Stephen Sondheim’s Final Musical ‘Here We Are’ To Premiere In NYC

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NEW YORK (AP) — The late Stephen Sondheim’s final stage musical — an adaptation of two movies by Spanish surrealist director Luis Buñuel — shall be given an off-Broadway stage this 12 months, providing theatergoers an opportunity to see a brand new work by musical theater’s most commemorated composer.

“Here We Are” — as soon as often known as “Square One” — will start performances this September at The Shed’s Griffin Theater with a guide by David Ives, greatest identified for the play “Venus in Fur.” Joe Mantello, who helmed “Wicked” and Sondheim’s “Assassins,” will direct.

The present — based mostly on the movies “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel” — was initially workshopped in 2016 with plans for a manufacturing at The Public Theater, which didn’t occur.

The two supply movies have a connective tissue: In “The Exterminating Angel,” a gaggle of friends arrive for a cocktail party and can’t depart, whereas “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is about friends who continually arrive for dinner however are by no means capable of eat.

Ticket info and casting shall be introduced quickly.

Sondheim, who died in 2021, influenced a number of generations of songwriters, significantly with such landmark musicals as “Company,” “Follies” and “Sweeney Todd.”

Six of Sondheim’s musicals received Tony Awards for greatest rating, and he additionally acquired a Pulitzer Prize (“Sunday in the Park”), an Academy Award (for the tune “Sooner or Later” from the movie “Dick Tracy”), 5 Olivier Awards and the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2008, he acquired a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.

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His final new musical to be produced was “Road Show,” which reunited Sondheim and author John Weidman and spent years being labored on. This story of the Mizner brothers, who launched into get-rich schemes within the early a part of the twentieth century, lastly made it to the Public Theater in 2008 with poor opinions after going via a number of totally different titles, administrators and casts.

Several Sondheim musicals have been mounted on Broadway because the grasp’s demise, together with a Tony-award successful revival of “Company” and a present revival of his “Sweeney Todd,” starring Josh Groban.