Here We Are - National Theatre Review

Reviewed by James

Stephen Sondheim was a simply matchless composer/lyricist titan like no other. His material was never strictly mainstream or commercial. Unbelievably, some shows often flopped upon opening (the excellent Follies, Merrily We Role Along), only obtaining re-arrangement and subsequent critical reappraisal as classics, in more recent decades. 

Photo by Marc Brenner.

Known for his deconstructionist approach to the form, this last work, is Sondheim at his most surreal; and tonally uneven. Years in gestation, and completed posthumously by his book writer, it’s also based on two films from Spanish director Luis Bunuel, The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel. 
The basic premise sees a group of materialistic, nouveau-riche friends meet for dinner, a meal which they can never get served, due to a series of increasingly bizarre encounters which constantly thwart them.
The group in question, are an astronomically wealthy plutocracy, a gaggle of upper-east side talent agents and plastic surgeons. Some of Sondheim’s satire on this particular strata of upper-crust customer, is very funny: ‘You insulted an innocent waiter! / What waiter is innocent, really? / I’ve cried in many a restaurant’. The main stumbling block, is that bar a couple, these characters are conceited, indistinguishable and very unlikable – but this of course, is the point. The vacuous elite are all assimilating into looking the same, disillusionedinto their own sense of innocuous anonymity.  
 The one who remains immensely charming - and also gives one of the starry cast’s best performances - is Jane Krakowski’s ditzy, powder-blue dressing-gowned Marianne Brink, so refreshing in her eternal optimism and perpetual wonderment. So accustomed is she to the very best lifestyle, she gets mixed up not only between baroque and rococo – to make: ‘Barococo’ , but also, (to the despair of her politically rebellious daughter, topically anticipating the apocalypse),between 'anti-fashion’ and ‘anti-fascist’. Krakowski’s is an endearing performance of souffle-light comic skill; juxtaposed amidst all the cynicism.

 Their first restaurant is Café Everything, which contrary to its name, has nothing at all (not even water) in stock. Sondheim has fun with this concept in his lyrics to Waiter’s Song: ‘We may expect a little latte later, but we haven’t got a lotta latte now!’. 

An absurdist sense of experimentation, is evident before the show even starts. Upon entering the Lyttelton’s wide,proscenium stage, it’s being hoovered and dusted by Tracie Bennett’s cleaner, blurring the line between what’s part of the show, and what isn’t. The piece is full of these clever flurries into self-referentiality, literally in some cases: at one point of magic-realist innovation, it suddenly starts snowing on stage.It’s at its strongest when it’s at its most bitingly satirical, orindulges in its own sense of meta-theatricality. There’s one lyric alluding to ‘overpaid actors’. At one point, Richard Fleeshman’s soldier (not all the characters even have names, again emphasising the examination of archetypes), declares:‘In my dream, we were all in a play, and we were on a stage!’. At which point, Krakowski pauses, then, timed to perfection, literally breaks the fourth wall, looks out into the audienceand asks: ‘Who are all these people?!’. This is a moment of high hilarity, I just wish there were more of them. Instead, the material too often leans into either the very strange, or goesoff on tacked-on tangents and under-developed sub-plots.Krakowski also has an impromptu duet with a bear, which inexplicably appears all of a sudden. These profoundly surreal moments lack coherence and momentum.  

When they finally do track down Bennett’s exasperated waitress (brilliant in a variety of quick-changing, service-industry roles), we’re treated to one of the best, and funniest songs, the French accented, Piaf-style, It Is What It Is, a societal comment on the ever-exacting demands of the customer, and the increasingly desperate, Python-esque, subservient attempts to meet guest expectation. Apart from this number, as well as the opener: ‘What A Perfect Day’, and ‘Waiter’s Song’, the other songs aren’t memorable enough. 

Jane Krakowski. Photo by Marc Brenner

 The loss of clarity is even more the case in the second half –apparently Sondheim mostly worked on the class satire of act one – and the discrepancy shows. Act two traps the ensemble in a mansion’s drawing room, Cluedo-style. Set designerDavid Zinn’s impressive staging retracts right to the very back of the Lyttelton, as one set is exchanged for another, and act two descends into an on-the-nose, muddled mixture of Dante’s Inferno and Lord Of The Flies. 

 Originally opening to middling reviews in the intimate off-Broadway venue The Shed in 2023, this production at The National marks its UK premiere. It’s slickly directed by Joe Mantello (who also directed a very small, obscure musical phenomenon called Wicked you won’t have heard of!).

What’s occasionally absent, is that customary Sondheim edge, that dark, lacerating humour, that lets you see the fractiousness beneath the jollity. Are we meant to feel sorry for these characters, or be on their side? In both cases, apart from the much softer Marianne, there’s no reasoning behind why they’re so shallow. Sondheim usually makes this motivation of his protagonists so clear. In Sweeney Todd, yes Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett bake people into pies, but its to avenge a great injustice. In Into The Woods, the witch places the curse because her own child abandoned her. In Follies, Sally and Phyllis attend the party in order to recapture their former glory.
 

Here We Are isn’t up there with those undisputed classics.The conclusion I deduced, was that the far stronger satire of the first half, was an allegory on the capitalism of the ultra-rich, tangential to the redemptive, A Christmas Carol-style ending. The minimalist modernity of the white-box set only returns, once the characters learn to value what’s important. 

Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Martha Plimpton. Photo by Marc Brenner.

 For such a gigantic figure who absolutely revolutionised what the American musical could do, I expected Sondheim’s swansong to pack a real punch. It’s more inconsistent, a befuddling, brainteasing oddity. Though flawed, knowing there won’t be another new work from the master, it remains a bittersweet privilege.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Here We Are runs at The National Theatre in London until 28th June 2025. Ticket are available from https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/here-we-are/