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 The Theatreguide.London Review

Here We Are
Lyttelton Theatre Summer 2025

Here We Are is the last musical from Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021. It gets its UK premiere at the National Theatre after its US debut in 2023, both performances directed by Joe Mantello.

A book by David Ives is shaped in the first half around Luis Buñuel’s film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), about six upper-class friends looking for somewhere to eat.

The second half draws on Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962) to depict the same elite group stuck in one room.

The films' surreal bleakness is replaced by a mildly amusing upbeat musical with plenty of echoes of Sondheim’s other shows, but nothing that sounds distinctly different or special about the new songs.

The lyrics by Sondheim keep to the plot and have his usual funny, mischievous touch, but don’t develop characters or ideas.

The fine, confident cast includes Rory Kinnear as the arrogant, rich Leo Brink and Jane Krakowski as his designer wife Marianne. They, along with Paul (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), the cosmetic surgeon, his partner Claudia (Martha Plimpton), a talent agent, and the diplomat Raffael (Paulo Szot), go in search of a meal.

Their privileged lifestyle seems absurd. One of the couples has cloned their dogs so they can have the same dogs in each of the homes they own. A character announces that he has just had his 'thousandth nose job', and Raffael is a drug smuggler.

They are an elite group that Marianne’s sister, Fritz (Chumisa Dornford-May), a member of PRADA (the People’s Revolution Anti-Domination Army) denounces in song:

'Once the revolution is up and humming That'll be the end of the world Your world:..of private jets….And hundred-thousand-bucks-an-ounce designer perfumes, The world of Wall Street thieves'

In each restaurant they visit, the sequence is the same. The waiter, usually played by Denis O’Hare, takes their order 'because that’s their job', and then tells them there is nothing to eat or drink. 'We expect a little latte later, but we don’t have a lotta latte now.'

The music mostly disappears from the second half of the show, where they are joined in Raffael’s embassy by a grandly dressed bishop (Henry Hodden-Poton) carrying a gold mitre. who claims he has lost faith in himself as a priest and is looking for another job, and a colonel looking for drug smugglers.

They find they are unable to leave without knowing the reason why, and become increasingly irritable with each other.

Surrealist elements include one character having a dream in which his mother walks in carrying a sheep, and the dreamer notices he is on a stage looking out at the audience. At another point in the night, a bear pops in to hug another of the characters.

With very little music in Act Two, this section feels like a conventional light fluffy comedy that has little depth, purpose or characterisation. However, the mildly entertaining show did get most of the audience smiling.

Keith McKenna