Singing a Sondheim

One of my friends is currently stage managing a play here in Denver, Side By Side By Sondheim. It's a small production (and for my friend, this is well earned, coming on the heels of a massive show with a cast of more than 150), being mounted by a brand new theater company in town, the Cherry Creek Theatre.

The theater is so new, in fact, that they don't as yet have a conventional theater space in which to perform. Instead, they've procured space in an oriental rug store. After store hours, the windows are covered up (with rugs), around 100 chairs are pulled in around a raised platform in the center of the large gallery, and the theater commences.

I've attended shows with even smaller audiences before, plays where the audience is right on top of the performers like this. I've also attended plays in "found spaces" like this, outdoor settings where large crowds can gather to watch. But this was the first time I'd ever experienced both of these unconventional aspects combined into one show.

Add to that the fact that the show is rather unconventional too. Side By Side By Sondheim is a musical revue, a collection of around 30 of songs collected from about a dozen musicals with music, lyrics, or both by Stephen Sondheim. I have also attended revue shows before, but here again the show delivered an experience not quite like what I'd seen before. Usually, revue shows strain to craft some kind of makeshift plot and characters to hold the songs. This show dispenses with that artifice. The assumption is you're there to hear songs by Stephen Sondheim, and maybe a few interesting factoids about them and the shows from which they come. So why bother with the window dressing?

All this combined for a theater experience that, I must confess, put me quite off kilter for a while. An unusual show in an unusual space; this wasn't at all what I was expecting from a night at the theater.

But that's not to say it wasn't entertaining. Indeed, once I got over the initial awkwardness, I had a great time. The show was a nice mix of songs I knew and songs I hadn't. The four performers (two men and two women; a younger couple and a somewhat older couple) all did a good job with their renditions of the songs. In fact, two of them (the older couple) were quite outstanding, instilling different songs with all kinds of different emotions -- funny, tender, playful, tearful, and everything in between.

Side By Side By Sondheim is honestly closer to a concert than a play, but I found it to still be a very enjoyable and intimate concert. If you're a fan of Stephen Sondheim, if you're at all familiar with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, or West Side Story, or Company, or if you simply enjoy really clever wordplay (because few lyricists are more clever), you'd probably enjoy getting out to see this show.

If you live in the Denver area, this particular production is running three more weekends after this. Get out there and enjoy some live theater. And while you're at it, you can take a look at some rugs that cost more than my car (even including the recent maintenance expenses).