communicating the meaning of a song. Her support for new talent also speaks to her generous spirit, and the feeling one is left with at the end of her cabaret is that the post-Sondheim future of musical theatre is in good hands.