PUTTING IT TOGETHER. To 5 April.
Manchester
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie
Library Theatre To 5 April 2003
Mon-Thu 7.30pm Fri-Sat 8pm Mat 5 April 3pm
Runs 2hr One interval
TICKETS: 0161 236 7110
www.uk.tickets.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 March
Sondheim performed by ace Sondheimites: a super, sophisticated occasion.OK, so band member Dave Browning's the trumpeter who plays the theme for Coronation Street, and Paul Baker's introduction (so high-camp the peak of Everest's hardly up there to provide a nestling place) includes a brief scoff at the Royal Exchange - the Manchester theatre with all the glitz and glamour the Library - er, has in modest proportions.
But the Library Theatre's rightly high on its superb 50th anniversary season and it's right this glittering 'musical review' should round it off. All three of the directors I've ever trusted to give me a Sondheim treat have been involved with Library productions of the great American music-theatre man's opus.
Paul Kerryson, before he moved to Leicester to mount a series of outstanding productions, Howard Lloyd Lewis, who died prematurely in the late eighties, determined to revive his sensational British premiere of Pacific Overtures. And Roger Haines, whose ways with the lighter side of American repertory deserves far wider acclaim than it's so far received.
His disciplined ease with this material's apparent from the start, with Merrily We Roll Along's 'Rich and Happy' backed by a silent quartet moving around to create a party-crowd crush.
Sondheim's supreme in the art of putting a musical together so each song develops character and situation. The show's concept of a suave anniversary dinner party gives a logic to the songs, with their frequent dissection of relationships, even if some lose out, ripped from their contexts. Sunday in the Park with George's 'It's Hot Up Here' - originally sung by figures in a painting - is neutralised, as is 'Bang' from A Little Night Music.
But these are tiny prices to pay for the glittering wit, the punchy point of these songs. If one impression over-rides others, it's less the way that Sondheim has reshaped audience ideas of melody, stylistic pastiche frequently making points - hear the Dick Tracy pieces (with 4 out of 30 entries, Putting It's a fair promo for this little-known show) or Baker's superb rendition of the rollicking 'Buddy's Blues' from Follies.
It's more the sheer economy, there in Sarah Redmond and Angela Richards' back-to-back bitch-hate duel under elegantly glacial veneers, and again in Richards' expert over-ride of wedding ceremonial in the over-drive mind of a woman who's not gonna get hitched at all, after all.
And where's the deepest feeling amid this irony and detachment? In 'Unworthy of Your Love': Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald's song from Assassins, before the killing ofJohn F. Kennedy.
James Smillie and Tim Rogers match the people already praised. Haines keeps things rolling along merrily, not to say stunningly, knowing just when to pull back and when to flower into detail in a production that's as good as it gets.
The Observer: Paul Baker
Charles: James Smillie
Julie: Sarah Redmond
Barry: Tim Rogers
Amy: Angela Richards
Director: Roger Haines
Designer: Judith Croft
Lighting: Nick Richiings
Sound: Paul Gregory
Musical Director: Jonathan Gill
Choreographer: Kay Shepherd
2003-03-30 13:04:23