The release of the cast album of Here We Are, the final new musical to feature music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, seamlessly integrated into a book by David Ives, marks the end of an era. Following a limited run at The Shed’s Griffin Theatre, which started late last year and ended in January this year, the release of the cast recording offers to many more of us than those who could see the show, the last first listen of a new Sondheim musical.
Here We Are is based on two films by Luis Buñuel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel. It’s about a group of people – the kind of rich folk who are easy to satirise and whom we love to hate – looking for a place to have brunch. In the face of an apocalyptic social revolution, they grapple with what it all means to be “here,” wherever that may be.
For my part, I’ve tried to avoid much of the press about the show, including its reviews, and the social media circus that surrounded the run. I wanted to have the experience of discovering Here We Are on my own terms as far as possible. So after a first listen of the cast album, here’s a list of five ways we see Sondheim’s sense of genius in his last original cast album. The road awaits… so let’s find our way down it together.
5. A Sense of Completion
Avoiding the word on the street when it came to Here We Are meant missing much of the gossip about how complete the show was, given Sondheim’s death in November 2021 and thus, its post-humous premiere. Listening to the album, I never experienced the sense that the show was unfinished and was then delighted to read David Ives and Joe Mantello’s views on the point of view that the show as produced is some kind of compromise of Sondheim’s vision:
In spring 2021, Joe happened to re-read the script and realized that, though there were musical transitions and underscoring and orchestrations to be added, the piece was complete as it stood. Steve had written numbers up to a point in the action where the characters had nothing to sing about. Small wonder his Blackwing pencil had stalled . Following his own dictum, the content had dictated the form and told him to stop. He didn’t need to write another note.
We two did some tightening on our own and set up a reading. After hearing the results, Steve agreed: that indefinable thing, The Show, was all there. He gave the nod to a production and by the time he died two months later, Here We Are was already pointed toward the stage.
As the show headed into production, rumors and opinions and misinformation flew about whether the show was “finished” – rumors almost exclusively floated by people who had nothing to do with the show. One would have thought we were trying to put something over on the world rather than giving it what everybody wants: i .e ., more Sondheim. Were we supposed to just ditch all his work? Lock away what a great and perpetually game-changing American artist had had on his mind during the last years of his life? People quoted Steve toward the end as saying that the show wasn’t “finished” yet, but nobody knew better than Stephen Sondheim that a show isn’t finished until the curtain call on opening night. Sometimes not even then.
For me, Here We Are tells a story on its own terms. It doesn’t adhere to any impression of what a musical is meant to be and it is all the stronger for it. Browsing some of the reviews and social media criticism of the show after my listen, there seems a sense that the second act lacks musical material, but to my ear, it feels as though what is needed to drive the action forward is all there. I will concede that in terms of the way the show plays, as Jesse Green puts it in his review for The New York Times, it may feel like a ‘not quite fully solved puzzle of a show’ – but in terms of what’s written, it is both entertaining and philosophical, and more to the point, feels finished.
4. A Sense of Occasion
Almost as exciting as starting to listen to the cast album of Here We Are was the moment before I hit play. In the theatre, there is that moment where we enter the transaction of the play, when the house lights fade and it all begins. I had that same feeling when I waited to start listening to this gorgeous score. And when the first notes of “Here We Are,” the overture, played, I was immediately transported. The show draws you into the world of Leo and Marianne Brink’s fabulous apartment on this most glorious day and by the time we first hear one of the show’s catchphrases – ‘Everybody into the car!’ – we’re all right here with this modern-day Ben and Phyllis as well as Fritz, Claudia, Paul and Raffael. The forward movement of this show’s opening is simply wonderful and there is absolute joy in hearing the music, lyrics and dialogue all come together to serve something greater as “The Road I – Part 1” kicks into high gear.
3. A Sense of Song
Here We Are is much more in line with Sondheim’s later work where everything is folded into one integrated structure. Structurally, it has a great deal in common with Passion and Sunday in the Park with George, although it’s worlds away in tone, perhaps more like Anyone Can Whistle or Assassins than anything else in that sense. This means that there are fewer standalone songs than in his shows of the 1970s and that everything just flows once the score gets going. Its overall momentum is simply breathtaking. That said, there are some great songs woven into the action. In the first act, set pieces like “Waiter’s Song” and “It Is What It Is” are just hilarious. Elsewhere, we get some great unexpected rhymes that pull together a thought, as in “The Road 1 – Part 2”
I’m completely undone
By the endless abundance of life,
Aren’t you?
It’s a great enough lyric on its own terms, but combined with the melody, it falls so brilliantly on the ear. Later in the song, Marianne sings:
Buy this day for me, darling,
Buy this perfect day.
Put it on display,
Let it stay Just this way
Forever.
