Bernadette Peters & Lea Salonga to Lead Sondheim’s OLD FRIENDS On Broadway in 2025- Page 2

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 3:51pm

Would love someone like Joanna Gleason to be part of this. 

[inception]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 4:12pm

binau said: "The problem with London is that no one knew who Bernadette was. ​​​​​​

No one in London ever saw The Jerk or The 1982 Annie???

 

[Owen22]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 4:24pm

hearthemsing22 said: "Trying to get tickets for this will be a bloodbath. I hope they're smart about setting up a queue for the general onsale"

Possibly not. Cameron lost his entire investment in the West End I hear. 

[Play Esq.]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 4:25pm

I adore Bernadette, and I didn’t see either.  These references are very dated. 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 4:27pm

inception said: "binau said: "The problem with London is that no one knew who Bernadette was. ​​​​​​

No one in London ever saw The Jerk or The 1982 Annie???"

Binau's phrasing is a little ridiculous, but it's more a matter that buyers in London did not CARE to spend top dollar to see Bernadette in a West End Sondheim concert. In the same way that Broadway buyers did not CARE to see How To Dance In Ohio or The Anarchist.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 4:29pm

I wonder if it's going to be the same setlist and 'character breakdowns.' And if so, I hope we get an actual gay/queer man doing that one track rather than a straight man mincing about. Lordy what was that (and that's an actor I like). 

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 4:30pm

“In the same way that Broadway buyers did not CARE to see How To Dance In Ohio or The Anarchist.”

Where is Althea?

[binau]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 4:40pm

I’m dead serious almost no one knows who Bernadette is in London besides of course core fans. Trust me I talk to enough people in all different kind of demographics to get a gauge for this kind of thing. It’s a completely different story to the USA/New York. There is a reason her last concert tour to the UK was cancelled - it didnt sell many tickets (outside the core theatre fans in London). Bernadette is a much bigger star in New York and will sell many more tickets. 

[Bette's Turban]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 6:36pm

We bought tickets 10 minutes before curtain in London.  Paid rush prices and had great seats.  I liked it.  But purely for nostalgia sake.  People knew who Bernadette was. But it wasn’t like she was box office or anything like that.  
Not sure why this deserves a transfer.

[Dylan Smith4]

Posted: 4/8/24 at 11:47pm

I know this is highly unlikely, but I would just love the QUEEN herself, Patti LuPone, to be in this. She was very close with Sondheim, and I feel this could be the best way to finish the musical era of her career. 

[jkcohen626]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 1:50am

Dylan Smith4 said: "She was very close with Sondheim."

She wouldn't agree with this statement, but it's true that she's become tied to his work and she would certainly sell tickets. 

Personally, I think this will do pretty well. Only 650 seats + Sondheim + subscribers + Bernadette and Lea (in New York) seems to me to be enough to fill the house. 

I'm so curious to see who else they get to do this. We've had SOOO many fantastic character actors in Sondheim shows in the past few years. I'd love to see some of them come back! 

[jimmycurry01]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 8:46am

Dylan Smith4 said: "I know this is highly unlikely, but I would just love the QUEEN herself, Patti LuPone, to be in this. She was very close with Sondheim, and I feel this could be the best way to finish the musical era of her career."

They were not close. Patti has talked about the fact that they were not close. They worked together, they respected each other's work, and they lived in the same area, but they were not really close at all. She believes that Sondheim made her a better performer, but she described their relationship as being "complicated." 

With that said, she does well interpreting some of his work. She would certainly be a draw to subscribers, but she also made a big production out of giving up her Equity card. The likelihood that she would return to a do a musical, let alone a musical review, is indeed highly unlikely. I think she'll happily stick to doing concerts on her own terms.

 

[BJR]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 10:48am

Yeah, no way. She reiterated it just recently. She'll be back in a play one day, but no more musicals, as she feels too old/they're too physically taxing.

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 10:55am

I am not writing this to be obnoxious. It's my honest view. Can we please have a one year moratorium on anything Sondheim?
I have seen almost every original cast since Night Music.  I love him as much as everyone. Let's move forward.

[JSquared2]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 11:04am

CurtainsUpat8 said: "I am not writing this to be obnoxious. It's my honest view. Can we please have a one year moratorium on anything Sondheim?
I have seen almost every original cast since Night Music. I love him as much as everyone. Let's move forward."

