Marry Me a Little – Stage Door Theatre

Shelley Rivers and Markus Södergren in Marry Me a Little at the Stage Door Theatre, London. Picture: Peter Davies

Marry Me a Little continues at the Stage Door Theatre, London until 13 April 2024.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

In a week when writer-performer Jonathan Blakeley went on social media to announce a performance of his play, Stitches at the Hope in Islington, had been cancelled because zero tickets had been sold, how gratifying it was to see a full house for the opening night of a similar pub theatre venture, the Stage Door above the Prince of Wales in the heart of London’s Theatreland – and a corker of a show worthy of the occasion.

Blakekey was making the point that while people moan about the high prices for star-studded West End shows, they are not supporting ambitious Fringe theatres where tickets are affordable to anyone. Well, for £18 you won’t find any better value for money than this charming two-hander Marry Me a Little, a welcome revival of a clever 1980s revue that weaves 18 of Stephen Sondheim’s lesser-known songs into a sung-through tale of two nameless young singles. They live alone in their one-room apartments in the same Manhattan block, knowing of each other’s existence, but are too shy or wrapped up in themselves to make contact. They don’t speak and the well-chosen material reflects their fantasies as well as the hard facts of being alone in a big, uncaring city.

I’ve seen Marry Me in the world’s three greatest cities, New York’s Clurman Theatre in 2012, St James in London in 2014 and the Marigny in Paris in 2019, and this one, on the tiny stage of an upstairs bar in Drury Lane, knocks spots off all of them, for me anyway.

So take a bow, director Robert McWhir, fondly remembered for his 16 years in artistic charge of the much-missed Landor, again in a pub’s upstairs space, this time in North Clapham where his credits included Follies and Into the Woods, and his experienced hand on the Sondheim tiller stands him in good stead.

There’s no way McWhir could entertain casts of Follies size on what he has to work with at the Stage Door where even two’s a crowd, yet somehow designer David Shields has found the space to create an illusion of two separate apartments, one with a needy female’s touch, the other the spare pad of a down-on-his-luck male who is on the point of being evicted.

And huge congratulations to the cast, the ever-hopeful Woman (Shelley Rivers) and lonely, downbeat Man (Markus Södergren), preparing for another long evening on his tod. The line “when you’re alone on a Saturday night, you might as well be dead” from the title song of Sondheim’s first, almost forgotten musical Saturday Night, informs us so deftly about his plight.

Rivers is a revelation on her two biggest numbers, ‘Can That Boy Foxtrot!’, cut from Follies but a song that survives as a much-loved cabaret staple, and the stunning ‘There Won’t Be Trumpets’, dropped initially from the Anyone Can Whistle previews partly because it was beyond the scope of Hollywood star Lee Remick’s limited vocal range – it was her character’s only Act I solo – but thankfully reinstated later in a flop that badly needed it.

Particularly proud of ‘Trumpets’ (and rightly so), Sondheim would have been thrilled by opera-trained Rivers with her soaring coloratura soprano and great belt. It is the high spot of the show.
Flashy and flirtatious on the wicked ‘Can That Boy Foxtrot!’, and deliberately emphasising the first syllable of the final word to ensure we are left in no doubt it’s not Dancing with the Stars she’s talking about but something far more basic, Rivers demonstrates impressive acting chops too. Her version of ‘Marry Me a Little’ (originally cut from Company but restored to all versions from 1990) is also a delight and I hope to see her on a bigger stage.

Södergren, an ArtsEd graduate from Sweden, has the less showy role but makes the most of his moments, particularly on the cynical ‘Ah, But Underneath’ (cut from Follies), ‘Happily Ever After’ (a Company out-take) and ‘Silly People’ (omitted from A Little Night Music) – and his harmonies with Rivers on their inevitably distanced duets are absolutely on point.

The song cycle, originally conceived by Craig Lucas and Norman René in 1980 for the Off-Broadway Actors’ Playhouse but a moveable feast down the years, not only features trunk songs – so-called because they’ve ended up in a trunk, unloved by all bar their author – but a number of other curios.

The show is top-and-tailed by ‘If You Can Find Me, I’m Here’ and ‘Take Me to the World’, two numbers Sondheim composed for a weird TV movie with Tony Perkins called Evening Primrose, about a poet who takes refuge from the world by hiding out permanently in a department store.

And there are three belters from Saturday Night, a show the author called “my baby pictures, not bad stuff for a 23 year old”, completed in 1955 (two years before the West Side Story job made him famous) but left in a drawer until dusted down for a world premiere at the Bridewell Theatre on the London Fringe 42 years later.

You may not know many of these 18 songs or the singers, sympathetically accompanied by MD Aaron Clingham on keyboards, but waste no time in queueing at this Stage Door – this LAMBCO production deserves to be a success. If you want a show and supper evening, there’s a £36 package that includes a two-course meal, or if you want to head off somewhere smarter, this little gem is done and dusted in an hour – the perfect aperitif. Let’s do all we can to support new ventures like this.

Jeremy Chapman