On Reflection: The Cast of Follies in Cabaret at the Underbelly Festival, London. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Janie Dee, who played Phyllis in the National Theatre’s stunning revival of Follies, keeps the musical theatre magic alive with her On Reflection cabaret. In this intimate hour-long cabaret in the Underbelly spiegeltent on the […]
Tag Archives | Stephen Sondheim
It’s a double whammy win for West End’s Company at the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards
Marianne Elliott’s ground-breaking production of Company, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s legendary 1970 musical comedy about life, love and marriage, with a hotly anticipated gender-swapped story line, took home two awards at the 2018 Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards held today (29 January 2019) at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre – The Peter Hepple Award for Best […]
Kacey Ainsworth joins Everyman’s Sweeney Todd
Former EastEnder Kacey Ainsworth will play the resourceful Mrs Lovett opposite Liam Tobin’s Demon Barber in the Liverpool Everyman’s re-imagined production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s multi-award-winning musical thriller Sweeney Todd in April. The actress who first found fame as Little Mo in the BBC soap and is currently appearing in her fourth series […]
Sondheim’s Marry Me a Little will play Paris’ Theatre Marigny
Deprived as we are of any English-language musicals in Paris while the Theatre du Châtelet is closed for refurbishment, there is still some Stephen Sondheim to be seen in 2019 at the Theatre Marigny just off the Champs-Elysees. Running from 30 January to 24 February is Marry Me a Little, that revue of out-takes from […]
City Academy Studio Company – Assassins
Assassins, performed by members of the City Academy Studio Company, continues at the Landor Space, London until 2 December 2018. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Stephen Sondheim is always tricky, never more so than in Assassins, one of his later works and a history lesson as well as his most daring musical, […]
West Side Story will Be Curve’s Christmas 2019 production
Classic Broadway musical West Side Story will be Leicester Curve’s Made at Curve Christmas production next year. Just a few weeks before the debut of this year’s eagerly-anticipated production of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, the team at Leicester have announced plans for a major new production of the Romeo and Juliet-inspired musical which will run […]
Putting It Together – Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester
Putting It Together continues at the Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester until 24 November 2018. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ ‘Having just a vision’s no solution, everything depends on execution: putting it together, that’s what counts’ – if ever there was a song to encapsulate the ethos behind the creation and development […]
Company leads individual production nominations for Evening Standard Awards
Marianne Elliott’s critically-acclaimed gender-swapped version of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company leads the individual production nominations for the 64th Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Just three weeks after the show’s opening night, Company has been nominated for the award for best musical alongside Caroline, or Change, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Fun Home and Hamilton. The […]
New look Company’s West End season extended
Just hours after a star-studded opening night, the producers of Marianne Elliott’s critically-acclaimed gender-swapped version of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company have released 100,000 extra tickets for the hit show with booking now extended until 30 March 2019. Andrew Garfield, Graham Norton and Emma Thompson were among the stars in the audience at the […]
Company – Gielgud Theatre
Company continues at the Gielgud Theatre, London until 22 December 2018. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Fuddy-duddy traditionalists who don’t normally like great works being tweaked or updated will be approaching this gender-bending revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical Company with trepidation but they needn’t worry – it’s wonderful. This most […]
Amy becomes Jamie as Jonathan Bailey and Alex Gaumond join cast of re-gendered Company
Jonathan Bailey, Alex Gaumond and Daisy Maywood will complete the cast for Marianne Elliott’s eagerly-anticipated gender-swapped version of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company. Bailey (American Psycho, Almeida, Othello, National Theatre) will play the re-gender-switched role of Jamie (originally Amy) opposite Gaumond (Matilda, We Will Rock You, West End) who will play his devoted fiancée Paul. […]
Competition: Win tickets to Send in the Clowns: Sondheim’s Extraordinary Women at the Lichfield Festival & drinks with the cast!
