Simply Sondheim – Signature Theatre, Virginia

Simply Sondheim – Signature Theatre revue on stream via Marquee TV from MAX Theatre, Arlington, Virginia until 26 March 2021.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Here’s a little gem of a show if you’re a Sondheim fan – who isn’t? – and although it costs $35 (around £26) to have it streamed to your home from Signature Theatre HQ just outside Washington DC, you certainly get your money’s worth.

More than 30 of the great man’s show songs, many familiar, some rarely performed, all lovingly worked into a slick 110-minute revue performed by 12 American musical theatre specialists, most you’ve probably never heard of but, believe me, they are so good, all of them.

Norm Lewis, the first African-American to play The Phantom on Broadway and one of many Javerts in Les Misérables on either side of the Atlantic, is the biggest name, rejoining Signature for whom he starred in the 1999 revival of Sweeney Todd.

We do not get much of the famed Lewis vocals but what we did get is prime. His faultless contribution is limited to two numbers ‘Is This What You Call Love?’ from Passion and Company’s big finale ‘Being Alive’.

The delightful Emily Skinner has eight Broadway shows on her CV but the other ten cast members, all new to me but clearly much respected in New York and DC, come from Signature’s talented repertory.

They tackle Sondheim’s tricky lyrics with verve and commitment. Making any sort of living has been precarious these past months and this rare gig, streaming for eight weeks under the Marquee TV banner, must be a godsend.

From Signature co-founder Donna Migliaccio’s perfect capture of the Cockney cadences of Mrs Lovett’s ‘The Worst Pies in London’ and the biting satire of ‘Could I Leave You?’ to Bobby Smith’s nostalgic ‘The Right Girl’ and a confrontational ‘Country House’, it is one gorgeous Sondheim classic after another.

For this awed listener comes the excitement of discovering thrilling new voices. We have long known American showbiz legends Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin but it is the names we have yet to see in the UK that whet the appetite.

To watch Solea Pfeiffer at the top of her game in a sparkling ‘Another Hundred People’ with never a word lost or Nicholas McDonough standing out in ‘Now/Later/Soon’ and linking impressively with Smith and Paul Scanlan on ‘Sorry-Grateful’ is a startling reminder of what we’ve been missing for almost a year now.

Conrad Ricamora’s fine ‘Finishing the Hat’ is well worth the wait and the team treatment of ‘The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened’, that sublime love song from Bounce/Road Show is never going to be a hardship. They are Broadway’s future once theatres start functioning properly again and it can’t come soon enough.

Meanwhile, Skinner and Pfeiffer link up brilliantly on two of Sondheim’s most moving compositions, ‘Losing My Mind’ and the heart-breaking ‘Not a Day Goes By’, while Skinner’s ‘Loving You’ and ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’, with that towering “everybody rise-rise-rise-rise-RISE!” climax, reveal totally different sides of a very versatile voice.

This is a tremendously well-rehearsed team effort. Out of 12 performers usually one or two are too strident, don’t get the full meaning of difficult material or whose interpretation of a number doesn’t tally with one’s own but in this company there comes not one jarring note.

The show opens and closes with the whole gang, backed by the lush sounds of the 16-piece orchestra under MD Jon Kalbfleisch, strutting their stuff on the lively title songs of Merrily We Roll Along and Bounce, a rousing start and finish to a treasure trove of musical theatre beauty.

They all deserve a mention – Katie Mariko Murray and Tracy Lynn Olivera team up thrillingly on ‘Every Day a Little Death’ and, with Mueller, give us a hilarious ‘Getting Married Today’.

Christopher Mueller’s ‘I Guess This is Goodbye’ to his beloved Milky White in Into The Woods is a two-hankie job and Awa Sal Secka makes the most of her ‘All For Now’ solo from Saturday Night, Sondheim’s “baby pictures” first musical written in 1953 when he was 23 but not produced professionally until 44 years later and only making it to the West End Fringe in 2009. The songs are better than the story.

Secka’s distinctive voice also plays a major part in the big ‘Weekend in the Country’ group number, arguably the best Act I finale in the Sondheim canon.

The revue, co-conceived by David Loud and Eric Schaeffer, the latter the director of no fewer than 28 Sondheim musicals for Signature, was filmed in November at their MAX Theatre five miles south of Washington DC and it’s a real semi-staged show in a real theatre with props and group numbers dutifully observing social distancing.

Director/choreographer Matthew Gardiner has his cast singing and dancing from the same hymn sheet, the sound and picture quality are first rate and the Simply Sondheim Orchestra has a ball with some of the classiest material on our musical planet.

For streaming procedure and how to book tickets, go to Signature’s SigTheatre.org site and give yourself a treat. Goodness knows, we deserve one.

Jeremy Chapman