Three years after his death, Stephen Sondheim feels more alive than ever before

A Serial mutating hairdresser who gets cute to his murder weapon. A dominant “stage mother” that collapses over her own false poll. A few teenage love birds who marry against the instructions of their parents. An artist who paints a hat. What do these apparently different scenarios have in common? It is what comes from the mouths of these people: the beautiful, profound, prolonged elegant music by Stephen Sondheim.

It was a little more than three and a half years since the monolithic composer and copywriter suddenly died at the age of 91 and thus retires a rich work. His oeuvre includes some of the most celebrated and most important music theater pieces that have ever been written – SWEENEY TICK: The Demon hairdresser of the Fleet StreetPresent Gypsy, company And West Side Story. Both Broadway and the West End have the cinemas, which are called in honor and are given both names unprecedented while he was still alive. Sondheim's last work, Here we areOnly now reached the British coast through a first west end production in the National Theater.

In public imagination, the music theater is often reduced to some blatant ambassadors: the infinite, money -spitting goods such as Evil or HamiltonOr the rush of Garish Jukebox musicals or stage adaptations of popular films. There is therefore something deeply comforting that Sondheim's musicals – challenging, inventive, substantial – are still able to order the most coveted theater phases that there is still an enormous appetite for his work. Here we are Comes shortly after a phenomenally successful revival of Sondheim's We continue to roll happily on Broadway and a gender -specific version of Pursue On the west end, which in 2019 led the Olivier Awards. Sunday in the park with George (Just to scuppered's transmission from Covid). There is also more on the horizon: Sondheim's 1986 Opus In the forest is to be revived later this year in the Bridge Theater in London. His work now feels as lively as when she improved the complacent norms of the music theater for the first time all these years ago.

The occupation of Here we are Includes Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern family), Rory Kinnear (Bank of Dave), Jane Krakowski (30 rock), Martha Plimton and Denis O'Hare. Based on two surrealistic films by the European Arthouse filmmaker Luis Buñuel, The exterior gel And The discreet charm of the bourgeoisieThe musical is a collaboration with the playwright David Ives, who wrote the book. In the first half, a group of versatile caricatures travels around to search for a place to get brunch. The second sees her in an opulent room of a foreign message that cannot go – although nobody knows why.

“There is great importance” Here we are'S Top Tier ensemble, tell me. “Sondheim is The Most popular [figure in musical theatre]And the fact that he wrote that gave him his blessing and put his heart into the heart for many years … it feels important as if it had to be seen. “The best known for roles in The crown And Downton AbbeyHadden-Paton takes on a role here by David Hyde Pierce: that of Here we areKVetching shoe fetishist Bishop. “I'm a terrible priest,” he sings. “No, I am in the wrong job / I keep stone the wine / I keep brocking the wafer / I don't have a charisma.”

Here we are bears many of the composer's licensees: musically skillful texts on the one hand, rich in words. (“We expect a little latte later, but we don't have a latte yet,” sings O'Hare's waiter in the outstanding comic number of the show.) It is tonal and is not afraid of dissonance. The story is a challenge and a high concept. The line -up is also good and you have to be: Sondheim's is a difficult style of singing well. Actors like Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin have given their reputation to counter the unique challenges of a Sondheim score. Many talented others have problems. “He was the master to do it so precisely” Here we are As a beloved soldier. “It will be like an addiction to the ear. This specificity of the timing … nobody does it like him.”

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“There is no paraphrasing,” added Hadden-Paton. “It feels like there is no thought or a line is wasted – in no way. Every poetry makes sense.”

In view of the circumstances – the piece is a posthumous Schwanie from a modern master – reaction to Here we are something was damped. It is how people were generally united, a minor work in the middle of the most important career. And although it is true that the show does not have the depth or dazzling insight of its best material, it is still an essential undertaking, wasteful and full of humor. In a three-star rating for The independentAlice Saville described it as “a beautifully rendered Kurio [Sondheim’s] Fans, full of joke and dash – and proof of his restless search for importance in the unexpected places. “

The story has repeatedly shown that Sondheim's musicals often survived their toughest critics. “If you look at the trajectory of the appreciation of Sondheim's work, it grows exponentially from year to year,” says Fleeshman. “He is famous for it – when his works come out for the first time, they are sometimes too intelligent for their own well -being, and it takes years for the general population to catch up and find out how brilliant they are.”

In fact, many of Sondheim's musicals took decades to maintain their fees. His penultimate stage work was in 2008 from 2008 RoadshowA fictional life story of the socially ambitious architect Addison Mizner and his Huckster brother Wilson. The show, known to different Wise peoplePresent BounceAnd Gold!experienced a tedious journey into completion and was rewritten several times over the course of a decade and rewritten several times. When it finally broken down, it was hit with a kind of respectful shrugs. There are still brilliant flashes; The fact that it was recently revived on the London stage (in Highgate's Gatehouse) shows a growing appreciation. Assassin (1990), a concept musical about the historical figures that tried to kill different US presidents, was another breeder; After a mixed first reception, it took its lawful place in Sondheim's indispensable canon.

Maybe of course the strongest case was the critic that it just misunderstood it We continue to roll happily. The original production hit Broadway in 1981 and closed after only 16 performances (plus 44 preview). Admittedly, it was not an easy sale – the piece that followed the life and disappointment of a group of university graduates was told in the reverse chronological order. The audience tried to keep the history and character of which character. (Belong to the original actors His field'S Jason Alexander and breaking Bad's Giancarlo Esposito.) In recent years, however, Cheerful was accepted as one of the best by Sondheim and remains fruitful for the reinterpretation: The recent revival of Tony winner with Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff proved to be great success, both critically and commercially (with a filmed version published by Sony) and became the highest rising production of every Sondheim musicals. childhood'S Richard Linklater is currently a screen adaptation with Mütze Feldstein and Paul Mescal for five years (by the way, which was heard among the participants Here we are'S London Press Night). “Sondheim's musicals will only grow posthumously,” adds Fleeshman. “Shakespeare's appeal did not do it [been diminished]And Sondheim was often described as the Shakespeare of the music theater. “

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Here we are is unconventional in its approach to music theater conventions. (Forget not to “have a melody that you can hum”. Here the music is specifically rejected by the second act.) But it corresponds to the lifelong approach of Sondheim to write, one that is rooted in innovation and creative subversion. His early mentorship under Oscar Hammerstein helps to convey the type of traditionalist foundation that he would later overthrow. PursueHis 1970 hit, which focused on a bachelor and his circle of married friends, was a pioneering concept musical that avoids the need for a linear act on a topic. Sunday in the park with George .

For someone who is as high as Sondheim, matters such as “legacy” are often too big to be quantified, too complex to be articulated. Maybe he is best thought of as a teacher in the abstract sense. (And sometimes in a literal: there is film material on YouTube from him, the young theater students train through the subtleties of his songs. “And art is a form of teaching.” Of course, it is true that his great and holy gift to mankind was his art, but the years between Roadshow And Here we are saw him another monumental treasure – two books collected texts entitled ” End the hat And Look, I did a hat. Sondheim ran through his life work in detail and created one of the most insightful, most impressive and scholarly exams of the creative process that was ever published.

Both volumes begin with Sondheim's four mantras – ideals that ruled his entire approach to writing. They were short: “Content dictated shape; less is more; God is in the details; [and] Everything in the service of clarity, without which nothing else is important. “It is difficult to name the artist who has offered the world so much clarity – emotionally, psychologically and creative.

“Here we are” runs in the Lyttelton Theater of the National Theater until June 28th