As we celebrate the first Sondheim birthday in our lifetimes (most of our lifetimes, anyway) without the composer in attendance, you might see fit to head over to Feinstein’s/54 Below this weekend, where Liz Callaway is performing her own highly personal salute to her—if you’ll pardon the expression—“Old Friend.”
Callaway is best known, perhaps, for her Broadway appearances in Baby and Miss Saigon, plus singing her way through numerous animated films. But she is a true Sondheimian Broadway baby, having made her debut at twenty in the original 1981 production of Merrily We Roll Along.
Early in her 90-minute set, in fact, she reprises her entire role in Merrily: namely, the first four bars of the title song (“yesterday is done, see the pretty countryside”) and one further phrase (“how did you get there from here, Mr. Shepard?”). In the original key, she notes! This brief appearance, back then, was enough to get her called for the Whitney Museum’s A Stephen Sondheim Evening in 1983. In a program headlined by Angela Lansbury and George Hearn, Callaway introduced the composer’s “What More Do I Need?” from the then-unproduced and unheard Saturday Night, which she duly presents here. Next came Follies in Concert, where she played the Young Sally to Barbara Cook’s (Old?) Sally; as well as various productions, in various places, of various Sondheim musicals. More to the point, Callaway seemed to enter the relatively small group of performers in the composer’s own inner circle. He was “always so particular,” she says understatedly.
To hear her sing 16 Sondheim selections is to understand why he favored her. Callaway so thoroughly inhabits two songs from the 1966 television musical Evening Primrose, “I Remember” and “Take Me to the World,” that she more or less takes us to the world along with her. Watching her sing “The Miller’s Son” from A Little Night Music—and sure, she must have made a wonderful Petra—you hear her describe that secure dream-life and can virtually see her visualizing those “five fat babies” Sondheim wrote about. Callaway is an ingenue again, this despite the fact that when she needs a partner for “Move On,” the Sunday in the Park with George duet, she sings it with Nick Callaway Foster, her 32-year old son.
Callaway’s selections range from the expected, such as “Send in the Clowns” and “Broadway Baby,” to the thoroughly unexpected. When she launches into “What Do We Do? We Fly!” from Do I Hear a Waltz?, we can almost hear Richard Rodgers (the composer), Mary Rodgers, and Sondheim separately chime up from their respective spots in the nether regions: Why??? The answer being, apparently, to give the crowd the opportunity to hear at least one Sondheim lyric they don’t already know by heart. “A cup of tea and a schnecken,” indeed. This, and “Loving You” from Passion, were practically the only songs during which you couldn’t hear at least one someone trying to sing along. Callaway is well supported throughout by musical director Alex Rybeck—whom she points out was a musical intern on the original Merrily, back in 1981—along with Ritt Henn on bass and Ron Tierno on drums.
The highpoint of the set—or, I suppose, the highpoint of numerous highpoints—is songwriter Lauren Mayer’s demented version of “Another Hundred People” from Company. “Another hundred lyrics just flew out of my brain….” it starts, wickedly taking off from there. It is a Sondheim parody to end all Sondheim parodies, if only you can find someone who can actually sing it. Which Callaway indeed can, to the extent that Sondheim permitted her to record it.
While wending along to the obligatory (and well-deserved) encore—a lovely “With So Little to Be Sure Of” from Anyone Can Whistle—Callaway confessed that she had to necessarily omit songs she intended to include, enough for a second cabaret evening of her own favorite Sondheim. We shall be sure to look forward to it.
To Steve With Love: Liz Callaway Celebrates Sondheim opened March 23, 2022 at Feinstein’s/54 Below and runs through March 26. Tickets and information: 54below.com
