REVIEW: You and Me and Sondheim, Arts Theatre ✭✭✭✭

Claybourne Elder You and Me and Sondheim

Arts Theatre

31 April 2017

Four star

Only a week before Claybourne Elder presented his solo show for one night only in London he was taking his final bows in Sunday in the Park with George alongside Jake Gyllenhaal at Broadway's Hudson Theatre. After a stop-off in a studio midweek for the show's cast recording, he hot-footed it to England to make his UK debut at the intimate performance space Above the Arts in the West End. As he has played the lead role of George in two previous US productions and was part of the cast and standby for Gyllenhaal on Broadway, the gig had to feature at least one song from the show, and that was "Finishing the Hat" - flawlessly performed showing off the full dynamic of Elder's voice.

As the gig's title suggests, You and Me and Sondheim features a lot of the composer's songs, from familiar showstoppers to lesser-known pieces, most notably from the not-so-successful Road Show. This Off-Broadway production was Elder's first professional acting job in New York City, and he treats us to two songs: the charming "The Best Thing That Ever Happened" and the bitter-sweet ballad "Isn't He Something" which he dedicates "to all the men I dated in my 20s".

Elder, now 35, peppers his show with titbits about his life, growing up as a gay Mormon in Utah and discovering a love for musical theatre at a young age. He touchingly recalls dressing up and enacting the Witch's transformation scene from Sondheim's Into the Woods with his brother, also gay, after watching the 1991 recording on TV. Now with his own solo show, he goes some way to playing the role on stage, singing the Witch's big number, "The Last Midnight".

Claybourne Elder as a soldier in Sunday in the Park with George at New York City Center.

Having been in Road Show, Sunday in the Park with George, West Side Story and Do I Hear a Waltz?, Elder shares anecdotes about working with Sondheim and performing on his shows along with fine performances of his songs such as "Love, I Hear" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum - the first Sondheim musical that Elder saw when he was 12 - and "Being Alive" from Company. He also throws in Brazilian bossa nova hit "The Girl From Ipanema" which segues into Sondheim's parody "The Boy From..." where he heroically meets the challenges of the difficult lyrics (although it loses some of its comic effect sung by a man rather than a straight woman unaware that the man she loves is gay).

Elder gives us a near-faultless rendition of another lyrically challenging piece, "Getting Married Today", originally sung by hysterical bride Amy in Company, which he says has gained resonance for him after experiencing the stress of a wedding when he married Eric Rosen five years ago. He reveals they are due to become parents through surrogacy in August which adds extra emotional power to his performance of "Hey Kid", about a young man's joy at becoming a dad, from Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's 2014 Broadway show If/Then.

Elder's show is only "mostly Sondheim" so we also get the delightful "How 'Bout a Dance" from Frank Wildhorn and Don Black's little-known Bonnie & Clyde - Elder's Broadway debut in 2011. He opens with the beautiful Melody Gardot song, "If the Stars Were Mine", and closes with a fun mash-up of "Singin' in the Rain" with Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Men at Work's "Down Under". He also throws in a couple of more personal songs by friends, including one requiring him to howl like a dog while playing the ukelele, which are cute but maybe not perfectly suited to sit alongside Sondheim.

Elder's show, which he has previously performed in the US, worked well in the intimate setting of the Above the Arts bar (although their piano perhaps needs more regular tuning). With an exchange of banter veering between bosom buddies and angry heckling, he was skilfully accompanied by composer Annemarie Lewis Thomas, head of The MTA stage school. Hopefully, we will get to enjoy Elder's fine, mellifluous vocals again in London, either in a return of his solo show or on a West End stage. In an aside, he hints that Sunday in the Park with George may cross the Pond but, for now, we will have to be content with the Broadway cast recording out this summer.

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