Here We Are: Stephen Sondheim's 'utterly absorbing' final musical

Here We Are cast at the National's Lyttelton Theatre — The 'terrific' cast of Here We Are

(Image credit: Marc Brenner)

"So, here it is, and it's hard to imagine it better done," said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. Stephen Sondheim's final musical, which he left in draft form, is certainly not his greatest work, and is perhaps not even a musical: more a "surreal drama in which music is part of the texture". But it's still uniquely Sondheim: "witty, wry and suddenly wise". And in its European premiere at the National Theatre, even the work's "unfinished state makes sense". Directed by Joe Mantello, "Here We Are" provides a "bonkers, bitty and sometimes brilliant coda to the great composer-lyricist's work, superbly delivered by a terrific cast".

The plot is drawn from two films by the Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel ("The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and "The Exterminating Angel"), which have been deftly stitched together by playwright David Ives into two linked acts, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. The first has "tunes a-plenty", but "the supply runs dry-ish after the interval", when the principal characters – a cohort of mostly plutocrat Americans – become "nightmarishly trapped in an ambassador's salon" after a meal. A strange blend of comedy of manners and existential drama, it is a bit like "Sartre's Huis Clos crossed with one of the wackier episodes of Seinfeld", said Clive Davis in The Times. It is "utterly absorbing" and frustratingly imperfect – and at times, it is "very, very funny".