OLD FRIENDS Reviews

[Robbie2]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 1:14am

A Great Big Broadaway Show  - Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends a musical celebration of the icon’s work. Tony Award winners Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, alongside a whole roster of unmissable theatrical talent, pay tribute to one of musical theatre’s most acclaimed composers in this special Broadway production.

Merrily We Roll Along, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George: Hear groundbreaking scores come to life, sung by the best in the business. After an acclaimed run in London, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, devised by producer extraordinaire Cameron Mackintosh (Les Misérables, Miss Saigon), brings this spectacular theatrical event across the pond for a Broadway bow. See Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends on Broadway, where Peters, Salonga, and an ensemble of treasured performers give new life to cherished classics. This isn't just a concert — it's a full-scale, star-studded celebration of an iconic artist.

 

[Robbie2]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 4:19pm

Opens tonight 6:30 

[EDSOSLO858]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 4:40pm

I'm expecting flat-out raves tonight. 

[carolinaguy]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 4:58pm

When does the press embargo for this lift? A week from Thursday? :)

[binau]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 5:35pm

No doubt everyone will give raves except Jesse Green who will give the show a pan, tell us that the Sweeney section is not as well sung as Depp/HBC, and declare Judith Ivey to be the best Sally of all time who should have been in the show in place of Bernadette. 

[TaffyDavenport]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 6:56pm

The show doesn’t deserve raves.

[henrike]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 8:00pm

TaffyDavenport said: "The show doesn’t deserve raves."

I agree. It's a fine revue, but I have no idea how it got such accolades in London.

[EDSOSLO858]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 8:28pm

Embargo lifts at 9…

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 8:57pm

Check the Broadway dot com instagram stories to see what Jordan Roth has emerged as tonight 🤯

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:01pm

NYT Critic's Pick from Jesse Green

Review: A Party With 17 ‘Old Friends’ and 41 Sondheim Songs

Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga lead the festivities in a new Broadway revue of the great musical dramatist’s work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/theater/old-friends-review-sondheim-peters-salonga.html

"These gems had been waiting in the 12 tones of the Western scale and the million words of the English language, unobserved, until he came along with his flashlight and pickax. Any opportunity to experience how the feelings he channeled and the connections he made have mined our psyches and reshaped our world is an opportunity even old friends should take."

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:02pm

Variety

‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’ Review: Not Just a Broadway Tribute but a Musical Feast

https://variety.com/2025/legit/reviews/old-friends-review-broadway-stephen-sondheim-1236363218/

" not only are the songs transformed. So are star personas, the most eye-popping being Salonga going all out as Mrs. Lovett (from “Sweeney Todd”), accompanied by Jeremy Secomb in magnificent voice as Todd. But even more remarkable is Salonga’s Momma Rose with “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (from “Gypsy”), displaying a belt and a fierceness that make the number a showstopper."

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:03pm

NY Stage Review

SONDHEIM’S OLD FRIENDS: SOMETHING GREAT HAS COME, NO MAYBE ABOUT IT

By David Finkle

★★★★★ Stephen Sondheim's brilliance celebrated by Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga, Matthew Bourne, other swells

https://nystagereview.com/2025/04/08/sondheims-old-friends-something-great-has-come-no-maybe-about-it/

 

SONDHEIM’S OLD FRIENDS: MUSICAL CORNUCOPIA MAKES AN OVERSTUFFED BANQUET

By Steven Suskin

★★★☆☆ Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga headline Cameron Mackintosh’s memorial salute to the songwriter

https://nystagereview.com/2025/04/08/sondheims-old-friends-musical-cornucopia-makes-an-overstuffed-banquet/

[MezzA101]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:03pm

MemorableUserName said: "NYT Critic's Pick from Jesse Green

Review: A Party With 17 ‘Old Friends’ and 41 Sondheim Songs

Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga lead the festivities in a new Broadway revue of the great musical dramatist’s work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/theater/old-friends-review-sondheim-peters-salonga.html

"These gems had been waiting in the 12 tones of the Western scale and the million words of the English language, unobserved, until he came along with his flashlight and pickax. Any opportunity to experience how the feelings he channeled and the connections he made have mined our psyches and reshaped our world is an opportunity even old friends should take.""

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/theater/old-friends-review-sondheim-peters-salonga.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-U4.JA1z.SkpcSZqNIsG2&smid=nytcore-android-share

 

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:04pm

Chicago Tribune/NY Daily News

Review: ‘Sondheim’s Old Friends’ on Broadway is a don’t-miss chance to revisit his music

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/04/08/review-sondheims-old-friends-on-broadway-is-a-dont-miss-chance-to-revisit-his-music/

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:04pm

Theatermania

Review: Good Times, Not Bum Times, Will Be Had at Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends

Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga, Beth Leavel, and more pay tribute to the master.

https://www.theatermania.com/news/review-good-times-not-bum-times-will-be-had-at-stephen-sondheims-old-friends_1769925/

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:05pm

AMNY is negative

Review | Old Friends: You could drive a person crazy (with another Sondheim revue)

https://www.amny.com/entertainment/theater/review-old-friends-stephen-sondheim/

"Unlike other Sondheim revues that made at least a passing attempt to shape Sondheim’s songs around a concept or narrative frame, “Old Friends” is a two-and-a-half-hour buffet of greatest hits, delivered without context, cohesion, or much reason for being. (The only actual “old friend” of Sondheim among the cast is Bernadette Peters.)

