CRITIC’S PICK: “ ‘Here We Are’ is as experimental as Sondheim throughout his career wanted everything to be...We, too, will always want more, even when we’ve had what by any reasonable standards should already be more than enough.”
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“ ‘Here We Are’ is more broadly funny than the films and also more overtly philosophical, with a recurring theme about the gap between appearances and reality—though it doesn’t go all that deep.”
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“Considering that it’s the final musical by the renowned composer-lyricist who died in 2021, Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Here We Are’ was guaranteed to jolt. Although the show emerges as modestly engaging, it adds a zap of electricity to the theatre season, thanks to inspired work by a dream cast and ace designers who serve up a slim slice of surrealism under Joe Mantello's ('Wicked') direction.”
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“ ‘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.”
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“ ‘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.”
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“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.”
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“We’ve been through sharper existential crises with convergences of Sondheim characters over the years...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.”
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“The novelty of attending Sondheim’s final musical and experiencing its non-stop zaniness wear off long before ‘Here We Are’ ends, and the whole thing falls apart.”
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