 

Or here's another idea...maybe you could just not go??  Sorry but that's my honest view.

 

[kdogg36]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 11:11am

CurtainsUpat8 said: "I am not writing this to be obnoxious. It's my honest view. Can we please have a one year moratorium on anything Sondheim?
I have seen almost every original cast since Night Music. I love him as much as everyone. Let's move forward."

To my mind, this is like asking that the Met skip Verdi for a year. It might happen in a rare season, but he's always going to be in the rotation because he is such a dominant figure in that domain. 

There will be 8.5 months between the end of Merrily and the start of Old Friends, so at least there's that. Assuming no other Sondheim shows are announced. 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 11:21am

These things come in waves, and right now the tide is high following his death. There were no Sondheim shows on Broadway from January 2012 (when Follies closed) to Feb 2017 (when Sunday opened) and I'm sure there'll be other droughts in the future.

In the same way that sometimes we get multiple productions of Shakespeare or Ibsen or Miller or Williams or Wilder in close proximity, and then there's years between those writers represented on Broadway.

Could be worse –– Jule Styne and Cy Coleman and Neil Simon are rarely performed on Bway nowadays, save for a few hits.

Updated On: 4/9/24 at 11:21 AM

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 11:30am

Opera has a much smaller canon of shows that are produced in general.

Yes, I can not go. That is the easy, lazy answer to my sincere comment. Broadway has become a disaster. Ticket prices, audience behavior, merchandising, etc......   The thing some of you are missing here is any sense of history. If you had been going to Broadway since the 70's, you would have perspective. You are 25 years old and you think Wicked is the most amazing show to ever hit Broadway.  80 percent of Broadway is AWFUL. And yes,  I do stay home... and I go to off Broadway where I actually see some quality theatre. I saw Len Cariou in Tuesday's with Morrie in a 75 seat space in a church and it was some of the most exciting theatre I have seen in a long time.  Do you know who Len Cariou is? Because that theatre should be sold out and people should be fighting for tickets to it. Len Cariou is as big a legend as Patti LuPone.... I love Patti, but she can scratch her ass on stage and you all go insane. The $50 I spent to see Len Carious give a Masterclass was what theatre used to be like in nyc.

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 11:45am

CurtainsUpat8 said: "Opera has a much smaller canon of shows that are produced in general.

Yes, I can not go. That is the easy, lazy answer to my sincere comment. Broadway has become a disaster. Ticket prices, audience behavior, merchandising, etc...... The thing some of you are missing here is any sense of history. If you had been going to Broadway since the 70's, you would have perspective. You are 25 years old and you think Wicked is the most amazing show to ever hit Broadway. 80 percent of Broadway is AWFUL. And yes, I do stay home... and I go to off Broadway where I actually see some quality theatre. I saw Len Cariou in Tuesday's with Morrie in a 75 seat space in a church and it was some of the most exciting theatre I have seen in a long time. Do you know who Len Cariou is? Because that theatre should be sold out and people should be fighting for tickets to it. Len Cariou is as big a legend as Patti LuPone.... I love Patti, but she can scratch her ass on stage and you all go insane. The $50 I spent to see Len Carious give a Masterclass was what theatre used to be like in nyc."

I'm a bit confused by your viewpoint here.  If you think modern shows are terrible, wouldn't you be in favor of more Sondheim to show all the 25 year olds what proper theater is like?  Especially if we get a bunch of Sondheim actors in a show like Old Friends, that would be a great way to demonstrate the depth and artistry of Sondheim songs as well as actors who know how to interpret them (and recent Sondheim revivals, while they stunt cast, are introducing a new generation to Sondheim for the first time, and thus opening their eyes to what Broadway can be outside of just movie adaptations if they didn't have that kind of experience before).

I don't remember if it was you or someone else that had posted about it before, but I discovered that Tuesdays with Morrie was happening due to this board, and I was also shocked that it hadn't been a big deal (especially with Sweeney currently on Broadway), having seen no press or anything about it, so I wonder if their marketing just hadn't been there.

Anyways, my point is that even if we had a year's moratorium on Sondheim like you suggested, there's no guarantee that the shows that would open on Broadway would be anything but the "awful" shows you say comprise 80% of Broadway anyway.  So speaking as someone who's not that far off from 25 and also doesn't think Wicked is the most amazing show to ever hit Broadway, I relish the chance to see Sondheim in person because I didn't get a chance to when they originally ran.  And sure, have we had a lot of Sondheim in the last year? Yes, but I only hope that people who only come to Broadway for shows like Moulin Rouge and Back to the Future (and yes, Wicked) can get a chance to learn about other types of musicals and how they've become so timeless.

