Here We Are Off-Broadway Reviews

The best good news about “Here We Are,” the combo platter Buñuel musical that opened on Sunday at the Shed, nearly two years after Sondheim’s death in November 2021, is that it justifies the idea of merging these two works and succeeds in making a surrealist musical expressive. In Joe Mantello’s breathtakingly chic and shapely production, with a cast of can-you-top-this Broadway treasures, it is never less than a pleasure to watch as it confidently polishes and embraces its illogic. Musically, it's fully if a little skimpily Sondheim, and entirely worthy of his catalog. That it is also a bit cold, only occasionally moving in the way that song would ideally allow, may speak to the reason he had so much trouble writing it.

We’ve been through sharper existential crises with convergences of Sondheim characters over the years: the painted figures stuck forever together on the Seurat canvas in “Sunday in the Park with George,” the fairy-tale denizens wandering bewildered in the forest of “Into the Woods.” We’re consoled in “Here We Are” with one more chance to gather together with Sondheim, to hear his irreplaceable voice on a stage. The resulting evening might not be stranded at square one, but it doesn’t satisfactorily cross the finish line, either.

“Here We Are” probably did not merit a full-scale, sleek, starry production – but I suppose that it had to be produced posthumously anyway in tribute to Sondheim, and diehard Sondheim fans such as myself feel as if they have an obligation to check it out.

Here We Are, mostly and regardless of some lovely performances, leaves no profound emotional impression at its end. It sure tries. When in its closing seconds the characters tell us what their experience meant to them, it feels like a stab at redemption and learning that comes across as more puzzling overshare, because for most of the production has not sketched any kind of ongoing emotional or psychological impact of their various trials and tribulations. It is so bizarre and rushed. Why do this now? What have they recognizably gone through, who have they been to each other in front of us, to suddenly reveal this stuff?

Here We Are is torn between its reasonable desire to obliterate its characters and its aspiration, if not quite to save them, then to remain open-ended as to where they—and we—go from here. If it’s sometimes a muddled impulse, it’s also a humane one. Sondheim certainly didn’t go gentle into the apocalypse of late capitalism, but he didn’t go heartless either. He stayed complicated. He gave us more to see.

Still, it’s a pleasure to once again hear new music from him, and deeply sad to realize it will be the last (except for the trunk numbers that will inevitably turn up). On first listen, it’s hard to imagine that any of the songs will become the sort of cabaret staples that prove unavoidable, but those sorts of expectations have been defied before.

David Zinn’s minimalist set in Act I may inadvertently encourage theatergoers in the feeling that “Here We Are” is unfinished – that it would have been different, better, if Sondheim were still alive, especially since he was a self-confessed procrastinator with a track record of coming up with his most brilliant work way past deadline (such as, most famously, “A Comedy Tonight” in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” the first musical for which he wrote both music and lyrics, in 1962.) But I prefer to see “Here We Are” in light of a different Sondheim track record. As both biographers and loyal fans know, the public rarely appreciates any of Sondheim’s musicals right away. It takes time to find them wonderful.

So what does it all mean? Here We Are doubles down on a message. “Life’s a tit! Suck it up!” says Raffael early on. Later, the Bishop puts it in other words: “Be here. Until we’re not.” Groundbreaking? No. But it’s food for thought.

What music there is, though, doesn’t disappoint. Sondheim’s score is decidedly within his most familiar vocabulary, a final master class in pressing music into the service of character. As the recent revivals of Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along also demonstrate, one of Sondheim’s superior gifts was his impeccable understanding of how the ear processes language. Rhythm and melody, under his pen, allow the text to crash like a wave over us, somehow guiding the listener response so that everyone gets the joke at the exact same moment.

Yet, this idealistic sunbeam is eclipsed by the finale of noise, gesturing toward grander world affairs that threaten to crumble down their insular comforts. Even though few, like Marianne, may emerge slightly different than before, their epiphanies may get swallowed by the world. This is a show about a bourgeoisie bubble that — for now — can afford distractions and sweep aside the questions some other time. Here they are, re-seeking pleasures, with their grins and anticipation melting like wax from the candle. Although 'Here We Are' leaves you hungry for completion, it's a slow-crawling nightmare that plink-pla-plink in your consciousness long after you leave the theatre.

The world premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical isn’t a big Broadway venture. Wisely, Here We Are – an imperfect show but a touching requiem for the man who reinvented and reinvigorated musical theatre – has come to life in The Shed, a 550-seat Off Broadway space. It’s a venue well suited to this odd, adventurous tuner that Sondheim worked on before he died in 2021 at the age of 91, since it’s not a show likely to stimulate audiences who aren’t already devoted Sondheim-ites...

Meanwhile, for lovers of Sondheim and musical theater, it is imperative to see this vibrant production of Here We Are at The Shed, filled with vitality and creativity. What a thrill it is to take this continuing journey with the “Final Sondheim”! In addition to the definitive contributions of Ives, Mantello and Tunick, there have been many others along the way, including Oskar Eustis who originally developed it at the Public Theater (in 2012); readings with Kelli O’Hara (2017) and Bernadette Peters and Nathan Lane (2021). And now there is an all-star cast team of theater artists (actors, director, designers) who shine.

Here We Are is meticulously assembled—including by choreographer Sam Pinkleton, lighting designer Natasha Katz, and sound designer Tom Gibbons—as well as cleverly written and wonderfully performed. It also, at a certain point, runs out of music. About 15 minutes into Act II, the onstage piano goes dead quiet. “Rest in peace,” says the Bishop, and as Pierce says the line he looks out and up, as though acknowledging a greater loss. And that seems to be the overall attitude of Mantello’s production: recognizing, and moving forward. This is what we have, it seems to say, and this is better than nothing. It is what it is. We are where we are. Here we are. Here we go.

“Here We Are” delights in the flavor of its vapid jet-sets, but ultimately spits them out in a resolution that betrays its own internal logic. It’s too much, and robs the show of its potential teeth. Better to know when the feast is done.

What music there is, is playful and joyous. You wish there were more of it, especially a finale. But Ives and Mantello do heroic work endowing it with coherence and force. Sondheim always insisted on giving equal credit to his book writers, those who fed him and goaded him. It’s fitting that his last collaborator finished the epitaph. Viewed in the context of Sondheim’s monumental career—quirkiest since Anyone Can Whistle, most political since Assassins—Here We Are is a tenderly whispered coda. It shocks, how much he achieved: writing the lyrics to West Side Story and Gypsy before he was thirty; noodling at the piano in his nineties. Here he was. Yet he’s still here.

Joe Mantello’s direction is superb; David Zinn’s scenic and costume design, even with a sumptuous budget that could court comfort, feels innovative; Natasha Katz’s lighting is sharp; and Sam Pinkleton’s choreography, if a little hesitant to depart from Sondheim’s mid-century aesthetics, suits the material. Its excellent ensemble is unbelievably well-cast, and receive terrific musical help from Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations and Alexander Gemignani’s additional, fill-in-the-blanks arrangements. But the score is patently unfinished, and its incompletion leaves a yawning gap in the overall piece. In many respects, though, its incompleteness is secondary to its impossibility: it is unlikely that an adaptation of these two films (which happened there) into musical theatre (which is here, in the room with us) could have ever worked, as its radical ambitions are, if not incompatible, at fatal odds with the sentimental form.