Here We Are at the National Theatre, Review: Sondheim’s Surreal Farewell
Here We Are is the new, posthumous, show from the great composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, whose works include Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, and the lyrics for West Side Story, along with many notable others. Sondheim died, at the grand age of 91, before the show could be produced, but his collaborators, writer David Ives and director Joe Mantello, decided to press on without him. As such, the mere existence of Here We Are is a cultural moment to pay attention to.
Here We Are is based on two films by the Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel. The show begins with a group of affluent friends arriving at the home of Leo Brink (Rory Kinnear), a man of considerable means and questionable background. They have come for brunch, but there has been a mix-up and Brink has no memory of inviting them. With no food in the house, Brink decides to treat his friends, and they go out to eat. Things then go from bad to weird, in hilarious fashion, as they travel from restaurant to restaurant but can’t get a meal. There’s the Café Everything, that actually has nothing, not even water, and a post-reconstructionist restaurant, where everything is what it seems, but which holds a macabre secret that sends them scattering; there’s also a restaurant that is shut down by the military before they can properly dig in, although the food was rubber anyway. When, finally, they do manage to eat they find that at the end of the evening they are inexplicably unable to leave, and an apocalyptic pall hangs over the proceedings.
The first half of the show is undeniably the stronger. The various restaurant scenes play out like surreal comedy sketches, held together by a lose chain of incidents, much in the vein of classic Monty Python. I was particularly put in mind of the sketches Cheese Shop, The Dirty Fork, and Spam. (If you haven’t seen these, check them out on YouTube and thank me later). In each of the restaurants the wait-staff are played by Denis O’Hare and Tracie Bennett, donning different costumes and silly accents. They are given the opportunity to fully stretch their comedic muscles and do excellent, hilarious work. The first half then builds to a magnificent comic crescendo, in which Fritz (Chumisa Dornford-May), a young female anarchist, falls in love with the solider that has come to close the restaurant they are trying to eat at. This leads to a breath-stretching, eye-bulging sing-off, and a dream sequence that leads to all the actors suddenly realising they are in a play. Cue house lights up and awkward, terrified stares out at the audience. It’s all very funny and had this writer beaming with delight.
As for the words and music, remarkably Sondheim’s capacity for coming up with clever, witty lyrics, full of detailed rhymes, alliteration, and perfectly timed punchlines, remained undimmed even at this late stage. High points include the waiter at the Café Everything opining the lack of latte, though they had a lotta latte earlier and might get a little latte later, as well as the Latin lover of the group, Raffael (Paulo Szot), crooning, “I must have her,” to every woman in his social circle before attempting a seduction. And the music is elegant as always; recognisably Sondheim.
The second half starts with one of the more hallucinatory moments I’ve witnessed on stage. Now ensconced in an embassy building from which they cannot leave, Marianne Brink, Leo’s wife, played by the wonderful Jane Krakowski, dreams that she is dancing with a bear. Said bear slips from the shadows at the back of the stage, disappears when she turns around mid-song, and then appears to stand fairly enormous behind her. The scene is magical, surprising, and funny in its surprise. By this point the show has created an atmosphere in which anything can happen and will be readily accepted (again, quite Pythonic.) It is also at this point that the songs stop and the tone of the show shifts quite dramatically. The characters are now stuck; they philosophize, they burn furniture, they eat books, anything to survive. They don’t know what’s going on outside. Has the world ended? They are trapped with an anarchist, also played by Denis O’Hare, who may have engineered the end of the world. He threatens them with a gun and controls what food and water they have. It’s strange, enigmatic stuff, but is barely dramatic enough to maintain interest for the last hour or so of the show, and one is left longing for Sondheim’s songs to lighten things up, but they never come. (As a side note, it’s eerily fitting that a show that Sondheim died while making should suddenly lose his musical and lyrical presence part way through, as if he has died and fallen silent while we sat there in the audience.) Nonetheless, so much goodwill has been built up by the first half – and a bit – and the rest of the show is so off-kilter, and so beautifully staged, that Here We Are still manages to carry the day and can be called a success.
Here We Are is not a wholly great show, but it has great things in it that come together to make something entirely memorable – mostly for the right reasons.
Here We Are is playing at the National Theatre in London until 28th June 2025
