Here We Are | Album review

According to a Stephen Sondheim lyric from his masterpiece Sunday in the Park With George, art isn’t easy. Well, neither is his final musical, Here We Are. It was not unexpected that when Sondheim died in November 2021 at the age of 91 he did not go gentle into that good night. Refusing to follow the path of so many late-career composers who finish out their days making anodyne stuff, Sondheim created one last show that is every bit as challenging, yearning, smart and funny as the man himself. Last autumn, it was given a consummate Off-Broadway production that has been beautifully captured on this album. 

Always one to push the boundaries of his art form, Sondheim was still mining new territory right up until the very end, creating a surrealist musical based on a pair of Luis Buñuel films. On record, Here We Are plays as though Carousel’s groundbreaking bench scene, with its flights of glorious melody interspersed with dialogue and underlying romantic ambivalence, has been exploded into an entire show about nothing less than the end of the world. 

All the Sondheim trademarks are here – the jauntily unsettling tempos, the unorthodox rhythms and melodies, the trenchant observations, the giddy wordplay (‘We do expect a little latte later, but we haven’t got a lotta latte now.’). The recording features an incomparable ensemble cast, including a bevy of Tony winners and nominees, and vivid orchestrations by the great Jonathan Tunick that make every moment come alive. The instrumentation may be traditional – strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion – but rarely has that mix sounded so fresh and piquant.

One of the more challenging aspects of the recording is that the last several tracks are book scenes with minimal underscoring and virtually no singing. While some of the dialogue leans toward the impenetrable, one of these cuts is the most affecting on the entire album. ‘Interlude 3: Snow’ is
a tender conversation for Rachel Bay Jones as Marianne and David Hyde Pierce as the Bishop, who ponder the meaning of ‘being.’ David Ives’s dialogue is so mystical and heartbreaking that it’s a perfect match for Sondheim’s ravishing music. 

Sondheim strove to expand the possibilities of Musical Theatre in order to more fully explore our collective joys and sorrows. How appropriate that his last show includes a ‘song’ without any singing that manages to be so bracingly modern and hauntingly human. I’ve never heard anything like it before, and I’m pretty sure Sondheim would be tickled pink by that.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Cast Francois Battiste, Tracie Bennett, Bobby Cannavale, Micaela Diamond, Amber Gray, Jin Ha, Rachel Bay Jones, Denis O’Hare, Steven Pasquale, David Hyde Pierce, Jeremy Shamos

Orchestrations Jonathan Tunick

Music supervision, additional arrangements Alexander Gemignani

Conductor Alexander Gemignani

Concord Theatricals

Released 17 May 2024