(seen at the afternoon performance on 26th August 2023)
As a programme note reminds us, the original Broadway production of this show was staged with a cast of teenagers and those in their early twenties. This new National Youth Music Theatre (NYMT) production, with its cast aged between 12 and 23 is thus the most authentic revival possible. It also turns out to be one of the best.
Mary Flynn (Madeleine Morgan) is drunk at a film premiere party in 1980. Her former best friend Franklin Shephard (Toby Owers) wrote the movie. Third friend in their broken triangle is lyricist Charley Kringas (Thomas Oxley).
The show moves backwards in time through the 1970s, 1960s and on to 1955 as we find out why the rifts occurred, how partners and addictions were acquired and experience the moulding of youth into adulthood.
Sondheim’s most complex score and construct, many of his songs from it are known “out of context” thanks to the show as an entity going unrevived for many years until a working revisal was constructed in the last decade.
As always with NYMT, the creative team attack the material with the youth at their disposal to create something special. Libby Todd has a two-level set, a simple piano (ingeniously hiding a bar) with sliding doors behind it on ground level.
Above, a gallery with wall-panels on which the year is hung on appropriately period graphic bedecked signs. A spiral staircase connects the two, the (likewise young) orchestra bookend the balcony in two groups under Leigh Thompson’s direction.
Todd’s costume designs are even stronger. The fashions of each era clearly enjoyed particularly by the young women of the cast, the gentlemen in tuxedos until age allows them simpler jackets.
For director Katherine Hare and choreographer Julia Cave there are the typical Sondheim issues of mass choral moments not always suggestive of dance and suddenly telescoping to interior monologues within the space of a few bars.
Both solve the problems using the multiple stage areas and also the aisles of the auditorium as an overflow. The party sequences are always effective, the coming together of the crowd carefully individualised by Cave.
Hare, meanwhile trusts the flow to George Furth’s book, the choral interludes as the years roll back are her dividers to contain each scene at the pace of the period – time speeding up as it does when older, somehow endless as the years ahead are distant.
The overall result is a stunning demonstration of how to make a difficult modern classic function, and reveal it as it was meant to have been seen in all its young and confused glory.
In the cast we are able to catch a glimpse of musical theatre futures. As always, protean West End standard talent is much in evidence and half the interval fun is assigning them roles in current and future productions.
Never emotionally maturing and terminally ambitious, Toby Owers makes Shepard unexpectedly sympathetic. He seems to know the right thing to do, yet allows ego to intervene. Moments alone at the piano show the man inside, the one his two loyal friends know and would love to have retained.
Collaborating partner Charley may blow the partnership on live television, but it was under severe provocation. Thomas Oxley stops the show with his explosive “Franklin Shepard Inc,” suggesting a musical comedy future. His maintained decency and bemused disadvantage in the face of naked ambition are painfully felt by all observing – including the audience.
Madeleine Morgan as third partner Mary Flynn is one of Sondheim’s women in full throttle. Drunkenly spewing vitriol on first appearance, with good reason having a waitress take a drink just watching her.
Morgan goes on to reveal a strong voice and endless compassion under similar pressure to that of Charley. Unpicking the threads which wove the woman into a girl, when the trio end the show in pyjamas to watch Sputnik from the roof of their New York apartment building – their first meeting – it is her emotional journey which is the broadest and beautifully executed.
Along the way, the collateral damage is fascinating. Shepard’s first wife Beth is a performer he fell instantly in love with when seeking a cabaret partner. Matilda Shapland at just 18 handles “Not A Day Goes By” with incredible skill.
Hare’s staging of the sequence is inspired as lighting designer Aaron Dootson places Shapland and Owers in individual spotlights. As she reveals her feelings, they chase the light and move from it to newly lit places, no escape, vocal or visual.
Second wife Gussie gives Sophie Lagden free range to move from ambitious idealist to lusty manipulator. A satisfyingly full voice and the ability to dominate the Broadway stage at the beginning of the second act make her another performer to watch.
Her unfortunate first husband Joe allows Sam Sayan a little fun with a Jewish New York slant, and also an unusual reversal of power, diminishing as the years go forward and Gussie outstrips him in every way. Answerphones were the right solution after all.
Smaller roles are equally well done. Journalist K.T. (Caren Farrell) handles the dynamite on-camera interview and earlier P.R. disasters with amused detachment. Luc de Freitas and Hattie Candler as TV anchors on her channel amuse, as does Imogen Grover scuttling off as a make-up artist almost caught on camera.
Equally, Peter Unsworth as the judge, Marnie Maw as Meg Kincaid and youngest cast member Matilda Penna as Frankie Jr get their moments – Penna having the most fun and widest range of playing ages.
A large ensemble is impossible to mention by name but each makes a special contribution to convince beyond doubt that they are coming through as it is our time, it is also, most certainly, a hit.
5 stars, standing ovation given.
Photo credit: Konrad Bartelski. Used by kind permission.