What a competition we have for fans of Sondheim! Two tickets to the concert Send in the Clowns: Sondheim’s Extraordinary Women at the Lichfield Festival on Saturday 14 July at 2.30pm An invite to a drink with the cast afterwards AND free membership to the Sondheim Society for a year! As part of the 2018 Lichfield […]
Interview: Actress Rebecca Trehearn is looking for the ‘it’ factor at the Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year gala
The West End Gala for The Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Yearand the The Stiles + Drewe Prize, celebrating up and coming performers and writers, returns this weekend, at the Savoy Theatre on 10 June 2018. The annual competition, co-produced by the Stephen Sondheim Society and Mercury Musical Developments, features 12 of the top student performers […]
Into the Woods – Cockpit Theatre
Into the Woods continues at the Cockpit Theatre, London until 24 June 2018. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods opened on Broadway in 1987 and won three Tony Awards. Seen some years later in London in an award-winning production at the Phoenix Theatre with a […]
Just Another Love Story – Above The Arts
Just Another Love Story continues at Above The Arts, London until 26 May 2018. Star rating: five stars ★★★★★ There have been a rash of Sondheim shows in and around the London Fringe in the past few weeks but Ray Rackham’s love letter to the world’s greatest living composer is as good as it gets. Rackham, the […]
Marry Me a Little – Drayton Arms Theatre
Marry Me a Little continues at the Drayton Arms Theatre, London until 26 May 2018. Star rating: three stars ★★★✩✩ As admirers of Marry Me a Little will know, the musical takes songs that didn’t make Sondheim’s well-known repertoire of shows and designs a whole new storyline just for them. The hour-long musical doesn’t contain any dialogue […]
A Little Night Music – Storyhouse Theatre, Chester
A Little Night Music continues in repertory at Storyhouse Theatre, Chester until 8 July 2018. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Everything about Storyhouse’s production of A Little Night Music simply oozes style. Designer Jess Curtis tells us that she was inspired by, among other things, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, and […]
Interview: Gus Gowland on sharing his new musical Pieces of String with audiences at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Pieces of String is a new musical set simultaneously in the 1940s and the present day: following her father’s death, Jane is clearing out his house, but while she is going through his possessions she unearths a secret that she is unprepared for. GUS GOWLAND has written the book, music and lyrics for the show […]
London School of Musical Theatre – A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum
A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, performed by London School of Musical Theatre students at the Bridewell Theatre, London. Star rating: four stars ★★★★☆ Sondheim is notoriously tricky, farce is notoriously tricky. So put them together and the resultant musical in the wrong hands can be an accident waiting to happen. At […]
Hadestown debut and Follies return For National Theatre
American folk singer Anaïs Mitchell’s record-breaking Hadestown and the winner of the 2018 Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival, Follies, will be the musical theatre productions included in the National Theatre’s 2018/2019 programme. Arriving in the UK following record-breaking runs at New York Theatre Workshop and Canada’s Citadel Theatre, Hadestown will arrive at the NT […]
All Star Productions’ Into the Woods to return to London
Award-winning All Star Productions has teamed up with Trilby Productions and London’s The Cockpit to stage a fresh new production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods next month. Following on from a sold-out run in 2014 at All Star’s home base, Walthamstow’s Ye Olde Rose and Crown, the new production of Sondheim […]
Assassins – Pleasance Theatre
Assassins continues at the Pleasance Theatre until 8 April 2018. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Assassins is a show that I’ve seen countless times, but only really fully enjoyed on a handful of occasions. It’s a tricky show for newcomers to the material, set as it is in a limbo-like carnival […]
Company – Aberdeen Arts Centre
Company continues at the Aberdeen Arts Centre until 10 February 2018. Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ It’s Bobby’s 35th birthday and all of his married friends are wondering why he is avoiding that matrimonial state. Yes, he has lady-friends galore and yes, everyone adores the man; but why won’t he cross that […]
Mel Giedroyc joins cast of Company at the Gielgud alongside Rosalie Craig and Patti LuPone
Mel Giedroyc will join the cast of Elliott & Harper’s highly-anticipated new production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Tony Award-winning musical Company, directed by Marianne Elliott. It will run at the Gielgud Theatre from 26 September 2018 for a limited run. Giedroyc will play Sarah and joins Rosalie Craig as Bobbi, a role re-imagined […]
Sally Ann Triplett to play Mrs Lovett opposite Thom Sesma in Off-Broadway Sweeney Todd
