Here We Are, legendary composer Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, features a book by Tony Award–nominee David Ives. It is inspired by Luis Buñuel’s films The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel. Here We Are is directed by Tony Award–winner Joe Mantello.
The cast will include Francois Battiste, Tracie Bennett, Bobby Cannavale, Micaela Diamond, Amber Gray, Jin Ha, Rachel Bay Jones, Denis O’Hare, Steven Pasquale, David Hyde Pierce, and Jeremy Shamos. The understudies for Here We Are are Bradley Dean, Adam Harrington, Bligh Voth, Adante Carter, Mehry Eslaminia, and Lindsay Nicole Chambers.
Produced by Tom Kirdahy, its executive producers are Sue Wagner, John Johnson, and Jillian Robbins. Co-presented by The Shed.
Performances begin in September 2023.
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.
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.
2023 | Off-Broadway |
The Shed Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
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