Learn about the history of Sondheim musicals in London ahead of 'Here We Are'

As Sondheim's final musical comes to the National Theatre, revisit the hit UK productions of shows such as Follies, Gypsy, and Company.

For one last time, London audiences get to share in that very special experience: gathering for the much-anticipated arrival of a new Stephen Sondheim musical. The late, great composer and lyricist’s final show, Here We Are, which debuted at New York’s The Shed in 2023, is making its UK premiere at the National Theatre in April.

The musical is inspired by two respected art house films by Luis Buñuel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, and features a book by David Ives. The London production will once again be helmed by director Joe Mantello and boasts a powerhouse transatlantic cast, including Rory Kinnear, Tracie Bennett, Denis O’Hare, Jane Krakowski, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Martha Plimpton.

Ahead of this momentous event, get to know all about the celebrated history of Stephen Sondheim musicals in London.

Book Here We Are tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Saturday Night (1954)

Sondheim’s first professional musical was meant to debut in the 1954-55 Broadway season, but it was shelved following the death of lead producer Lemuel Ayers. A proposed staging in 1960 was also halted, as Sondheim felt the work didn’t reflect his current skill level.

That meant Saturday Night actually had its first professional production at the Bridewell Theatre in London in 1997, directed by Carol Metcalfe and Clive Paget, and starring Tracie Bennett. More productions followed, on both sides of the pond, including a UK revival at Jermyn Street Theatre in 2009 and a West End run at the Arts Theatre later that year.

West Side Story (1957)

The extraordinary retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet by Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents opened on Broadway in 1957 and came to the UK the following year, doing a run at the Manchester Opera House before moving to Her Majesty’s Theatre in the West End in December 1958. It was a smash, running for 1,039 performances.

West Side Story has been a favourite of British audiences ever since. The Shaftesbury Theatre reopened following its refurbishment with the show in 1974, and other major revivals include a run at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1984, and a national tour in 1997 followed by runs at the Prince Edward Theatre and Princes of Wales Theatre.

Gypsy (1959)

Audra McDonald is currently wowing Broadway audiences with her Mama Rose, but Sondheim, Laurents and Jule Styne’s musical about the dying days of vaudeville, the rise of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, and the ultimate stage mother has been a big hit in the UK too.

Angela Lansbury led the successful West End premiere at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1973, but perhaps the definitive British production came from director Jonathan Kent, starring the indomitable Imelda Staunton. Beginning at Chichester Festival Theatre, it transferred to the Savoy Theatre in the West End in 2015 and won four Olivier Awards, including Best Actress in a Musical and Best Musical Revival.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)

Sondheim’s witty love letter to Ancient Roman farce, whose title riffs on the classic vaudevillian set-up to a joke, “A funny thing happened on the way to the theatre”, was a Tony Award-winning success on Broadway and was also adapted into a movie.

In the UK, audiences first got to enjoy its slapstick humour in a 1963 West End run at the Strand Theatre, starring Frankie Howerd, and then again at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1986, and most recently in an Olivier-nominated revival at the National Theatre in 2004, where Sondheim’s final musical is also playing.

Anyone Can Whistle (1964)

Sondheim and Laurents’s zany satire about social conformity, political corruption, perceived madness and rampant capitalism has certainly retained its thematic relevance, but this tonally challenging show has never quite landed. Still, this whimsical show has since become something of a cult favourite.

London audiences first saw it at the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2010, led by Issy Van Randwyck and Rosalie Craig. The Union Theatre then staged it in 2017, and in 2022 Southwark Playhouse produced a major revival, starring Alex Young as the gleefully self-serving mayor.

Company (1970)

Sondheim and George Furth’s sophisticated examination of marriage, love, dating and the meaning of life had a mixed response from its initial Broadway audiences, but subsequent revivals have more than proven the show’s staying power, buoyed by songs such as “Being Alive”, “The Ladies Who Lunch”, “Another Hundred People” and “Getting Married Today”.

The first West End production came at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1972. Sam Mendes directed an acclaimed revival at the Donmar Warehouse in 1995, starring Adrian Lester, but it was Marianne Elliott’s gender-bent 2018 production at the Gielgud Theatre, led by Rosalie Craig, which set the gold standard. Her staging won four Oliviers, including for Patti LuPone and Jonathan Bailey.

Follies (1971)

Sondheim and James Goldman’s exquisitely bittersweet musical about the reunion of former showgirls at a shuttering Broadway theatre, and the group’s reflections on their youthful dreams, regrets, lost loves, nostalgia, and ultimate survival, is also teeming with wonderful songs, from “Losing My Mind” to “I’m Still Here”.

Still, it was a work-in-progress when it came to London’s Shaftesbury Theatre in 1987, with Goldman making extensive changes to the book, and there has been a continuing battle to find exactly the right form for the show. Happily, we were rewarded with a pitch-perfect Follies in 2017: Dominic Cooke’s remarkable Olivier-winning National Theatre production, led by Staunton, Janie Dee, Peter Forbes, Philip Quast and Bennett.

A Little Night Music (1973)

Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical version of the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, this country-house tale packed with tangled romances is best known for spawning the mega-hit “Send in the Clowns”. The show was first seen in the West End in 1975, staged at the Adelphi Theatre.

It has returned to London numerous times since, including a run at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1989, at the National Theatre, starring Judi Dench, in 1995, at the Menier Chocolate Factory and then the Garrick Theatre, led by Hannah Waddingham and featuring Jessie Buckley, in 2008, and I will never forget the concert performance in Holland Park in August 2020: a post-covid triumph.