Sondheim’s work represents the pinnacle of musical theater writing—brilliant in its craft, deeply human in its storytelling, and unmatched in its lyrical and musical complexity. But what makes it extraordinary—its specificity to character, situation, and emotional arc—gets flattened in this glossy concert staging. “Old Friends” tries to be everything at once, moving from “Company” to “Into the Woods” to “A Little Night Music” to “Sweeney Todd” at breakneck speed. The result feels more like a mixtape than a tribute, more exhausting than illuminating."

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:06pm

WSJ

‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’ Review: A Lot of Night Music

Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga lead Cameron Mackintosh’s song-stuffed revue of the Broadway composer’s legendary career, stretching from ‘Gypsy’ to ‘Sweeney Todd’ to ‘Passion.’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/stephen-sondheim-old-friends-review-revue-broadway-bernadette-peters-lea-salonga-bbcd7f1e

"The headliners are wonderfully showcased. Ms. Peters has been an exemplary interpreter of Sondheim’s work for decades, having starred in the original stagings of “Sunday in the Park With George” and “Into the Woods.” While her voice has lost some of its rich timbre, her rendition of “Send in the Clowns” is so deeply infused with soul-searching that any vocal imperfections are quickly forgotten as Ms. Peters’s evocation of a love that might have been—could have, should have—burrows into your heart. Equally extraordinary is her performance of another exquisite song of ill-fated yearning, “Losing My Mind.”"

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:07pm

3 1/2 stars from NYP

‘Old Friends’ review: Bernadette Peters and a glorious cast sing Sondheim

https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/entertainment/old-friends-review-bernadette-peters-and-a-glorious-cast-sing-sondheim/

 

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:07pm

Vulture

Here’s to Us: Old Friends, a Familiar Trip Through the Sondheim Canon

https://www.vulture.com/article/old-friends-bernadette-peters-sondheim-revue-review.html

"Old Friends stretches to two and a half hours, counting an intermission, which is both way too long and woefully incomplete. You can’t take offense at the concept — it accomplishes exactly what it aims to do, which is to remind you that Sondheim wrote some really great songs — but you do start to fantasize about it all slowing down and just committing to the dramatic frames that contained them. Should we just revive Sweeney Todd again? Or Follies? Or wait, it’ll never make as much money as a revue, but let’s do Passion."

[Fordham2015]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:08pm

Jackson McHenry in Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/article/old-friends-bernadette-peters-sondheim-revue-review.html

"A rich, basic chocolate brownie — familiar ingredients and satisfying, if not necessarily a whole meal.

"A hagiography may be deserved, but it’s not an interesting mode for a show to idle in forever."

Jinx MemorableUserName lol

Updated On: 4/8/25 at 09:08 PM

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:09pm

NY Sun

Mass Appeal Seems To Be the Main Aim of ‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’

Producer Cameron Mackintosh has recruited Matthew Bourne, a director and choreographer who shares his fondness for spectacle, to guide the actors and provide ‘musical staging’ for this new revue celebrating Sondheim.

https://www.nysun.com/article/mass-appeal-seems-to-be-the-main-aim-of-stephen-sondheims-old-friends

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:11pm

Daily Beast

‘Sondheim’s Old Friends’: Bernadette Peters Is Making All of New York Weep

LOSING MY MIND

Peters, Lea Salonga, Bonnie Langford and others fizz and frolic in “Sondheim’s Old Friends” on Broadway, a Sondheim greatest-hits show. Bring tissues!

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sondheims-old-friends-bernadette-peters-is-making-all-of-new-york-weep/

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:11pm

The Wrap

‘Old Friends’ Broadway Review: Do We Need Another Stephen Sondheim Revue?

This tired songfest does nothing to enhance the master composer’s reputation

https://www.thewrap.com/old-friends-broadway-review-stephen-sondheim-revue/

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:17pm

Theatrely:

A Charming OLD FRIENDS Brings Nostalgia To Broadway — Review

https://www.theatrely.com/post/a-charming-old-friends-brings-nostalgia-to-broadway-review

"Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends is a celebration of a fearless artist that is itself quite timid, a memorial piece that seems overly desperate to keep out the spectre of death. Once you accept the show’s limited ambitions, as I gradually did over the course of this pleasant and jauntily staged musical revue, you can let yourself to have a good time. Sure, Steve himself would doubtless have rolled his eyes at the whole affair—but there’s no denying the production’s considerable nostalgic charm. "

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 4/8/25 at 9:23pm

Three stars from TimeOut

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/old-friends-broadway-musical-review-stephen-sondheim-bernadette-peters-lea-salonga

"To those unfamiliar with Sondheim’s oeuvre, Old Friends offers a respectable and professional introduction to the late master’s voice, both as a peerlessly witty lyricist and as a unique compositional dramatist. What it doesn’t provide is context. The show contains vanishingly little biographical information about Sondheim’s personal or even professional life; neither, for the most part, does it place its songs in the dramatic moments they were written for. (When it tries, the results are spotty: The semirealized microstagings of suites from Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd seems out of place amid the rest of the show’s rather stodgy style: performers in ballgowns and tuxedos, on a cheeseball set of light-bulp prosceniums and swoopy musical bars.) Extracting musical flowers from their original soil is fine for songwriters like Rodgers and Hart, but it’s a challenge with Sondheim, who tied his songs insistently to character and situation. "