It’s the simplest of rhymes, but it points towards some of the underlying questions the piece asks about ownership and materialism, making the lyric stand out just enough to plant a seed in our heads. The idea of the perfect day becomes something of a motif in the show’s first act too; this is not the last time we’ll hear about it. Sondheim is also famous for his lists, and he gives Fritz a good one in “The Road 1 – Part 3.” While there’s a key rhyme at the start to hold things together, the sounds unravel as Fritz starts to rant:
Wake up, it’s the end of the world,
You morons,
Welcome to the end of
Power brokers and hydrofractors
And underpaid teachers and overpaid actors
And disappearing polar bears
And bought-and-sold elections
And infinity pools
And Damien Hirsts
And phony bank accounts —
With safe deposit boxes in
Corrupt banana rat holes
Like Moranda!
They’re gonna blow your mergers
And your laptops
And your bitcoins
All to bits!
which then goes on to rhyme with Claudia’s reaction, ‘Fritz,’ masterfully tying up the whole idea and restoring order and balance to the song.
Later on, Sondheim and Ives play with metatheatricality in “The Soldier’s Dream.” If the message that something is very odd in the world of the play hasn’t reached us yet, this song leaves us with no doubt. Where are these people? In our world? Are we in theirs? Is this soldier’s dream more real than the characters’ reality? Or ours? What are we meant to think when the house lights bump up mid-song and the actor playing Paul proclaims ‘I don’t know my lines’? As we start seeing the world of the characters unravel and their uncertainties become clearer in terms of our own experience, suddenly we’re complicit in their view of the world. We can see ourselves in them, and them in us and hang on – weren’t we judging them all for their behaviour just minutes before? It’s a bold move that changes our investment in this particular ritual of theatrical performance.
The second act also has some highlights, including “Shine,” where Sondheim couches a criticism of Marianne’s attitudes in a way we can relate to all too well. First:
I like things to shine —
Shoot me.
I like things to glow.
Why can’t I be free
To like what I see
And not what I know?
and then
I want things to shine —
Hit me.
Is that so bizarre?
I want things to gleam.
To be what they seem,
And not what they are.
Don’t we all, sometimes? It’s the definition of superficiality, but isn’t it something we’ve all thought about in moments when everything seems so tiring and the world and its complexities just don’t let up?
Act 2 also offers us a new Sondheim anti-love song in “Double Duet” and the delicate and meandering “Interlude1: Marianne and the Bear,” two pieces that highlight perhaps the two strongest aspects of Sondheim’s work in Here We Are, both of which are prominent throughout his body of work. The first is his sense of collaboration as a composer and lyricist with the writers of the books of his shows. In these sequences, music and drama are one, and Ives’s contribution can’t be underestimated. The other is Sondheims’ capability to make his characters sound individualised and human. This is evident not only in these numbers but also throughout the score. In a contemporary musical theatre landscape where so many characters sound like each other, written to show off vocal styling rather than character-specific voices, Sondheim’s work here reminds us how much music can characterise, something the best musical theatre theatre-makers who are carrying the torch into the future haven’t forgotten.
2. A Sense of Story
Everyone has a favourite story, right? Mine is probably The Wizard of Oz. All of this goes back to the idea that there are only a handful of unique stories in the world that we keep on retelling in our own way to suit our own time and our own needs, which means we see the same patterns – overcoming the monster, the quest, voyage and return, rebirth and so on – playing out again and again. And some of these patterns resonate more than the rest in a profoundly personal way with each of us. There’s a definite sense of universality through specificity in Here We Are.
In many ways, Here We Are was like a reinvention of The Wizard of Oz for me. Marianne and her pals follow a road that takes them away from home and back again. While Dorothy makes new friends, Marianne and her various Totos discover new places – three of them, Café Everything with its apologetic waiter, Bistro à la Mode with its distraught waitress and Osteria Zeno with its poetic soldier – before heading off to a veritable Emerald City at the Embassy, where they encounter a Wizard in the form of a Bishop, and are transported to the horror of a Wicked Witch’s castle when the Embassy transforms into a luxuriously hellish prison in the second act. We even get a speech from the Bishop of the ilk that both Professor Marvel and the Wizard himself give Dorothy and her friends in Kansas and Oz respectively, words that frame the themes of the show as a whole in “Interlude 3: Snow.” There’s even a more straightforward allusion to The Wizard of Oz when the Soldier talks about his dream and says, ‘And you and you were there, And you and you and you’ – a moment that defines the real world from Dorothy’s dream in the MGM version of her story, but which here pushes us out of the dream the characters are presenting as their reality.
