Satan Sings Mostly Sondheim, Jermyn Street Theatre

By Sophia Longhi

Stephen Sondheim, multi-award winning lyricist and composer whose works include West Side Story and Sweeney Todd, is regularly heralded as a hero amongst musical theatre fans. Not likely, therefore, is it that he should share the bill with the Dark Lord of the Underworld, Satan himself, let alone face affiliation with him in a new musical. However, Adam Long's Satan Sings Mostly Sondheim is full of such juxtapositions and is as off-the-wall as you would expect from the co-creator of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).

This cheeky and witty musical tells the story of the Satan, drawn to earth in the 1960s by the exhilarating pull of musical theatre. We learn of his successes in his chosen field but also of the drawbacks he faces, chiefly the fact that his hero, Stephen Sondheim, will not grant him the rights to his songs for a one-night Sondheim-fest extravaganza at the London Palladium.

There is no question, with a premise such as this, that the story delivers in silliness and mirth; there are some particularly memorable moments, such as when we hear Satan's mother, Bubby, gushing over his talents like a proud parent outside an X Factor audition: "He was singing when he was still attached to the placenta." However, the Jermyn Theatre is so cosy that it feels like your living room and sometimes the performance level felt a little like it too. Despite a grandois opening number promising "one hell of a show," it seemed to lack the punch it needed to convince the audience that it was in fact going to be one.

Long, however plays Satan in a way that we have never seen him before. He has written and plays him as a loveable underdog in the unforgiving world of acting; sensitive and melodramatic, declaring when he doesn't get his way, "This is the worst day of my life on this earth!" meriting giggles from the audience. His manager, Robert, is also played well by Mark Caven and the relationship between the two, especially in duet-mode, is what drives this play forward.

As far as the music goes, the lyrical reworkings of Sondheim's songs are clever and funny but many of the jokes are lost in delivery - the audience having to work hard to catch them. With such successful comedy musicals hitting The West End and Broadway (The Book of Mormon is a prime example) we might ask ourselves, 'Is this what new musical theatre really looks like?' We can reel off new musicals that all have ridden the wave of silly songs and outrageous humour (Avenue Q, Jerry Springer The Opera and the X Factor-inspired I Can't Sing) but few or none that have touched our souls and broken our hearts like the timeless Les Miserables or Blood Brothers. The fact that there is still demand for serious musical theatre tells us that perhaps audiences are not over it, despite new writing being comedy-driven. Maybe we need something new to break our hearts?

Comedy musicals provide invaluable entertainment but do they have the longevity? Might the wave ripple out in a few years time? Whether a show goes the distance or not is always down to the quality of the writing, rather than whether it is following a fad or not. Let's face it, religious satire, as demonstrated in The Book of Mormon, has been done to death, but when executed well, it becomes more than a fad and becomes something timeless. Sondheim and his work is already timeless, and although Long's new offering to musical theatre glints with potential, Satan Sings Mostly Sondheim would benefit from further crafting for it to become another West End success story.

Satan Sings Mostly Sondheim runs from 11th to 29th March 2014 at the Jermyn Street Theatre.

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