Following the triumph of Old Friends at the 2023 WhatsOnStage Awards where it won the Best Theatre Event Award, and the unforgettable all-star gala performance to celebrate the life and work of the great Stephen Sondheim at the theatre named after him in May 2022, Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, devised and produced by Cameron Mackintosh, will open for 16 weeks only from 16 September 2023 - 6 January 2024 at the Gielgud Theatre with many of that Gala cast.
Old Friends all-star cast will again include Bernadette Peters who is appearing in a West End run for the first time in her legendary career and Lea Salonga who is appearing for the first time in 27 years. Co-stars include several of the fabulous Gala company, including Christine Allado, Janie Dee, Bonnie Langford and Jeremy Secomb, joining them will be Beatrice Penny-Touré, Joanna Riding, and Jac Yarrow with further exciting casting to be announced soon.
The thrilling, joyously staged Gala of Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends sold out within a couple of hours last year leaving thousands of disappointed fans unable to get tickets, so a simultaneous screening took place at the Prince Edward Theatre. Now by popular demand, audiences will have another chance to see the never to be forgotten and one of the most talked about theatrical events of the year.
__Assisted Performances__
Audio Described: 2.30pm - Saturday 11 November 2023
Captioned: 2.30pm - Saturday 18 November 2023
What’s especially gratifying is to see the range of the performers, from Sondheim veterans Joanna Riding and Janie Dee, the latter a returnee from the 2002 gala, to newer Sondheim singers such as the rich-voiced Christine Allado and Bradley Jaden, a deliciously seductive Wolf to Peters' Red Riding Hood (pictured right). We also get to see Jeremy Secomb, the great Sweeney Todd from the Tooting pie-shop production, which Sondheim visited (and got spattered with stage blood), and the dynamic Jason Pennycooke, a seasoned musicals man who was a fine Lafayette in Hamilton.
To answer that question, Old Friends really is bliss. It’s less a reprise of the one-off gala concert that caused a sensation some 18 months ago than a deepening of material. The director-choreographer Matthew Bourne, working with Britain’s leading Sondheimian, Julia McKenzie, has given this cavalcade of song a fluidity matched only by the elegance of the design and the astonishing clarity of conductor Alfonso Casado Trigo and his orchestra. (The Merrily We Roll Along entr’acte is itself nearly worth the price of admission.)
2023 | West End |
West End |
2025 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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