Lea Salonga Co-Stars in Broadway-Bound Old Friends

By Jana Monji

Lea Salonga joins Bernadette Peters in the musical revue, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, which opened this week at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York. With two Tony Award-winning actresses at the helm, this is a must-see for West Coast fans of musicals and the Tony and Academy Award-winning Sondheim. For US Salonga fans, this musical revue is an opportunity to see Salonga in a meaty roles.

The revue was originally being developed by Cameron Mackintosh at Sondheim’s suggestion. Two other revue productions, Side by Side by Sondheim and Putting It Together had met with success. Both being nominated for Tony Awards in 1977 and 2000 respectively. Sondheim unfortunately passed away in 2021. Mackintosh continued on and in 2022, Old Friends was made into a one-night only production at the Sondheim Theatre. While Peters was in that cast, Salonga was not.

When Mackintosh decided to make the revue into a 16-week run, under the direction of Tony Award-winning (Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake) Matthew Bourne and Olivier Award-winning (Sweeney Todd) Julia McKenzie, Salonga joined Peters heading the cast.

It recently played in a pre-Broadway run at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles where this reporter got a chance to see it.

When Peters and Salonga came on stage opening night to sing, Side by Side from Company, the applause was deafening and continued on for so long, the veteran actresses gamely continued on, both in coordinating sparkling red outfits. While they both have solo performances and join the company at times, they also come together later in the program to perform Children Will Listen (Into the Woods).

Salonga has performed on Broadway and the West End, winning Tony and Olivier awards for Miss Saigon. She also has performed Sondheim, playing the Witch (Into the Woods) in Singapore (Victoria Theatre) and Mrs. Lovett (Sweeney Todd) in Singapore (Sands Theatre). While this was the first time Peters has been on stage at the Center Theatre Group venues, Salonga performed in the David Henry Hwang revision of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song at the Mark Taper Forum during the 2001-2002 season. For Old Friends, she assumes the role of Mrs. Lovett for two songs (Worst Pies in London and A Little Priest) opposite Jeremy Secomb’s embittered Sweeney Todd. Salonga gets the right balance between opportunistic baker not wanting to waste the dead human meat and creepily romantic in her attraction to Sweeney Todd.

Yet she also brings heartbreak and yearning in her luscious tones for Loving You from Passion and Somewhere from West Side Story. Salonga brings brassy optimism to her rendition of Everything’s Coming Up Roses from Gypsy as the theatrical world’s most infamous stage mother role.

Old Friends is more than a staged concert with a collection of Sondheim songs. The costuming by Jill Parker and hair and make-up design by Stefan Musch and scenic design by Matt Kinley take us on a journey for Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd. Directed by Tony Award-winning (Matthew Bourne Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake side by side with Olivier Award-winning (Sweeney Todd) Julia McKenzie and choreographed by Olivier Award-winning Stephen Mear this is a fun two hours and 30 minutes (with one 15-minute intermission).

The production premiered on Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club on March25. For a rundown on the rest of the show and Sondheim’s musicals and his awards, visit my blog: AgeOfTheGeek.org.