Not a day goes by that Bernadette Peters doesn’t miss her old friend Stephen Sondheim. “I do think of him every day,” she told me over lunch at Cafe Luxembourg. “I’m singing his music, you know. And I’ve had dreams about him. He should be here. He should be here.” Peters is back on Broadway … Read more
Theater review OLD FRIENDS Two hours and 35 minutes, with one intermission. At the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street. When Bernadette Peters elegantly opens her umbrella in the new Stephen Sondheim revue “Old Friends,” she’s becoming Dot, the Georges Seurat muse she famously played in “Sunday in the Park with George.” But … Read more
Each week, Alexa is rounding up the buzziest fashion drops, hotel openings, restaurant debuts and celeb-studded cultural happenings in NYC. It’s our curated guide to the very best things to see, shop, taste and experience around the city. What’s making our luxury list this week? Cult French sneaker brand Hoka unveiled a huge new store, … Read more
This major moment for Stephen Sondheim’s musicals is not limited to New York, where the late composer’s “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Sweeney Todd” and final show “Here We Are” are all playing at the same time. Over in London is a sublime revue of favorite Sondheim standards called “Old Friends” at the Gielgud Theatre that’s … Read more
Stephen Sondheim had a genius for genre. Some of his best works were adapted from very niche sources like penny dreadfuls (“Sweeney Todd”), epistolary novels (“Passion”) and Roman comedies (“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”). Leaning hard into their specific styles, he mined their expressive potential in songs that could hardly … Read more
Like most people do, the three New York friends at the center of the musical “Merrily We Roll Along” get more cynical, jaded, greedy and stubborn with age. Or, as book writer George Furth succinctly put it in the original production, “practical.” But Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 show, which was a 16-performance flop when it began … Read more