Thank God for Stephen Sondheim. Not just for his songs, but for his running commentary, which punctuates the new revue “Sondheim on Sondheim” at regular intervals.
Funny, informative, occasionally self-deprecating and often deeply touching, his insights — shown on moving video screens — have more life than the wan performances onstage.
Indeed, even with such skilled interpreters as Barbara Cook and Vanessa Williams on board, the numbers flatline. The visuals are theater, the music is glorified cabaret.
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Though Sondheim’s been hailed as the king of the integrated musical, his songs have lent themselves to several jukebox shows over the decades, including “Side by Side by Sondheim” and “Putting It Together.”
This Roundabout offering — conceived and directed by one of the master’s regular collaborators, James Lapine (“Sunday in the Park With George,” “Into the Woods”) — stands out by offering a more intimate look at its subject and how his life relates to his art.
And so it covers Sondheim’s entire stage career in a thematic rather than chronological manner, balancing hits like “Send in the Clowns” with lesser-known numbers and songs that were cut from final productions.
That may please his hard-core fans, and yet it seems downright insane to do “The Wedding Is Off” from “Company,” instead of its superior replacement, “Getting Married Today.”
Other ideas work better, like juxtaposing Williams’ “Losing My Mind” with Cook’s “Not a Day Goes By”: Not an eye stays dry. Similarly, “The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened” is done both as a straight love ballad, when the work it’s from was called “Bounce,” and a gay one (from when it was remounted as “Road Show”).
Yet “Sondheim on Sondheim” never takes off.
A big reason is, sadly, musical: The orchestra is too small and David Loud’s horrid arrangements sap the life out of most of the songs. Doing “Something’s Coming” from “West Side Story” and “The Gun Song” from “Assassins” in a lite jazz, Manhattan Transfer style is wrong, wrong, wrong. Unbelievably, a medley of “Company” and “Old Friends” is borderline barbershop.
Out of the cast of eight, Cook and Williams get by on chops, while Tom Wopat and Norm Lewis disappoint. Leslie Kritzer and Euan Morton, representing the younger generation, are the only ones who look as if they’re having fun. Unlike the others, they lend the material a loose, playful energy, seemingly uncowed by The Genius looming behind them. And that dash of irreverence is the best tribute Sondheim could get.