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So here it is, and it is difficult to imagine that it is better done. The Stephen Sondheim's final musical, produced for the first time posthumously in New York, arrives in London: a Bonkers, Bitty and sometimes Brilliant Coda at the work of the great composer-Lyrician, superbly delivered by a formidable cast.
As many have noted, it is barely a musical – more a surreal drama in which music is part of the texture – and that certainly does not correspond to the masterpieces of Sondheim. But in the affectionately precise staging of Joe Mantello, even the unfinished state of the work makes sense. When the songs dry, at the beginning of the second act, it seems in line with the context: the passage of satire to something more reflective. Here, the play looks like both a acerbic comment on a world on the edge and an ironic meditation on the nature of the theater where the characters remain suspended in their own little hermetic world. It is not Sondheim to his greatest, but it is always only him: spirit, ironic and suddenly wise.
The plot, which could be subtitled Five go feralis taken from two films from the Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel (The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie And The exterminating angel), skillfully adapted by the playwright David Ives in two linked acts. The first part sees a handful of tedious and private types of ubergure taking place about the city in search of perfect brunch, for having encountered the dismay that each establishment has no food.
The conversation sparkles with an expensive dysfunction: the billionaire Leo (Rory Kinnear, in a designer tracksuit) and his sweet aerial wife Marianne (Jane Krakowski in the neglected nou of the sky drive) hovers to clone their dogs, so they have identical pockets in all their homes. The film agent bristling with Martha Plpton, the cynical cynical cynical surgeon of Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the leurrel of Lebrique Diplomat by Paulo Szot, the sulky and the flirt. The marking, supposedly reluctantly, is the grassy anarchist gamity of Marianne, Fritz (Chumisa Dornford-May), which growls to drop capitalism and the end of the world. Shots and disturbing bombs explosions suggest that she could be right.
Sondheim's score propels and comments on the action: a little capricious and thorny piece to accompany the desperate hunt for food worthy of Insta, a lush piaf style number for a waitress at the end of his attachment. And there is a superb work by Denis O'Hare and Tracie Bennett as a succession of eccentric and mephistophelian staff.
Cut in the second part and the gang fled to the sumptuous residence of the ambassador, only to find that they cannot leave. Soon, all the pretension to civility have evaporated while friends (plus a few soldiers and a reluctant bishop) walked on the vestiges of food, hack the water sector and use the library. The songs stop. As a political commentary on the excesses of capitalism at an advanced stage, it is quite frank and the lack of action is problematic. But there is an advantage in the staging of Mantello which raises it in something bizarre and existential.
“Here we are,” directs a refrain. But where are they really? In purgatory? There are certainly echoes of Sartre Home house In the second part and a nod to Beckett everywhere. The design of the design of David Zinn, all the brilliant surfaces of the first half and the mad opulence in the second, makes the characters look like exhibitions in a gallery. And, despite all the drawbacks of the play, in the middle of it comes an unexpected and moving take point. Marianne asks the priest a meaning. “We are here. In fact here on earth. Most likely, ”he replies. It looks like a silent reminder to use our wisely time of a great artist who is no longer here.
★★★★ ☆
Until June 28, Nationaltheatre.org.uk
