Here We Are review – Sondheim’s desperate diners have a double helping of Buñuel

Stephen Sondheim’s last philharmonic is simply a passionateness task successful much ways than one. An adaptation of 2 films by Luis Buñuel, it reflects his lifelong emotion of cinema. Sondheim began mulling implicit the thought much than 4 decades agone (with playwright-director James Lapine) and started moving connected it astir a decennary earlier helium died successful 2021.

This production’s programme notes talk of its improvement arsenic a dilatory process with email exchanges betwixt Sondheim, manager Joe Mantello and publication writer David Ives. A parting acquisition from Sondheim, near successful draught form, it makes its European premiere aft a tally in New York successful 2023 – 2 actors from that accumulation are joined by an different caller cast. It is afloat of adventurous imagination, with immoderate signature Sondheim sparks, but the occupation spots are inactive wide to see.

Its crippled is simply a blended rearrangement of the 1972 societal satire The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, successful which a radical of idle affluent types marque plans for meal which are repeatedly foiled, and The Exterminating Angel (1962), astir the aftermath of a enactment successful a location wherever the servants person fled and the diners are mysteriously trapped. The archetypal enactment is based connected the erstwhile film, the 2nd mostly connected the latter.

Mantello’s accumulation begins energetically with wryly satirical humour astir the charmed lives of the 1%. There are comic exchanges successful the archetypal edifice they visit, Cafe Everything, which falls woefully abbreviated of its name. Subsequent edifice scenes are a airy reflection, bordering connected farce, and wherever The Discreet Charm is filled with surreal hauntings and dreams wrong dreams, this does not construe with the aforesaid aerial of intrigue connected stage.

The actors are vibrant nonetheless, though immoderate are wobbly singers. Paulo Szot, arsenic ambassador of the imaginary South American federation Miranda, has an awesome operatic extent to his dependable and Chumisa Dornford-May, who plays the revolutionary Fritz ­– a trustafarian who is fixed an unconvincing romance with a worker – is simply a beardown singer, too, portion Rory Kinnear is amusive arsenic the arrogant Leo Brink.

Visual thrills and spills … the formed of Here We Are astatine the National Theatre. Photograph: Marc Brenner

But arsenic the amusement travels from question to stasis, with emphatic repetition that is arsenic existential arsenic it is literal, it falters successful momentum and brings longueurs, contempt urgent warnings astir the extremity of the world. Musically, the dependable is unmistakably Sondheim’s but determination is nary 1 large song, not adjacent 1 memorable song. There is heartiness and humour but small of Sondheim’s usually intimate oregon penetrating psychology. Lyrics incorporate immoderate bully satire but besides banal rhymes specified arsenic “Ladies and gents earlier we dine / Let america convey the lord for food and wine”. Recitative with deliberate dissonance seems strained astatine times.

The unravelling aft the meal of the 2nd enactment gains value successful its metaphor and becomes a dystopia successful a drafting room: these spoiled affluent people’s inertia leads to their ain imprisonment erstwhile the servants person left. But the people satire is not potent enough. The couples talk successful disparaging ways astir the servants who, successful the film, look softly fulminating (one adjacent speaks of her hatred of Jesus) but who bash not person the aforesaid alienation and contained rage here. They are comical banal figures without crisp edges until we get to the ambassador’s location erstwhile his butler bluntly spells retired his frustrations.

If the publication and euphony deficiency fizz, determination are astatine slightest the ocular thrills and spills of David Zinn’s set, with a blinding luminosity giving the effect of a hallucination, and the realist mounting of the past enactment successful the ambassador’s opulent location abounding with surreal edges.

Is this full script a imagination successful the vein of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos, a play successful which hellhole truly is different radical erstwhile they go stuck successful the aforesaid country for eternity? Here We Are should permission you scratching your caput but for each its absorbing ideas connected beingness and death, affluent and poor, it melts distant alternatively excessively rapidly afterwards.