'Here We Are' review — Stephen Sondheim's final musical is a witty, audacious, dreamlike and ultimately poignant tribute

Read our review of Here We Are, starring Rory Kinnear, Martha Plimpton, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jane Krakowski, now in performances at the National Theatre to 28 June.

The late Stephen Sondheim left us with one final work to savour, asking a question, appropriately enough, no less profound than “What is the meaning of life?”. Here We Are opened Off Broadway in 2023 and now makes its UK debut at the National, a witty, dreamlike, insightful, sometimes maddening, ultimately moving tribute to the man who left an indelible mark on musical theatre.

Here We Are, created with playwright David Ives, is something of a folly (in the preposterous sense, rather than the revue which Sondheim also immortalised). It takes two tricksy surrealist films by Luis Buñuel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, and straps them together in an odyssey that begins as snappy satire and winds its way into a level of despairing, absurdist existentialism that would probably tickle Sartre. In short: from the rich eat to eat the rich.

The plot begins straightforwardly enough: a murderer’s row of ultra-wealthy American friends (who are often posed in police line-up fashion) are trying in vain to find a brunch spot. The group features billionaire tycoon Leo Brink, his daffy wife Marianne, Marianne’s activist sister Fritz, horndog ambassador Raffael, high-powered talent agent Claudia, and her plastic surgeon husband Paul.

The barriers to them eating grow more bizarre and ominous, from the Everything Café running out of food through to fatalities and a looming revolution. The group, along with a crisis-stricken bishop, blustery colonel and a soulful lieutenant, winds up trapped in the embassy in the show’s considerably weirder (and, alas, much less musical) second half.

That disparity, per Ives, is by design, since Sondheim’s core principle was “Content dictates form” – and the confined characters have no reason to burst into song. Admirable, though in the wake of this great loss it’s also wrenching. Just hearing those first few instantly recognisable notes of Sondheim’s score sends shivers down the spine; of course we want more of it. The project was unfinished when the composer died, so perhaps we might have gotten our wish.

Still, what we do get is typically brilliant: crafted with immense rigour and care, emotionally and thematically rich, every rhyme ingenious, and meaning always allied with form – as when the panicking waiter at the Everything Café sings “I am so sor-ry, mad-am”, with increasingly biting, unhinged emphasis. That’s one of several roles (all overlooked service workers) taken by charismatic livewire Denis O’Hare.

But then all of this transatlantic cast, directed by Joe Mantello, are fantastic. Tracie Bennett also gets a mini showstopper as an extravagantly grieving French waitress, and we get a perfectly grotesque collection of elites from Rory Kinnear, Martha Plimpton, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jane Krakowski, the latter a sort of deranged Disney princess, constantly swishing her floor-length satin nightie, while alternating between one-liners that are blithely enraging (“We’re getting the dogs cloned”) and heartbreaking (“I’ve cried in many restaurants”).

Chumisa Dornford-May is a great pairing with Richard Fleeshman’s wildly smitten soldier, Paulo Szot is a larger-than-life lothario, and Harry Hadden-Paton is hysterical as the bishop in search of a new calling, though constantly sidetracked by his rampant shoe fetish.

The material seems only to have grown more pertinent since the show was first in development, concerning as it does class warfare, empty capitalist excess, foodie culture, a purgatorial state reminiscent of lockdown, apocalyptic anxiety, and the blurring of the divide between reality and appearances. There’s even a prominent American clergyman and a Tesla reference.

David Zinn’s vivid design ranges from a mirrored room for this self-obsessed but introspection-resistant crew to their decadent embassy prison, which looks like a gleaming oil painting when it’s first revealed. It’s a great fit for a piece that embraces theatre’s fantastical reaches, while also asking simple but vital questions like: what do we really want in life, and do we matter? That combination of creative audacity and philosophical truth is Sondheim’s extraordinary legacy.

Here We Are is at the National Theatre to 28 June. Book Here We Are tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Photo credit: Here We Are (Photos by Marc Brenner)