The Queens of Cups are trying to contact the late musical theatre composer Stephen Sondheim in a seance.
Grace O’Keefe and Jordana Belaiche are our guides, leading us in a chant of his name and an exploration through his song catalogue through excellent parodies.
O’Keefe is the main conduit between show and audience, asking them to believe that eventually, they will hear the great man himself speak from beyond the grave, with all his worldly wisdom.
It’s a light and frothy show with a subversive edge, and if you love the genre and especially this one example of it, you will have a great time at this show.
It is a piece of Sondheim fandom? Not quite. It feels as if it has points to make about men leading the charge of musical theatre and how female characters are often portrayed as evil or unstable.
It feels as if it is slowly joshing the whole genre and its impossible plots. Clever use of interview snippets and musical cues add to the experience.
At one point, an audience member is set up to be a potential sacrifice for the cause, with Sondheim’s Finishing The Hat book to create the organ of dispatch.
At another, the uneasy demons of another composer of the time threatens to derail proceedings. There’s also an in-joke about ‘borrowing’ musical themes (surely not?!).
If you get the references you’ll have a great time. I definitely recommend a crash course in the basic facts and works of Sondheim before partaking of this ritualistic production.
Belaiche’s involvement is inspired, with a fab singing voice and an affinity with the weird and wonderful, the occult and the ordinary. As a duo she and O’Keefe are excellent.
I think Sondheim himself would have approved of them and their show and be the first to lead the applause.
Summoning Sondheim played at Edinburgh Fringe this summer, and now returns to London for the week of Halloween (29 Oct-2 Nov) at the Seven Dials Playhouse. Details here.
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