Why reflect on this? Is it relevant? Maybe. I think I was worried that Here We Are was going to be difficult to access and understand. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was the idea that the show is based on two quite heady surrealist films. I should have remembered that Sondheim’s craft (as he expressed it in Finishing the Hat) has always focused on
Content Dictates Form
Less is More
God is in the Details
all in the service of
Clarity
without which nothing else matters.
That’s what Here We Are delivers: clarity – all in the form of an age-old story, transformed by a master for us and the world in which we live.
1. A Sense of Conversation
Listening to this show, I deeply felt its connections to Sondheim’s body of work. There are catchphrases, ideas, motifs, rhythms of speech and song – all reminding us of Sondheim’s distinctive approach, his unbounded and personal brand of making theatrical art. Listening to the piece I felt it was in the same family of shows as Assassins. I’ve already mentioned the show’s seamless weaving in and out of music, and shifts from lyric to dialogue and back again, reminded me of the unity of Passion, an ideal to which Sondheim strove. In “The Road 1 – Part 3,”
Fritz asks the other characters, “Can’t you hear the sound of that distant drumming?” That moment is a pure echo of “There Won’t Be Trumpets.” Fritz, like Nurse Apple, is shaking up the world around her. I felt the weight of Follies in the lightness of touch seen in Here We Are. Marianne isn’t going to tragically proclaim, as Sally does, “Oh dear God, it is tomorrow.’ She simply reflects on where they are and says, ‘Perfect . Now where do we want to eat?’ When Paul delivers an expletive to complete a triple rhyme started in “Waiter’s Song” (‘Right, who had the duck? You’re out of luck…’), we’re taken all the way back to Sondheim’s original intentions for the final line of “Gee, Officer Krupke” in West Side Story. And overall, I had such a great sense of Dot’s philosophy: ‘Just keep moving on. Anything you do, let it come from you – then it will be new.’ Sondheim gave us more to see.
Final Thoughts
Even when it seems you have everything, you still can’t always find what you want. This becomes evident through the characters’ journey in Here We Are. While some have been qualified in expressing their feelings about this final show, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that for me, Here We Are is a perfect swansong for this master craftsman of story through song. Sondheim leaves us in the only place we can be, here: hesitant to move forward, caught looking back at his masterworks, running faster and faster all the time as the world swirls around us and hoping to catch a glimpse of something that helps us to make sense of it all. At this point, we have everything Sondheim gave us over his incomparable career and ironically, if we explore the worlds he created, there is everything we could ever want from the greatest musical theatre works: complexity, passion, heart, thought – everything that it takes to fill a blank page, or finish a hat.
The Saturday List: My Junk is SPRING AWAKENING
Get ready to journey back to the groundbreaking world of Spring Awakening, a modern musical where the show tunes are as haunting as the themes are daring! Since its debut, this Tony Award-winning musical has captivated audiences with its raw portrayal of adolescent angst, sexuality and rebellion against societal norms. But beyond the powerful storytelling and unforgettable songs lies a series of creative moments that have left an indelible mark on the landscape of musical theatre. Bold artistic choices and innovative staging ideas enabled Spring Awakening to move beyond the boundaries of the genre in ways that continue to resonate with audiences today. In today’s Saturday List, we revisit just five of the most creative ideas that helped to solidify this show’s place in musical theatre history.
1. Origin Story, or “[Frank Wedekind] who Bore Me“
The play upon which the musical adaptation of Spring Awakening is based was completed by Frank Wedekind in 1891. Frühlings Erwachen was not, however, performed until 1906, when Max Reinhardt staged it at the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin. Set against the backdrop of the sexually oppressive nineteenth century, the play follows a group of teenagers – primarily Melchior Gabor, Wendla Gabor and Moritz Stiefel – whose journey through puberty leads them to experiences of sexuality, physical and sexual abuse, suicide, pregnancy and abortion. The first English performance of the play was in 1917, at which time New York City’s Commissioner of Licenses through its edgy content and approach pushed the boundaries too far. Everyone headed to court, where an injunction allowed the production to be staged. While the play’s brilliance in its original German form was recognised by critics, the first English production was criticised for its poor translation. Since then, the play has been translated several times; my favourite version is the 1995 Royal Shakespeare Company-commissioned version by Ted Hughes. Almost three decades later, the Hughes translation is still a great introduction to the play for anyone who has no experience of it, or for fans of the musical who want to see just what inspired composer Duncan Sheik and librettist Steven Sater to put their own spin on the story.
