This study of loss and grief is the stage equivalent of extreme sports, writes Veronica Lee

Here We Are (Lyttelton, National Theatre) 

Verdict: Stuck 

Full marks for effort. The National Theatre has really pushed the boat out for the last show by the late god of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021.

The posthumous production – which premiered in Manhattan’s Shed theatre in 2023 – stars Tony award-winner Jane Krakowski (30 Rock), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family) and leading British thesp Rory Kinnear in a top-notch cast of 17.

But not even they, nor a stunningly inventive and lavishly executed stage design, can make this mongrel sing.

The programme tells, at length, how ‘Steve’ often gave up on this fusion of two surrealist films by Spanish-Mexican director Luis Bunuel – 1972’s The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie and 1962’s The Exterminating Angel.

The first follows a group of middle-class Frenchies (reinvented as pampered Californians) in search of a restaurant. The second concerns a group of friends (the Californians again) stuck in a mansion.

The material is breathtakingly thin – as flimsy as its satirical targets. It centres on hedge fund billionaire Leo Brink (Kinnear) and his bubble-brained trophy wife Marianne (Krakowski), who go looking for brunch after a surprise visit from a plastic surgeon friend (Ferguson) and his film agent wife (Martha Plimpton).

The National Theatre has really pushed the boat out for the last show by the late god of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021

But not even they, nor a stunningly inventive and lavishly executed stage design, can make this mongrel sing

They are joined by sundry cartoon characters, including a shoe fetishist bishop (Harry Hadden-Paton), before they all wind up getting trapped in that mansion. 

Tellingly – and unlike most Sondheim musicals – it’s not sung through. The programme suggests this is because Steve got stuck.

But his collaborators (book writer David Ives and director Joe Mantello) wouldn’t let him drop it. ‘We had to understand the absence of music WAS the score,’ they explain.

The result is fitful, burbling and totally forgettable. Early sonic capering yields a song about not getting a decaf mocha latte. Elsewhere, Krakowski sings about her love of surfaces (fabrics, etc).

Nothing sticks, and two-and-a-half hours proves a long haul without an engaging plot, characters we care about, memorable tunes, emotional depths, or pleasing lyrics (at one point ‘it’ is rhymed, audaciously, with… ‘it’).

Wearing a gorgeous blue silk negligee, Krakowski’s Marianne is a blissful airhead who’s had her dogs cloned so she can have identical pooches in every home.

Ferguson snorts a little coke but has even less to sing about.

The leads are joined by sundry cartoon characters, including a shoe fetishist bishop (Harry Hadden-Paton), before they all wind up getting trapped in that mansion

Kinnear struts about manfully in a Tom Ford tracksuit and giant, black-framed specs but is eventually reduced to belching, thanks to indigestion. It’s curious to think that on this very stage, in 2010, he delivered one of the most celebrated Hamlets in living memory.

Even with David Zinn’s stunning set transforming a white box into opulent tableaux, Here We Are remains an empty pageant. Sondheim may not be everyone’s dry martini, but he deserves to be remembered for something else.

Until June 28

This study of loss and grief is the stage equivalent of extreme sports, writes Veronica Lee

An Oak Tree (Young Vic, London)

Verdict: Trick or treat

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Tim Crouch’s groundbreaking two-hander, the Young Vic is staging it anew. Actually, every time it’s performed it’s being staged anew, because playing opposite the writer is a different guest actor at each show. A guest who comes to the stage without having previously read the play.

It’s the theatrical equivalent of extreme sports but — when it works — a chance to show some serious acting chops.

At the performance I attended, the celebrity was Sope Dirisu (from Gangs Of London). Other stars appearing in this run are Jessie Buckley, Mark Gatiss, David Tennant and Indira Varma.

The framing device is that Crouch is a stage hypnotist and the guest actor is Andy, whose young daughter he killed in a road accident.

Andy comes to his show seeking answers, solace, perhaps closure as they both recall the tragic event.

As Crouch flits between cringingly bad magician and master of ceremonies, the relationship between him and the grieving parent builds, layer by layer.

The framing device is that Crouch is a stage hypnotist and the guest actor is Andy, whose young daughter he killed in a road accident

It’s very meta and complex — tricksy, even — as Crouch/the hypnotist directs the actor, feeding lines through their earphones, whispering in their ear or handing them a few pages of script to read, as well as breaking the fourth wall to address the audience. This can make the pacing uneven.

Crouch’s play is a study of loss, guilt and the power of suggestion; it’s funny and moving by turns, and a chance to see art being created in real time, as Crouch interacts with his guest.

But so much depends on the second performer grabbing the chance to shine — and the technology working properly.

Crouch’s microphone failed in the show I saw, further interrupting the flow and leaving Dirisu — normally such a commanding actor — looking rather lost.

Until May 24

Two Pints (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry) 

Verdict: Good craic 

By Patrick Marmion 

Oscar Wilde once said: ‘Work is the curse of the drinking classes.’ That’s very much the sentiment in this stage adaptation of a short story by another Irish writer, Roddy Doyle.

Two Pints, about a pair of working-class, bar-room laureates in Dublin, was first staged in a pub in the Irish capital in 2017.

It’s audaciously sedentary — not to mention a minefield of ‘F’ and ‘C’ bombs… Alas Smith And Jones meets Mrs Brown’s Boys.

The duo’s beery blarney has them chew over Nigella Lawson’s prospects as a pro footballer, the dangers of reading the Koran, and the mystery of why all food seems to be female (chickens, sheep, cows).

There’s a good deal of absent-minded Sєxism, identifying women as ‘bords’, but it’s never misogynistic and, interestingly, female тιтters rang loudest at the performance I saw.

Two Pints, about a pair of working-class, bar-room laureates in Dublin, was first staged in a pub in the Irish capital in 2017

Excellent jokes include one about digital prostate testing. But another, about paedophilia in Ireland, prompted gasps of discomfort.

Anthony Brophy, as the pasty-faced, skinny fella whose father is dying in hospital, looks like he’s staggered in off O’Connell Street.

Pink-faced Sean Kearns, as his hard-boiled but sympathetic buddy, seems welded to his stool.

Both could use a more intimate staging, and although Sara Joyce’s amiable production, in a hyper realistic boozer, is little more than a two-hour chin-wag, I for one enjoyed the craic.