The Frogs (1974)

Who fancies a spot of Ancient Greek comedy? Sondheim and Burt Shevelove (and later Nathan Lane) put their own spin on Aristophanes with The Frogs, which sees Dionysos travel to the Underworld where he encounters great playwrights like Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw.

The show had a brief run at London’s Old Brentford Baths in 1990, and again at the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2017. Audiences will get another chance to see this relatively unknown Sondheim at Southwark Playhouse this summer, in a new production directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman and starring Glee's Kevin McHale.

Pacific Overtures (1976)

Sondheim, John Weidman and Hugh Wheeler’s ambitious musical concerns the forced westernisation of Japan by America in the mid 19th century. It’s a challenging prospect, both to stage and watch, but we have seen a few revivals over the years.

English National Opera staged Pacific Overtures at the Coliseum in 1987, and more recently there was a well-received co-production between Japan’s Umeda Arts Theater and the Menier Chocolate Factory. That version, which benefitted from Sondheim and Weidman’s 2017 revisions, came to London in 2023.

Sweeney Todd (1979)

It’s no surprise that British audiences took Sondheim and Wheeler’s gory revenge saga Sweeney Todd to their hearts, given that it’s inspired by our own Victorian penny dreadfuls. The show was immediately acclaimed in both the US and the UK, winning Tony and Olivier Awards – the latter for the 1980 West End premiere at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

Its legend has only grown since, with revivals such as the National Theatre’s 1993 staging, the 2004 Trafalgar Studios and Ambassadors Theatre run, the 2012 West End production (transferring from Chichester) starring Michael Ball and Staunton, and the inspired 2014 Tooting Arts Club immersive experience set in an actual pie shop.

Merrily We Roll Along (1981)

Another Sondheim and Furth musical that first flopped and since been gloriously vindicated, this reverse-chronological portrait of three friends/aspiring artists is now so popular that it’s being turned into a movie, starring Paul Mescal, Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein.

It first appeared in the UK at the Guildhall School in 1983, and had a belated West End premiere at the Donmar Warehouse in 2000. But it was the 2012 Menier Chocolate Factory production directed by Maria Friedman (who previously played Mary) which triumphantly reclaimed the musical: that incredible version transferred to the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre, and subsequently took Broadway by storm.

Sunday in the Park with George (1984)

The French painter Georges Seurat is the inspiration for Sondheim and James Lapine’s profound and deeply moving show, which was garlanded with awards, including the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was first seen in the UK at the National Theatre in 1990, starring Quast and Friedman, and won two Oliviers.

There was a major revival in 2005 at the small-but-mighty Menier Chocolate Factory, another favourite Sondheim venue. That was led by Daniel Evans and Anna-Jane Casey, with Jenna Russell succeeding Casey when it transferred to the West End’s Wyndham’s Theatre – and won another five Olivier Awards.

Into the Woods (1987)

Be careful what you wish for in this fairy tale mash-up, one of Sondheim’s most popular shows. Written with James Lapine, it throws together characters from Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and more with a childless baker and a crafty witch, and it was adapted into a movie in 2014 starring Meryl Streep.

The show made its London premiere at the West End’s Phoenix Theatre in 1990: Imelda Staunton won an Olivier for her performance. It was revived at the Donmar Warehouse in 1998, featuring Russell, Sheridan Smith, Damian Lewis and Sophie Thompson, and at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in 2010, with Waddingham as the Witch. Next up: a new production at the Bridge Theatre this December, directed by Jordan Fein.

Book Into the Woods tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Assassins (1990)

Sondheim and Weidman put together a disparate but compelling group in this sinister musical: people throughout history who have attempted to assassinate the President of the United States. Reflecting various grievances and discontent, it has proved startlingly resonant in each subsequent revival.

London first saw it at the Donmar Warehouse in 1992, and it was then staged at the Union Theatre in 2010, and at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2014. The latter had a stellar cast featuring Aaron Tveit, Jamie Parker, Catherine Tate, Andy Nyman, and Mike McShane.

Passion (1994)

This rather divisive Sondheim and Lapine musical, adapted from Ettore Scola’s movie Passione d’Amore, explores obsessive love, manipulation, power and mania. It opened in London’s West End in 1996, at the Queen’s Theatre, in a significantly revised version of the Broadway run, and starring Ball and Friedman.

We haven’t seen much of Passion here since then, other than the Donmar Warehouse giving it a short run in 2010 as part of Sondheim’s 80th birthday celebrations. That version was directed by Jamie Lloyd, and starred Elena Roger, David Thaxton and Scarlett Strallen.

Road Show (2003)

This Sondheim and Weidman musical about a pair of real-life brothers seeking their fortune in the Klondike gold rush has gone through various transformations, even changing its name. It began in workshop as Wise Guys, with Sam Mendes directing Nathan Lane and Victor Garber, then became Bounce, and finally Road Show.

The show came to London in 2011, making its UK premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory. John Doyle directed a cast led by Michael Jibson, David Bedella and Jon Robyns. But that’s the last we saw of this vaudevillian musical – perhaps it’s due a return?

Here We Are (2023)

Following Sondheim’s passing in 2021, his final musical was posthumously produced by New York arts centre The Shed in 2023. The show, written with David Ives, is based on two surreal Buñuel movies, and concerns a group of wealthy people on a doomed brunch venture who become trapped during an apocalyptic crisis.

The UK premiere of Here We Are is coming shortly to the National Theatre, directed by Joe Mantello. The incredible cast features Rory Kinnear, Tracie Bennett, Denis O’Hare, Jane Krakowski, Richard Fleeshman, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Chumisa Dornford-May, Harry Hadden-Paton, and Martha Plimpton.

Book Here We Are tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Brinkhoff/Moegenburg, Johan Persson, Manuel Harlan, Tristram Kenton, Nobby Clark