2. Anticipating Expressionism, or “All That’s Known“
Frühlings Erwachen anticipated the Expressionist theatre movement that would reach the height of its popularity during World War I. I would never say that Spring Awakening is a work of Expressionism. What I would say, is that Wedekind’s foreshadowing of the movement in his work in general means that some of the movement’s conventions have their foundations in his practice. This makes a basic knowledge of Expressionism in the theatre useful to understand the play and its musical adaptation. Back in the day when the online musical theatre forums reigned supreme, the glory days of which were already in their decline when Spring Awakening made its musical theatre bow in 2006, the pearl-clutching generation of musical theatre superfans lamented what they perceived to be poorly developed characters, thematic ideas that went nowhere and emblematic characters that should have been fleshed out. I vividly remember one regular poster on the forums referring to the show as pop trash. They simply didn’t get it. Perhaps they were never going to get it. To them, Spring Awakening was innovation without substance; to those of us who loved the show, it was innovation that meant something. People who loved the show understood that musicals could be built in ways that challenged the Rodgers and Hammerstein II model, by drawing on an array of other theatrical influences, just as Stephen Sondheim had done in Company and Follies and theatre-makers of the next generation, like Sheik and Sater, were doing in Spring Awakening.
3. A Fever Dream, or “The Bitch of Living”
The musical adaptation of Spring Awakening is like a fever dream. While it is broadly linear chronologically, its episodic structure and the sometimes casual relationship between the scenes make it feel like a collage with Sater’s book carrying us from song to song. It’s the perfect structure for a play about a group of teenagers who are ‘tossing, turning without rest.’ One of the aspects of Expressionism that Wedekind prefigured was its distorted representation of reality to communicate inner feelings. Sheik and Sater picked up on these impulses: Spring Awakening is less about creating a conventional narrative journey than creating states of being. The songs are like rabbit holes that take us deep into each character’s personal Wonderland, landscapes full of beauty and horror. We learn about “The Song of Purple Summer” and “The Mirror-Blue Mind,” about “The Dark I Know Well” and “The Word of Your Body,” and every moment gives us insight into a particular character’s experience of a situation. In its avoidance of traditional character development over the show, Spring Awakening acknowledges that in life, experiences are fragmented in the context of a single life and of a community. The show proposes that we should see a story about people who are ‘broken inside’ in a broken way and in this way, delivers to us a key we can use to unlock our own souls.
4. Microphones and Stereos, or “My Junk”
One of the most controversial staging choices in the original production of Spring Awakening was the use of hand-held microphones, an anachronous prop in a nineteenth-century setting. The show’s most eager critics decried how random this appeared and chalked it up as an empty nod to pop culture and a shallow way of making the show’s issues feel relevant today. There’s just more to it than that. In Expressionist drama, the action is seen through the eyes of the characters and, therefore, seems distorted or even dreamlike. Wedekind’s use of this technique was another way he preempted the genre, evident in Spring Awakening through a narrative constructed from the collective perspectives of Melchoir, Wendla, Moritz and the gang. Combined with a bit of Freudian theory, we can then begin to understand the use of hand-held microphones as well as the mention of other contemporary objects in the show. Freud’s theory states that our psychological makeup includes the “id” (the fully unconscious part of our mind that contains the drives related to things like sex and aggression and other things repressed by consciousness), the “ego” (the mostly conscious part of our mind that allows us to deal with the world in which we exist), and the “superego” (the partly conscious part of our mind that informs our moral judgments). In Spring Awakening, we see certain songs delving into the characters’ respective ids. These moments are highlighted through the appearance of hand-held microphones and the mention of other contemporary objects. It’s not just about making the issues of “then” seem relevant “now.” There is a central and binding metaphor at work here, in which the teenagers view themselves (in their “id”) as rock stars: free and able to perform with agency. The whole point is that the microphones are incongruent with the reality of the historical period. We are caught in the middle of a fantastical imagining of a world that never was and never can be, that this group of teenagers will never fully attain.
4. Left to Their Own Devices, or “The Guilty Ones”
Teen stories, whether their creators tell them in writing, on film or television or on stage, rely on one central conceit: the adults are notably absent or superficially drawn so that the teens may be left to their own devices. Spring Awakening takes this one step further, with Wedekind in the original play (once again moulding ideas that would feature in Expressionism) and Sheik and Sater in the musical using this technique to couch their critical view of controlling societal structures like the family, education and the church. The adult characters in Spring Awakening are purposeful caricatures, subjectively seen through the eyes of the teenagers and as such, are uniformly punitive, heatless or clueless. It’s a masterstroke to have them all played by the same two actors in the musical and adds to the “us and them” opposition that informs the play’s action: “we, the teenagers are individuals; they, the adults, are all the same”.
Closing Thoughts
It’s time to whisper our way out of our all-too-brief behind-the-scenes exploration of Spring Awakening, a show that has carved out a unique place in the annals of musical theatre history. It’s clear that this musical is a force to be reckoned with as it continues to challenge and inspire audiences with its raw honesty and unapologetic creativity almost two decades after its first performances!