Actor-singer Maria Friedman has, since wandering onstage as a waif-like unknown during an otherwise star-studded 1989 Sondheim benefit at Drury Lane, come to be one of the prime Sondheim interpreters of our time. As a performer, in the original London productions of Sunday in the Park, Merrily We Roll Along and Passion; as a singing interpreter; but also as the wizard who found the key to solving that most frustrating puzzle, Merrily We Roll Along. Working with the composer—initially at the London’s Menier Chocolate Factory in 2012—Friedman devised and directed the production, which culminated as Broadway’s finest and most exciting musical of last season.
Back in 2001, Sondheim determined that Friedman should play Café Carlyle (“I want to introduce you to my New York community,” he explained) and personally arranged for her to play the club which at the time regularly hosted a rotating team of legends. Barbara Cook! Elaine Stritch! Eartha Kitt! Friedman returned periodically, through 2006; and she is once more back in residence on that postage-sized platform in the riotously-decorated boîte on Madison Avenue.
The singer enters with an intriguing and entreating rendition of “Being Alive,” after which she takes us back to the aforementioned Drury Lane concert where she was all but heckled off the stage. (Vociferous fans of Stritch—who was performing other songs in the benefit—were disgruntled that someone else dared attempt “Broadway Baby.”) Friedman plunged ahead, winning the day and the enduring admiration of the composer as well. More to the point, though, is what she does at the Carlyle now; the sixty-something singer, who has just made a meal of “Being Alive,” hears that familiar vamp of the Follies anthem and seems to drop thirty years. Friedman is up there alone in the spotlight; she doesn’t just sing the song, or the subsequent numbers for that matter. She acts them, performs them, inhabits them.
Next comes an extended segment she calls “Sunday in the Park with Dot,” weaving together a half-dozen musical strands from Sondheim’s 1984 musical. Having played the role back when she was thirty, Friedman knows what to do and how to do it.
The evening is not all Sondheim all the time; being a child of the Sixties, Friedman takes brief detours through Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell and others. Somewhat surprisingly, she goes into a fond tale about her friend Marvin Hamlisch, the better to waft us into a rendition of “Nothing” from A Chorus Line. Once again, the songstress fades away and crossfades into a teenaged high-school student. It’s not the singing; it’s the acting.
Sondheim returns, of course; for those of us who’ve frequented the Carlyle since the days of Friedman’s first engagements there, one has the uncanny feeling that Steve and Barbara are sitting in one of the far corners watching. And that Elaine is at the bar, throwing in an untethered comment as she was wont to do on occasion. Friedman sees fit to salute the help she received during her initial stint at the Carlyle from Barbara’s accompanist Wally Harper, so it’s fitting to mention that Theo Jamieson—at the piano—offers the same high-grade combination of musical skill, pianistic fireworks and onstage performance support.
As a prime spell-maker, Friedman knows enough to return to Sondheim at evening’s end, serving up superb renditions of “Losing My Mind” (on a level with the original rendition by Dorothy Collins), “Send in the Clowns” and “Goodbye for Now.” Audiences who miss the presence of the late composer—and those unfamiliar with Maria Friedman-the-singer—will find a unique, welcoming evening of perfectly crafted Sondheim this week at the Carlyle.
Maria Friedman: Legacy opened September 24, 2024, at Café Carlyle and runs through September 28. Tickets and information: rosewoodhotels.com
