Sondheim Sessions: Oscar Conlon-Morrey

Sondheim Sessions: Oscar Conlon-Morrey (Crowdcast, 7 June 2020).

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Only Fools and Horses The Musical star Oscar Conlon-Morrey launched the new Stephen Sondheim Society season of virtual cabarets while theatreland is unavoidably dark with a half-hour taster of his exceptional brand of humour and song.

Accompanied by world-renowned musical arranger Jason Carr for whom he used to cat-sit in his student days at Mountview, the larger-than-life Conlon-Morrey regaled an unseen Crowdcast audience of over 300 from his South London flat before switching to Zoom for an after-show Q&A session.

We were treated to a selection of the outrageously over-the-top jackets from his 100-plus collection as well as the wild black wig he donned for Mrs Lovett in a riotous ‘The Worst Pies in London’ from Sweeney Todd.

It was another number from that show, ‘The Contest’, in which Sweeney takes on the fake-Italian quack Pirelli in a shaving duel, that introduced the Sondheim Society to Conlon-Morrey as that comedy routine was his choice for the 2017 Student Performer of the Year (SSSSPOTY) competition.

That he did not win was a reflection on the exceptional standard of that year’s finalists but SSS patron Julia McKenzie, who knows a thing or two about Sondheim, was so impressed by Conlon-Morrey’s comedic gifts she rewarded him with a £250 special prize from her own pocket.

Besides, you don’t have to win SSSSPOTY to be an international star as Cynthia Erivo proved by wowing Broadway in The Color Purple and getting Oscar-nominated in Hollywood for the title role in Harriet. She was a beaten finalist in the 2009 SSSSPOTY.

In paying tribute to the power of SSSSPOTY – he also performed ‘The Contest’ as a guest the following year – Conlon-Morrey said that until lockdown there was not a single day he had been out of work since that summer Sunday afternoon three years ago.

Of the six songs he performed, five inevitably were Sondheim, the odd man out being ‘Shadows’, written by Eamonn O’Dwyer, a guest on the show who has used lockdown to complete the reworking of his Fanny and Stella musical.

Apart from the two Sweeney Todd numbers, the other Sondheim songs to get the Oscar treatment were ‘Agony’, ‘Losing My Mind’ and, with vodka stingers at the ready, ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’.

Clever technology enabled him, apparently simultaneously, to play both lovesick princes for the ‘Agony’ duet from Into the Woods.

Described by Sondheim Society chair Craig Glenday when introducing the show as one of the funniest men in show business, Conlon-Morrey is far more than that, as he proved with a heart-wrenching ‘Losing My Mind’ which he dedicated to the memory of Marin Mazzie, who died far too young two years ago.

The Broadway star’s version of that classic Follies number at the Sondheim 80th birthday concert was, he said an inspiration to the young Oscar.

That was the cue to show the “painful” video clip  that went viral of a worse-for-wear Oscar serenading Underground passengers after he and Only Fools and Horses colleagues went on the lash after suddenly being shut down by Covid-19.

Stealing a line from another Follies number, this once “timid and shy” son of a father who played in the Doncaster brass band closed with “good times and bad times we’ve seen them all and we’re still here”. We are indeed and at the worst of times, this was the perfect choice of entertainer to disperse those lockdown blues, however briefly.

MD Jason Carr, a near-neighbour who spotted Oscar’s potential at Mountview, the college he auditioned for by writing a monologue about a drag queen, kicked the show off by playing the rarely-heard overture to Stavisky, a 1974 French movie for which Sondheim composed the music.

For those who missed the first Sondheim Sessions, it will be up on YouTube for posterity in the near future. Roll on, the next one!

Jeremy Chapman