A theater critic and his piano-playing wife are taking audiences from a cocktail party in a New York apartment to some of the scenes of the musicals of the famous American composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, in “Side by Side by Sondheim,” at Mānoa Valley Theatre.
“Side by Side by Sondheim” runs Thursday, July 17, through Sunday, July 27.
“He was just such a brilliant composer, a wonderful wordsmith and an incredible master of his words,” James Wright, the show’s director and choreographer told Aloha State Daily. “He's literally acclaimed with writing pretty much unsingable songs, which sounds like a terrible thing to say. They're complex and wordy, but they're great tunes, as well.”
Sondheim is known for writing the lyrics for “West Side Story" (Leonard Bernstein wrote the music). He went on to write the lyrics and music for a number of other musicals, including “Into the Woods” and “Sweeney Todd.”
Wright previously choreographed “Sweeney Todd” and “Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical,” for Mānoa Valley Theatre. Trained as a classical ballet dancer at The Australian Ballet School, he has also been the choreographer for a number of Hawaiʻi Opera Theater performances. While Wright has directed at least a dozen shows in Australia, this will be his first credit as a director in Hawaiʻi.
Typically, this show is done with one character who narrates, while three singers perform songs as they are mentioned, Wright said. For this production, the narrator is the theater critic and there are a total of seven people on stage. The roles of the three singers are distributed between the five friends and a piano player, who is the wife of the theater critic.
Miki Yamamoto, the show’s music director, plays the piano on stage as part of her role as the theater critic’s wife. She was previously one of the lead roles – Janet in “Kim’s Convenience” – which closed in June.
“I’m really astounded working on this project by how much work this would have been for three people,” Wright said. “It's incredible."
Buy tickets for “Side by Side by Sondheim.”
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Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
