Here We Are
“It’s too surreal to be a dream,” sang Soldier (Jin Ha) as we roared into act two of “Here We Are,” one of the most exciting shows of the ‘23/‘24 Off-Broadway season. The finale on Stephen Sondheim’s iconic catalogue is finally on the stage this October after being a concept in his world since June 1982. With a forty year conception and sixty year old source material, it’s timely commentary is a testament to Sondheim’s genius, a work that is both self-reverential and standalone. It’s inevitable to draw comparisons to his legendary breath of work, but “Here We Are” is something Sondheim enthusiasts will never see coming.
The show is divided into two scenes: the road for act one and the room for act two. This division draws the line of his noted inspiration to Spanish Mexican director Luis Buñuel, with his film “The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie” from 1972 inspiring act one, followed by his 1962 classic, “The Exterminating Angel.” Buñuel’s separate pieces aren’t explicitly connected, but Sondheim and playwright David Ives found the links in commentary on two groups of high society, power hungry individuals who could be Frankensteined together into one cohesive story. The plots are compatible, both using an acrimonious world to create the friction against our cast of characters: a billionaire and his aloof wife, her far-left, anarchist sister; and their friends: a loud talent agent, her plastic surgeon husband, and a foreign ambassador she’s having a not-so-subtle affair with. On “the road,” they meet a Homeland Security colonel and his beautiful young soldier, as well as a bishop questioning his career in faith.
A potential title suggested by director Joe Mantello was “Don’t Be Absurd,” making fun of the nonsensical world the audience is entering at The Shed. It makes sense that the director of both inspirational movies was friends with Salvador Dali; the show illicits a similar feeling viscerally, like there’s more going on than meets the eye, and literally, when the space transforms in front of the audience over and over again. It also makes sense they intentionally chose an Off-Broadway location for performing, wanting to establish that this will not be a final hail mary of Sondheim’s career, another entrance into the classic American musical repertoire. The first half is absorbed in the gang’s trials to get a good brunch, continually halted by the servants who fail to serve food, but give us beautiful lamenting songs of their lives. The main cast is oblivious to the struggles of these no names, brushing them off again and again until they finally end up at the ambassadors embassy for a spectacular meal. Unknowingly, this meal could be their last, as act two begins with them trapped in a room together, unable to leave due to forces greater than understanding. Two of the no name servants from before, a maid and a butler, become conscious in this trapped room and reestablish the power scales.
Even in the experimental style, the musicality is flooded with Sondheimisms, the priest performing a “Sweeney Todd,” inspired solo, and the repeated flourish of them on the road sounding straight out of the “Merrily We Roll Along,” score. I doubt this will become a sought after cast album, though, as the music seemed very periphery to the story. The second act contained hardly any singing at all, what I thought was a sign to what Sondheim had left behind posthumously before the show was finished. The script was stuffed to the brim with questions about aging, politics, and religion, all which gave it an “Into The Woods” morality dilemma. But Sondheim and Ives had a revelation in revisiting “The Exterminating Angel” and realizing Buñuel had not placed a score over it. These characters could not return to singing in this situation; they had to be trapped without anything, including music. The gravity of the situation had to be sat in and we will sit with them, the facades of poise and wealth being stripped to the bones, the question of revolution, anarchy, or apocalypse happening outside the walls. But in true fashion, none of these serious queries could be taken seriously for too long, always bouncing back to outlandish humor, often coupled with outright shock! There was an unintentional (or was it?) jump scare, very similar to the scene from Hereditary with Toni Collete on the wall, the slow realization of what is wrong. It was one of many times my jaw was on the floor.
It’s hard to divide up this star studded ensemble into single performances as they all moved as one highly dysfunctional yet cohesive unit. Even when reading the story behind Sondheim, Ives, and Mantello’s individual works on the piece, it’s also hard to separate the score from the book from the direction. “Here We Are,” is the first time for audience members like myself going into Sondheim blind, without a memorized cast album or a carefully studied PBS recording. The experimental nature exasperates this unknowing, amplifying the shocks and guttural laughs, which also leaving the overall message unclear, up from major interpretation. My main thought walking out of The Shed was how badly I wanted to see it again, right away, to study it as I have so much of Sondheim’s work. That’s why this final marker on his life is such a gift, not a formal moral lesson, but the opportunity for education to come out of it. Thank you Stephen.
https://www.theshed.org/program/301-here-we-are
