Let me be absolutely honest and say that this star rating should come with a health warning. Why? Because the valedictory offering from the late Stephen Sondheim is such a curate’s egg. The musical fantasy that unfolds on the National’s Lyttelton stage is, for long stretches, utterly absorbing. Yet it’s undeniably flawed, too.
Let’s start with the many positives in a show which opened in New York in 2023. The first part of the evening is quite simply extraordinary, the typically angular melodies delivered with panache by a first-rate ensemble in which Jane Krakowski is always the centre of attention. Her character, Marianne, forever floating around in a negligee, is a maddeningly shallow socialite — a younger version of one of the ladies who lunch — but somehow she works her way into our hearts.
We’re used to thinking of Sondheim as a cerebral talent who shines a steely light on human nature — or at least that gilded subsection of it living in Manhattan. This show reminds us that he can also be very, very funny. An adaptation of two films by the Surrealist director Luis Buñuel, it contains some of Sondheim’s wittiest lyrics since A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. David Ives’s book is ultra-sharp.
It’s in the second act that something strange happens to Joe Mantello’s urbane production. An astonishingly deft piece of musical theatre slowly gives up on songs and becomes a mixture of comedy of manners and existential drama. Think Sartre’s Huis Clos crossed with one of the wackier episodes of Seinfeld.
For the first hour or so, we are watching a New York version of Buñuel’s dream-like satire The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Krakowski and our own Rory Kinnear play a couple who unexpectedly find themselves hosting friends who think brunch is about to be served. Setting off to find a restaurant, the group settles into one chic establishment after another but, mysteriously, there is never any food to be had. Denis O’Hare is superb in the various manifestations of a harassed member of staff (Waiter’s Song is delicious); Martha Plimpton spits venom as Claudia, a married woman who is having a dalliance with Raffael (Paulo Szot), an over-sexed ambassador who is a caricature of all things Latin American.
Later, David Zinn’s design moves the action from a glistening white box to an ornate embassy, the kind of place where you half-expect to see bowls of Ferrero Rochers piled all around. Now the story switches to Buñuel’s earlier movie, Exterminating Angel, in which dinner guests are somehow unable to take their leave of the premises. Marianne bares her superficial soul on Shine, but for much of this section Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations confine themselves to decorous underscoring. Revolutionaries, a bishop and a bear are also part of the spectacle. Don’t ask why. It’s better to let the fey tale wrap itself around you like some modern-day Midsummer Night’s Dream.
★★★★☆
145 minutes
To June 28, nationaltheatre.org.uk