[TarHeelAlan]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 11:51am

CurtainsUpat8 said: "I am not writing this to be obnoxious. It's my honest view. Can we please have a one year moratorium on anything Sondheim?
I have seen almost every original cast since Night Music. I love him as much as everyone. Let's move forward."

I appreciate that you did not write the above to be obnoxious, and it's your honest view. Thank you for that. Here's mine: My wife and I have not seen any original cast Sondheim save for the Merrily revival (if that's even considered OBC) and Here We Are, nor have we seen anywhere near all of Sondheim's shows. Whenever there's an opportunity in NY or DC, we try to see something that's new to us, but we still have several more to go. For us, Old Friends might be something that would be appealing.

I suspect that having seen the OBC in virtually everything he wrote, you are the outlier. But there are likely a whole lot more of us in the theater-going universe than there are folks like you. I envy you. Please don't begrudge those of us who have more recently come to enjoy and even love Sondheim, and who continue to explore his works.

There are plenty of other new shows opening every season. I hope you find a number of them that you will love as much as you love Sondheim. There's a good chance we'll be seeing some of those along with you. 

 

Updated On: 4/9/24 at 11:51 AM

[JasonC3]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 12:36pm

And your comment below gives the impression that you are dismissive of others and their opinions, somewhat bitter, and set in your ways.    Good luck having people take your opinion seriously with such a haughty tone.

CurtainsUpat8 said: "Opera has a much smaller canon of shows that are produced in general.
Yes, I can not go. That is the easy, lazy answer to my sincere comment. Broadway has become a disaster. Ticket prices, audience behavior, merchandising, etc...... The thing some of you are missing here is any sense of history. If you had been going to Broadway since the 70's, you would have perspective. You are 25 years old and you think Wicked is the most amazing show to ever hit Broadway. 80 percent of Broadway is AWFUL. And yes, I do stay home... and I go to off Broadway where I actually see some quality theatre. I saw Len Cariou in Tuesday's with Morrie in a 75 seat space in a church and it was some of the most exciting theatre I have seen in a long time. Do you know who Len Cariou is? Because that theatre should be sold out and people should be fighting for tickets to it. Len Cariou is as big a legend as Patti LuPone.... I love Patti, but she can scratch her ass on stage and you all go insane. The $50 I spent to see Len Carious give a Masterclass was what theatre used to be like in nyc."

 

[Kad]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 12:45pm

Although I'm thrilled to have Peters back on Broadway singing Sondheim, I can't say the set list in the UK incarnation particularly excites me- particularly since it leaned heavily into selections from Company, Sweeney, and Into the Woods, all of which we've had on Broadway in just the last two years. I would've liked to see a broader selection from Sondheim's body of work rather than something that just feels like a greatest hits, particularly coming after his death.

[Dancingthrulife2]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 1:11pm

It would be a crime to not include anything from Here We Are, his last musical.

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 1:20pm

Kad said: "Although I'm thrilled to have Peters back on Broadway singing Sondheim, I can't say the set list in the UK incarnation particularly excites me- particularly since it leaned heavily into selections from Company, Sweeney, and Into the Woods, all of which we've had on Broadway in just the last two years. I would've liked to see a broader selection from Sondheim's body of work rather than something that just feels like a greatest hits, particularly coming after his death."

This is always my problem with Sondheim retrospectives. There's always one or two shows that seem to get overrepresented, and if a show is HONORING him then I'm sure he would prefer his lyrics-only work to be left out.

The 80th Bday Philharmonic concert was practically a FOLLIES concert.

It's always at the expense of Pacific Overtures, Passion, Bounce/Road Show, Forum, and Saturday Night. But people don't necessarily go to hear "Someone In A Tree"...

As for HERE WE ARE, it may be that the commercial rightsholders wouldn't allow selections to be included, as they plan for the future life of the show.

Updated On: 4/9/24 at 01:20 PM

[Sally Durant Plummer]

Posted: 4/9/24 at 2:15pm

Jordan Catalano said:

"Where is Althea?"

How can you believe that which you disbelieve?