Old Friends (Play)

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    Lea Salonga Is Never Getting Tired of Sondheim

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    Nobody doubted that Lea Salonga could sing.She had won a Tony Award at the age of 20 for her breakout role as the besotted Vietnamese teen Kim in “Miss Saigon,” and sung her heart out as Éponine, and later Fantine, in Broadway productions of “Les Misérables.” She provided the crystalline vocals of not one but two Disney princesses: the warrior heroine of 1998’s “Mulan” and the magic carpet-riding Princess Jasmine in 1992’s “Aladdin.”But could the singer handle Sondheim — a composer heralded for creating some of the most challenging, idiosyncratic work seen on the American stage — on Broadway? Could she inhabit a character like Momma Rose, the monstrous, pathologically ambitious stage mother from “Gypsy”? Or Mrs. Lovett from “Sweeney Todd,” the butcher/baker who breaks down the marketing challenges of hawking pies filled with human meat, in a Cockney accent, no less?“Some of it’s hard,” Salonga admitted.But she is doing all that and more in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” currently playing at the Ahmanson Theater here in Los Angeles after a 16-week run in London’s West End. Scheduled to begin previews on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater next month, the show features more than three dozen songs from some of Sondheim’s biggest musicals, including “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “A Little Night Music” and “Into the Woods.” The tribute revue also stars Bernadette Peters, who, no stranger to Sondheim, put her own indelible stamp on the character of Momma Rose in 2003.Salonga, center, stars in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” with, from left, Jasmine Forsberg, Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Maria Wirries and Joanna Riding.Matthew MurphySalonga, Peters said, “has one of the great Broadway voices, and she just brings down the house.”For Salonga, “I’m getting the chance to sing some of the most incredible lyrics ever written. I’m getting to dip, not just a toe, but my entire body, into this incredible work.”“Nobody was surprised how terrific she was as a performer,” said the show’s producer Cameron Mackintosh, who also cast Salonga in “Miss Saigon” and “Les Misérables.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Eureka Day’ and Sondheim Revue Join Broadway’s Next Season

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      Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga will star in Sondheim’s “Old Friends” in Manhattan Theater Club’s Broadway season, which also includes “Eureka Day.”Manhattan Theater Club, one of the four nonprofit organizations that operate houses on Broadway, is planning to stage a vaccination comedy called “Eureka Day” and the Sondheim revue “Old Friends” at its Samuel J. Friedman Theater next season.“Eureka Day” predates the pandemic — it was first staged in 2018 in Berkeley, Calif., where it takes place, and the disease at issue is mumps, not Covid. The play, by Jonathan Spector, is set at an exuberantly left-leaning private day school; the characters are school board members who find their tolerance tested by the anti-vaxxers among them.The initial production was at the Aurora Theater Company; in 2019, there was an Off Off Broadway production presented by Colt Coeur that the New York Times critic Ben Brantley praised, saying it “is not only one of the funniest plays to open this year, it is one of the saddest.” There have been several other productions since; most prominently, in 2022, the show was staged at the Old Vic in London, with Helen Hunt starring.The M.T.C. run, which is to begin performances on Nov. 25, will be a new production, directed by Anna D. Shapiro. (She won a Tony for directing “August: Osage County.”) Casting has not yet been announced.“Old Friends” is a posthumous tribute to the acclaimed composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021. (“Old Friends” is the title of a song in the Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”) The revue, a passion project for the megaproducer Cameron Mackintosh, was first performed for one night in 2022, and then had a 16-week West End run that ended earlier this year.The New York production, like the London production, will star the Tony winners Bernadette Peters (“Song and Dance”; “Annie Get Your Gun”) and Lea Salonga (“Miss Saigon”) and will be directed by Matthew Bourne (who won two Tonys for “Swan Lake”) in collaboration with Julia McKenzie, an English actress and frequent Sondheim performer. The New York production is to begin March 25, 2025, following a run at Center Theater Group’s Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More