Putting It Together - Review

Playground Theatre, London

****

Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Directed by Janie Dee

In a refreshing contrast to the capital’s typical December when the city’s theatres teem with festive offerings, Putting It Together makes a brief return to a London stage after a 10 year absence. A revue of some of Stephen Sondheim’s sharpest compositions, the show was originally curated by Sondheim himself alongside Julia McKenzie.

In a stripped-back staging at the (packed) Playground Theatre, this iteration of the collection sees Janie Dee make her directorial debut. One of today’s finest interpreters of Sondheim, Dee also steps up to play the Wife amongst the show’s quintet of performers.

Drawn from the spectrum of Sondheim’s work, the revue’s numbers are generously spread amongst the cast. In her usual spectacular form, Dee most memorably gets her chops around Could I Leave You?, The Ladies Who Lunch and Not Getting Married Today. Dee’s ability to extract the cruellest sharpest satire from Sondheim’s writing is possibly unmatched - rarely is the acid in her characters’ lyrics delivered with such fluid, mellifluous, perfect poison.

As Dee makes her entrance as a director, Miriana Pavia boldly steps up to make her professional debut as a performer, here playing the Younger Woman. Vocally astonishing, Pavia displays a stunning range notably in her solo More, as well as in her two duets with Dee, Every Day A Little Death and There’s Always A Woman. She is definitely one to watch.

Edward Baker-Duly as the Husband displays a chillingly predatory charm in Hello Little Girl, his clipped elegance a perfect caricature of the oleaginous patrician. He also delivers a complex wry tenderness in The Road You Didn’t Take. There is equally fine work from Tom Babbage as the Younger Man.

Other than perhaps as a nod to a Xmas pantomime dame, the casting of drag artist Kate Butch as the Narrator is a distraction. Sondheim’s lyrics stand on their own merits, in no need of Butch’s barbed support. That being said, when Butch ditches the garish, patent heels for a more vulnerable, masculine take on Buddy’s Blues it makes for a marked improvement. On piano, as the show’s sole musical accompanist, Archie McMorran is sensational.

As a directing debutante, Dee has much to be proud of, with fine work coaxed from all of her cast and the composer’s acerbic genius shining through both acts of the show. This production of Putting It Together demands a longer run.