‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’ L.A. Review: Songwriting Depth and Skilled Diva Turns Make the Broadway-Bound Revue a Retrospective Joy

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic There are the ladies who lunch. And then there are the ladies of musical theater who eat everyone else’s lunch. “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” has plenty of the latter, and as a revue, as opposed to a narrative musical, it has no limit on the number of power diva ballads that can be packed into one show, nor any of the normal fears that one of these numbers might overshadow another in the course of an overpacked evening.

Now playing a four-week run at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theater in advance of hitting Broadway, “Old Friends” is hardly lacking for capable menfolk to round out its considerable ensemble of talent.

But in the end, it is Sondheim’s love for womankind that provides the biggest turbo boost when it comes time to make “everybody rise,” as his “Company” lyrics famously command.

As befits a tribute to genius, there is a level of genius right in the primary casting. At the top of the show, the audience gets a nice two-shot of Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, standing (how else) side by side as they deliver a very few introductory words about the tributee and then launch right into one of his earliest theatrical songs, “Comedy Tonight.” Very quickly, they are joined on stage by the full cast, establishing that this will be an oxymoronic delight: a star vehicle and a true ensemble piece.