There I was, right after seeing Here We Are, walking across the windswept Hudson Yards plaza towards the Number 7 subway, gazing up at that giant shawarma of an outdoor sculpture that invites suicide and wondering what this intriguing if obviously unfinished musical would be like had Stephen Sondheim completed his final score.
A surreal saga that begins as an elegant satire on conspicuous over-consumption, Here We Are darkens into a contemplation of how nobody, rich or otherwise, gets out of this world alive. “Everybody dies,” as Joanne notes in Company.
Of course, from the funeral song in Forum to The Frogs in its entirety to Fosca’s agonies in Passion, most of Sondheim’s musicals deal with death in some way or another. Hello, Sweeney Todd, Assassins? The mortal theme was punctuated by the composer’s death in late 2021, but all that’s beside the point, other than Sondheim is not available to face the lack of music in the latter stretches of Here We Are.
In a Frank Rich article excerpted in their new show’s program, writer David Ives and director Joe Mantello maintain that Sondheim signed off on Here We Are as a finished piece. Probably he did, but I suspect Sondheim harbored an ulterior motive in deliberately leaving behind an incomplete score.
As enjoyable as its glittering production proves to be at The Shed (currently through January 21), the musical eventually stops singing. Signaled by an onstage piano that quits cold, the second act provides mostly bleak talk underscored by infrequent bursts of explosive music.
Where are the rest of the songs to advance the quirky story or deliver a message or, above all, coalesce into that higher power of drama and music that makes for satisfying musical theater?
Sure, it can be argued that deliberately stopping the music is meant to signify the end of their civilized world for the characters, but come on: Here We Are is a musical. That’s too perverse a concept even for Sondheim.
My guess is that the composer privately concluded that he no longer possessed the mojo to completely musicalize to his own rigorous satisfaction Ives’ challenging libretto. After all, not everybody is a Verdi who can deliver a couple of stunners late in their creative lives.
Putting down his pencil, Sondheim may have further decided that the realized material of Here We Are was too substantial – and delightful – to throw away into the trunk. So it proves to be: Orchestrated in the composer’s characteristic style by longtime collaborator Jonathan Tunick, this sardonic musical comedy about privileged urbanites who desperately seek a place to dine (and later die?) might well be renamed Sunday in the Dark with Brunch.
Let’s remember that among his multiple accomplishments, Sondheim was an inveterate player of games and maker of puzzles. This ever-analytical genius always thought matters through. By authorizing future productions of a not entirely realized piece, Sondheim makes one brilliant final move on his chessboard of life and legacy.
In Here We Are, Sondheim has delivered a tantalizing “what if” work of art.
What if the composer had managed to complete it? Would that second act realize the glittering promise of the first part? Was this a masterpiece in the making?
We’ll never know. The potential of the story’s characters and situations seems rich enough and might well have resulted in memorable music and lyrics. Sondheim crafted some of his finest compositions in the last-minute heat of hitting production deadlines, so thoughts about what if and what could have been will haunt Here We Are now and forever.
Perhaps in its currently unfinished state Here We Are is better than an ambitious musical that’s complete but which fails to rise to everybody’s expectations, especially Sondheim’s. It’s a smart decision to stop work and convince others that your contribution is complete. Sondheim’s final discussions with Ives and Mantello regarding their on-again off-again collaboration must have been compelling, to say the least.
Anyway, such speculations on the musical’s development and its possibilities are endless and fun to imagine. My colleague Frank Scheck observed in his review how Sondheim fanatics probably will invent drinking games drawn from this musical that offers echoes of previous shows.
Certainly Sondheim has given his fans one final game to play: Finishing Steve’s Hat.
Besides all that, Sondheim’s Here We Are can be considered in the same league with Puccini’s Turandot and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and (speaking of death) Mozart’s Requiem as major though incomplete musical works. That’s mighty nice company for Sondheim and his musical to keep.
Sculptors and painters have a term for works intentionally left unfinished: Non finito. This is the aesthetic idea how deliberately creating blank areas will heighten a composition’s otherwise beautifully rendered parts. A prime American example of non finito art would be Gilbert Stuart’s 1795 portrait of George Washington (still used for the U.S. dollar bill).
Likely there are musical examples to be found within Sondheim’s works already but let’s leave that conversation to the aficionados.
Not precisely a non finito musical but nevertheless a semi-masterpiece, Here We Are benefits from sensationally chic design (sets and costumes by David Zinn, lighting by Natasha Katz), memorable performances by the best ensemble of major artists you’ll likely ever see and Mantello’s perfectly pitched staging. In every way this production of Sondheim’s final musical is legend.
Here We Are opened October 22, 2023, at The Shed and runs through January 21, 2024. Tickets and information: theshed.org
