Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends” reviewed

Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends is a beautifully staged tribute revue honoring musical theatre composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Now playing at the Ahmanson, in DTLA, the musical showcases some of Sondheim’s most popular of hit tunes, playing out as a juke-box musical of highlights from such stage productions as Sweeny Todd, Company, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, West Side Story, Gypsy and more.

Originally designed as a one-night event it premiered at the Sondheim Theatre in London in 2022. Over a year later, Mackintosh began producing a limited West End run.

Above photo: Jasmine Forsberg, Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Lea Salonga, Maria Wirries and Joanna Riding perform “Broadway Baby” in Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends. © Matthew Murphy.

This glorious new production was devised by renowned producer Cameron Mackintosh as a medley of all Sondheim’s greatest songs. The dazzling and star-studded show features the return of Lea Salonga (last seen at the Mark Taper Forum in Flower Drum Song), along with Broadway legend Bernadette Peters making her long-awaited CTG debut.

Center Theatre Group is presenting the North American premiere of Old Friends at the Ahmanson Theatre in advance of the Broadway premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club on March 25, 2025.

Playing at the Center Theatre Group Ahmanson Theatre from February 8 through March 9, 2025, tickets are on sale here.

Joining two-time Tony Award winner Bernadette Peters and Tony Award winner Lea Salonga on stage is a talented company of top Broadway performers as co-stars: Jacob Dickey, Kevin Earley, Jasmine Forsberg, Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Beth Leavel, Gavin Lee, Jason Pennycooke, Joanna Riding, Jeremy Secomb, Kyle Selig, Maria Wirries, Daniel Yearwood, Paige Faure, Alexa Lopez, Greg Mills and Peter Neureuther.

Review

Celebrating the late composer’s extensive body of work, the production features over forty songs from more than a dozen of Sondheim’s shows. Employing a medley-segue technique, the songs seem to flow from one to the next like a daisy chain. Set pieces truck on and off stage to re-set for each musical number’s appropriate backdrop. Director Matthew Bourne’s staging is seamless, fluid and quite slick.

The show is especially energetic when the entire cast take to the stage, belting out the ensemble numbers with power and panache, such as “Comedy Tonight” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, swiftly followed by “Company” from that musical.

Some of the evening’s highlights include a dramatic rendition of two songs from Sweeney Todd; “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” (performed by Jeremy Secomb and full company) and “The Worst Pies in London,” performed with relish by Lea Salonga, opposite Secomb, as the grimy Mrs. Lovett.

Now almost 77, Bernadette Peters has starred in six Sondheim productions throughout her illustrious career. Her voice is still great, if a little wobbly at times. During her solo rendition of “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, Peters placed a lot of showy emphasis on the final syllables – “Isn’t it ri-CHHH?” – with dramatic and audible nasal inhalations in between the lines. By the song’s end, she appeared to be in tears, such was Peters’ commitment to the emotionality of the tune.

More enjoyable were the duets from Into the Woods. Peters had created the iconic Sondheim role on Broadway playing the witch, but for “Hello, Little Girl” Peters played Little Red Riding Hood and appeared with the fabulous Jacob Dickey as a very sexy Wolf.

Another highlight was Beth Leavel’s raunchy and hilarious solo rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch,” also from Company.

Act I concluded with a wistful staging of “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park with George, which was inspired by the French pointillist painter Georges Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (painted in the mid 1880s). Effectively recreating the famous artwork, impressionistic and projected black and white images slowly become suffused with color by the song’s conclusion. Gorgeous projection design by George Reeve.

Of course, the full company take to the stage to conclude the evening with a rousing rendition of “Old Friends” from Merrily We Roll Along and “Our Time” from Company. There’s even a treat performance of a song that Sondheim had written but then cut from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, “Love is in the Air.”

Almost three hours of show-stopping moments and Sondheim songs backed by a live 17-piece orchestra upstage is a very nice way to spend an evening in the theater. If you love Sondheim’s musicals or just want to get a glimpse of Bernadette Peters doing her thing live on stage, this is the show for you.

Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends 

Presented by Center Theatre Group, and by Manhattan Theatre Club in association with Cameron Mackintosh and Daryl Roth.

Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center

135 N. Grand, Los Angeles (DTLA)

February 8 through March 9, 2025

Tickets (all-in pricing including fees) start at $52.00

Runtime: 2 hour and 30 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission.

For more information and to purchase tickets, go here.