British actress Sally Ann Triplett will step in to play Mrs Lovett alongside Thom Sesma’s Demon Barber in the hit immersive Off-Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. The new partners in grisly crime will take over from Hugh Panaro and Carolee Carmello in the acclaimed version of the hit show at the Barrow Street […]
Aberdeen Arts Centre to stage Sondheim’s Company
Aberdeen Arts Centre will follow up last year’s hit version of Cabaret with a new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. With a cast of West End stars, the show – featuring the music and lyrics of Sondheim and a book by George Furth – the multi award-winning show will play Aberdeen from 1-10 February 2018. […]
Patti LuPone and Rosalie Craig cast in gender-bending production of Company
Actresses Rosalie Craig and Patti LuPone will lead the cast in Marianne Elliott’s forthcoming production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company at the Gielgud Theatre (beginning for a limited season on 26 September 2018), presented by Elliott & Harper Productions (the company she recently founded with producer Chris Harper). It is the first time the […]
Follies – National Theatre
Follies continues at the National Theatre (Olivier), London until 3 January. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ We’ve waited long enough, 30 years unless you count the limited-run version at the Royal Festival Hall in August 2002, for a full-scale revival of one of Stephen Sondheim’s finest creations and now we’ve got […]
Follies at the National Theatre – new gallery of production images
Here’s a brand new gallery of production images to give readers a sneak peek of the National Theatre’s much-anticipated production of the 1970s Broadway musical Follies, opening tonight (6 September). Starring the multi-award winning trio of Tracie Bennett, Janie Dee and Imelda Staunton, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies will play the Olivier Theatre until 4 November. Featuring […]
Interview – Josefina Gabrielle on the pleasure of playing her latest Sondheim role in A Little Night Music
JOSEFINA GABRIELLE is playing Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, currently playing at the Watermill Theatre in Bagnor, near Newbury. Josefina is no stranger to Sondheim’s musical style – she has played Gussie Carnagie in Merrily We Roll Along (Menier Chocolate Factory) and Dot/Marie in Sunday in the Park With George (Leicester Haymarket). Her extensive musical theatre credits also […]
Into the Woods – Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Assembly Hall
Into the Woods continues at the Assembly Hall until 28 August. Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is never afraid of tackling the big shows – in musical theatre terms there are few bigger than Into the Woods. Being more widely-known since the film version, you can all […]
A Little Night Music – Watermill Theatre, Newbury
A Little Night Music continues at the Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, near Newbury, until 16 September. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ This immaculate revival of surely one of the most perfect pieces of musical theatre ever written is worth going a long way to see. It is hard to believe Stephen Sondheim’s […]
Assassins – Encores! Off-Center – New York City Center
Assassins, an Encores! Off-Center production, was performed at New York City Center. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Given today’s fraught political climate, it’s hard to imagine that that the powers at Encores! Off-Center didn’t have some sleepless nights about their decision to include John Weidman and Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins as part […]
National Theatre’s Follies – further cast details
Full casting details have been revealed for the National Theatre’s much-anticipated production of the 1970s Broadway musical Follies which is due to begin previewing in August. Starring the multi-award winning trio of Tracie Bennett, Janie Dee and Imelda Staunton, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies will play the Olivier Theatre from 22 August until 4 November with […]
Sondheim: Smiles of a Summer Night – Cadogan Hall
Sondheim: Smiles of a Summer Night at the Cadogan Hall, London. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Two hours of nothing but Sondheim with an orchestra of 33, eight gifted soloists, 11 backing singers and 24 examples of his finest work – no wonder there were plenty of Smiles of a Summer […]
Sondheim concert at Cadogan Hall – Lucy Schaufer on making a personal connection to the music
On Sunday 4 June, Grammy Award winner, mezzo soprano LUCY SCHAUFER, will be bringing both her operatic and musical theatre talents to London’s Cadogan Hall, where she will perform in Sondheim: Smiles of a Summer Night. The concert, with direction from Alastair Knights, celebrates the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim. The 33-piece Alex Parker […]
Zedel return for Joan Vazquez’s Sondheim show
Spanish artist Joan Vázquez will return to London next month with his celebration of musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim, Something’s Coming – a Sondheim Tribute. The performer, who made his London debut last autumn as part of the launch season of entertainment concept Live At Zédel, will once again appear at the Crazy Coqs on […]
