Sondheim's Final Musical: HERE WE ARE (Off-Broadway) - Critics' Reviews — Page 2

NYT Critics Pick from Green:

This inventive, beguiling and not quite fully solved puzzle of a show is a worthy and loving farewell to the great musical dramatist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/22/theater/here-we-are-review-stephen-sondheim.html?searchResultPosition=1

Holdren in Vulture:

The Last Midnight: Sondheim and Ives’s Here We Are

A strange, dark, fragmented, and compelling final message from the master.

https://www.vulture.com/2023/10/theater-review-sondheim-here-we-are.html

(As always, Holdren is a delight to read.)

"The intellectual justification for bleeding the music from the play as it progresses holds up. But then, one can learn to intellectually justify pretty much anything; that’s what grad school is for. As the play’s ensemble, all exceptional actors, threw themselves into spoken drama-and-trauma, I remained a bit distanced. Again, we know this arc, and there’s still convention to it, even if it isn’t musical — shouting, crying, basically realistically expressed recrimination and breakdown. What would have been the un-conventional musical-theater way forward for Here We Are?

It’s not an answerable question, and that’s okay, but it’s still one that buzzes around one’s head throughout the show’s latter half, like a fly that’s difficult to bat away. The moments when it subsides most are the tender ones, particularly another midnight with Marianne, this one shared by a benign oddball of a bishop (a wonderful, wistful David Hyde Pierce). He has turned up unexpectedly, just before the existential lockdown — why? Because, as Pierce sing-splains in high understated-comic form, he’s looking for a new job. (Of course he is: This world is godless, faithless, spiritless, conscienceless. Who needs a little priest?)"

Updated On: 10/23/23 at 12:09 AM

Washington Post is mixed:

The world-premiere musical is blessed with a dazzling cast and design, but a sense of incompleteness diminishes its impact

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater/2023/10/23/here-we-are-sondheim-mantello/

"Why, the musical asks, can’t the music end if the story no longer requires it? (There are two mini numbers in Act 2; after that, Tunick’s underscoring carries us through to the end.)

Slant Magazine:

Here We Are Review: Stephen Sondheim’s Final Master Class Is Small and Funny and Fine

https://www.slantmagazine.com/theater/here-we-are-review-stephen-sondheim/

 

Overall, these reviews seem to be what I expected. Very happy to see the Critic's Pick from Green.

EDSOSLO858 said: "The “little latte / lotta latte” lyric some of these reviews quote are reminiscent of a lot of Sondheim’s later work, where he lets the alliteration and turns of phrase in his lyrics shine through. Genius.

Again, I come back to “What’s the muddle in the middle? / That’s the puddle where the poodle did the piddle.”"

Listen to Lucy and Jessie.  Its lyrics are incredibly intricate, with not a weak link in the intricacy.

Very pleased to read these (especially Green and Holdren), though I would still love to know what a casual, non-Sondheim-obsessed theatergoer thinks of it and if it can stand on its own with no context. I liked the show a great deal even if it doesn't rank up there with Sondheim's best works.

I don't have any knowledge of the producers' plans, but considering that the Shed run is a commercial production and they have no other announced shows until Branagh's LEAR a year from now, I wonder how long this could extend there (with or without the same cast)? Like, maybe a 9-month run at the Shed and then a London production is the best we could hope for for this quirky show and economic climate?

Updated On: 10/23/23 at 12:48 AM

More Holdren, because she captures the tensions inherent in the show very well, while also lavishing deserved praise on Rachel Bay Jones and David Hyde Pierce and my favorite scene:

“Yes. Being. Well,” [Pierce's priest] goes on, coughing a bit. “First of all — you might say — we’re here. Actually here! On earth. Most likely. Though perhaps not. As are other people, and also objects…. And that means something. That we’re here. We mean something, apparently. We are what you might call matter that matters. Or not. Depending on who you read.” Pierce’s touch is delicate, and Bay is radiant with glad attention. It’s the culmination of the playfulness of the show’s title: a banal little phrase that could signify a delighted arrival, or a hopeless assessment of the circumstances, or an articulation of astonishment at our very existence."

Holdren writes that the "logical conclusion of [the show's] premise is so dark, so extreme, that you can feel the opposing, more compassionate (or at least more ambivalent) instincts of the show's creators kicking back."

"Here We Are is torn between its reasonable desire to obliterate its characters and its aspiration, if not quite to save them, then to remain open-ended as to where they—and we—go from here. If it’s sometimes a muddled impulse, it’s also a humane one. Sondheim certainly didn’t go gentle into the apocalypse of late capitalism, but he didn’t go heartless either. He stayed complicated. He gave us more to see."

Overall, it was a pretty good night for the late SS, and congratulations to the people who managed to pull this off!

Someone over at All That Chat got some of the good stuff last night and inhaled generously as he predicts these reviews ensure Here We Are will one day be produced more than Into the Woods.

WOW! I was on the fence about seeing this show, but after reading NYT review I got tickets.

Cannot wait. 

Updated On: 10/23/23 at 09:56 AM

What is the running time?