Pacific Overtures – Classic Stage Company, New York
Pacific Overtures continues at Classic Stage Company, New York until 18 June. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ If there’s such a thing as minimalist grandeur, director John Doyle achieves it with his rendering of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Pacific Overtures. Doyle is capping his first season as artistic director of […]
Full cast for Watermill’s A Little Night Music
Full casting has been confirmed for the first actor/musician production of Stephen Sondheim’s haunting A Little Night Music at the Watermill Theatre this summer. Part of the Watermill’s 50th anniversary season and following on from the success of previous productions of Sondheim’s work at the intimate Berkshire venue, A Little Night Music will run from 27 […]
Lenny and Steve: Maria Friedman – Live At Zédel
Lenny and Steve: Maria Friedman continues at Live At Zédel, London until 20 May. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ British artists who truly understand the intimate art of cabaret are few and far between, but the wonderful Maria Friedman is one who stands alongside the very best and an evening in […]
Claybourne Elder on covering Jake Gyllenhaal and his London cabaret, You and Me and Sondheim
CLAYBOURNE ELDER has just finished portraying the character of the soldier Napoleon in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park With George at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway – the first Sondheim production to ever gross more than $1 million in a single week. The fact that its leading man is Jake Gyllenhaal […]
Watermill Theatre to stage A Little Night Music
The first actor/musician production of Stephen Sondheim’s haunting A Little Night Music will be part of the Watermill Theatre’s 50th anniversary season. Following on from the success of previous Sondheim productions at the intimate Berkshire venue, A Little Night Music will run from 27 July until 16 September. Directed by Paul Foster, with award-winning Sarah […]
Follies at the National Theatre – more cast details
More details have been revealed for the National Theatre’s much-anticipated production of the 1970s Broadway show Follies which is due to begin previewing in August. Starring the multi award-winning trio of Tracie Bennett, Janie Dee and Imelda Staunton, the Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman musical will play the Olivier Theatre from 22 August until 4 November with […]
The Frogs at Jermyn Street Theatre – exclusive gallery of images
The 2004 Broadway re-working of Stephen Sondheim’s quirky musical comedy The Frogs, presented by House on the Hill Productions, continues at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre until 8 April. Here’s an exclusive gallery of production images from Musical Theatre Review’s official photographer Roy Tan. With a book revised and expanded by Nathan Lane, based on Sondheim and Burt Shevelove’s original […]
The Frogs – Jermyn Street Theatre
The Frogs continues at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London until 8 April. Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ Stephen Sondheim was on a roll when he wrote the music and lyrics for The Frogs in 1974; his three previous shows, Company, Follies and A Little Night Music, coming during his most fertile […]
The Frogs at Jermyn Street Theatre – Nathan Lane attends UK premiere
Nathan Lane, whose 2004 Broadway version of Stephen Sondheim’s The Frogs has its UK premiere tonight (Thursday 16 March), attended the show last night at Jermyn Street Theatre in London’’s West End. Afterwards, he happily posed for photos with the creative team and cast, including Michael Matus, who plays his central role of Dionysos, and […]
DVD, CD and Book Reviews – Judy Collins, Drake’s Dream, The King and I/Carousel
JUDY COLLINS – A LOVE LETTER TO STEPHEN SONDHEIM DVD (Wildflower – MVD9662D) I have to admit that I love Judy Collins, always have. In fact, it was her who introduced me to Stephen Sondheim’s music in 1973 with her Top 10 hit version of ‘Send in the Clowns’. It made me want to find out […]
Music Theatre International presents Europe’s first Junior Theatre Celebration
Leading theatrical licensing agency Music Theatre International (Europe) Ltd will present the Europe’s first Junior Theatre Celebration at Leicester Curve next Sunday (12 March). Following on from similar annual events across the USA and in Australia, the UK’s inaugural Junior Theatre Celebration is designed to bring together schools and youth groups who have been introduced […]
Performance Preparation Academy – Merrily We Roll Along
Merrily We Roll Along was performed by Performance Preparation Academy at the Bellerby Studio Theatre, Guildford. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ It’s quite a coincidence that the two biggest flops of Stephen Sondheim’s career are being revisited at the same time with Anyone Can Whistle, which lasted nine performances on Broadway […]
Sunday in the Park With George – Hudson Theatre, New York
Sunday in the Park With George continues at the Hudson Theatre, New York until 23 April. Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Has any work of art ever been more imaginatively celebrated by another work of art than in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park With George? In Act I, […]
