Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends
Manhattan Theatre Club
In association with CMI and Daryl Roth
presents
Cameron Mackintosh's Production of
STEPHEN SONDHEIM'S OLD FRIENDS
Broadway Premiere
Starring Bernadette Peters & Lea Salonga
Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Devised by Cameron Mackintosh
Musical Staging and Direction by Matthew Bourne
Side by Side with Julia McKenzie
Choreography by Stephen Mear
Originally Produced in London by Cameron Mackintosh
ON BROADWAY AT THE
SAMUEL J. FRIEDMAN THEATRE
2024-2025 Season
Tickets for this show will go on sale at a later date. The only way to secure your seat today is by becoming an MTC Subscriber or Patron.
Celebrate one of Broadway’s true icons with this legendary theatrical event! Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends is an irresistible celebration of the master himself, with a company headlined by none other than Tony Award® winners Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga. Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends comes to Broadway from London’s West End, where it earned a bevy of 5-star raves and was hailed by The Times as “unmissable musical theatre.”
Center Theatre Group will present the North American premiere of Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in advance of the Broadway premiere.
Cast
Bernadette Peters
Throughout her illustrious career, Bernadette Peters has dazzled audiences and critics with her performances on stage, film and television, in concert, and on recordings. She has garnered numerous accolades including three Tony Awards, a Golden Globe, four Emmy and four Grammy Award nominations and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Best known for her work on stage and one of Broadway’s most critically acclaimed performers, Bernadette just concluded a highly successful West End debut in the Cameron Mackintosh production of Old Friends, celebrating the life and work of Stephen Sondheim. Bernadette has starred as Dolly Gallagher Levi in the hit musical, Hello, Dolly!. She also starred in City Center’s Encores! production, A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair featuring the music of Stephen Sondheim and orchestrations by Wynton Marsalis. Prior to that, she starred on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music and Follies. Peters garnered both the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for her performance in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Song and Dance. She also won a Tony Award for her performance in Annie Get Your Gun. She received Tony nominations for her outstanding performances in Sam Mendes’ critically acclaimed revival of Gypsy, in Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl, Stephen Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George, the Jerry Herman/Gower Champion ode to the movies, Mack and Mabel, and the Leonard Bernstein/Comden and Green musical On The Town. In addition to these honors, Peters earned a Drama Desk nomination for her unforgettable portrayal of the Witch in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. She also enjoys a career which boasts an impressive list of television credits, most recently the Apple TV+ series, “High Desert” and a guest-starring role on the NBC-TV series, “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” for which she earned an Emmy nomination. The popular series was made into a TV movie musical titled “Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas” for The Roku Channel. Other TV appearances include “The CW’s “Katy Keene”; CBS All Access’ “The Good Fight”; and Amazon Prime’s Golden Globe winning series, “Mozart in the Jungle”. Additional television credits include NBC-TV’s “Smash,” ABC-TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Ugly Betty’. In addition to starring in the Lifetime TV movie Living Proof, Peters has lit up the silver screen in over 30 films throughout her distinguished career. She received a Golden Globe Award for her memorable performance in “Pennies From Heaven.” Other film credits include The Jerk, The Longest Yard, Silent Movie, Annie, Pink Cadillac, Slaves of New York, Woody Allen’s Alice, Impromptu, It Runs in the Family, Coming Up Roses, The Broken Hearts Gallery and most recently, a surprise appearance in the popular Jonathan Larson biopic, tick, tick…BOOM! Bernadette has recorded six solo albums, including the Grammy-nominated I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, Sondheim, Etc.: Bernadette Peters Live at Carnegie Hall, and Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers & Hammerstein, in addition to numerous original Broadway cast recordings. Peters devotes her time and talents to numerous events that benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Her “pet project” Broadway Barks, cofounded with Mary Tyler Moore, is an annual, star-studded dog and cat adoption event that benefits shelter animals in the New York City and tristate area. The American Theater Wing honored her efforts and awarded her with the Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award which recognizes an individual from the theatre community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of one or more humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations, regardless of whether such organizations relate to the theatre. This past November, while in London Bernadette presented West End Woofs, a sister organization to Broadway Barks that she co-hosted with her good friend, Elaine Paige. The event is the first of its kind in the UK that fostered a spirit of community among animal shelters and rescue groups. She is a New York Times best-selling author who has penned three children’s books: “Broadway Barks”, “Stella is a Star”, and “Stella and Charlie: Friends Forever”. All of her proceeds from the sale of these books benefit Broadway Barks. Peters resides in New York and Los Angeles with her rescue dogs, Charlie and Rosalia.
Lea Salonga
LEA SALONGA is best known for her Tony Award-winning role in Miss Saigon. In addition to Tony, she has won the Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Theater World Awards, a Time100 Impact Award from Time Magazine, and the Gold Legend Award from Gold House. Most recently, Lea starred in the West End production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical revue, Old Friends, and as Aurora in Here Lies Love on Broadway, which she also produced. Lea was also the first Asian to play Eponine in the musical Les Misérables on Broadway and returned to the show as Fantine in the 2006 revival. Fans of all ages recognize Lea as the singing voice of Princess Jasmine from Aladdin and Fa Mulan for Mulan and Mulan II. For her portrayal of the beloved princesses, the Walt Disney Company bestowed her with the honor of “Disney Legend.” She has released 14 albums and toured all over the globe, performing sold-out concerts in landmark venues. Salonga’s talents extend to the screen, where she can be seen on MAX’s “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” and Sony’s “Yellow Rose” and heard on Netflix’s “Centaurworld” and FX’s “Little Demon.”
Bernadette Peters
Lea Salonga
Creative
Music & Lyrics
Stephen Sondheim
STEPHEN SONDHEIM wrote the music and lyrics for Saturday Night (1954), A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), The Frogs (1974), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday In The Park With George (1984), Into The Woods (1987), Assassins (1991), Passion (1994), Road Show (2008) and HERE WE ARE (2023), as well as the lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear A Waltz? (1965) and additional lyrics for Candide (1973), Side By Side By Sondheim (1976), Marry Me A Little (1981), You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), Putting It Together (1993/99), Moving On (2001) and Sondheim On Sondheim (2010) are anthologies of his work as composer and lyricist. For films, he composed the scores of “Stavisky” (1974), co-composed the score for “Reds” (1981) and wrote songs for “Dick Tracy” (1990). He wrote songs for the television production “Evening Primrose” (1966), co-authored the film “The Last of Sheila” (1973) and the play Getting Away With Murder (1996) and provided incidental music for the plays The Girls of Summer (1956), Invitation To A March (1961), Twigs (1971) and The Enclave (1973). He won the Tony Award for Best Score for Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Passion, all of which won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, as did Pacific Overtures and Sunday In The Park With George, the latter also receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1985). Stephen Sondheim was born in 1930 and raised in New York City. He graduated from Williams College, winning the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition, after which he studied theory and composition with Milton Babbitt. He served on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers and lyricists, and served as its president from 1973 to 1981. In 1983 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1990 was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University. He was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 1993, the National Medal of Arts in 1996, the MacDowell Medal in 2013 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. His collected lyrics with attendant essays have been published in two volumes: “Finishing the Hat” (2010) and “Look, I Made a Hat” (2011). In 2010 the Broadway theater formerly known as Henry Miller’s Theatre was renamed in his honor, and in 2019 he became the first living artist to have a theatre named in his honor on Shaftesbury Avenue when the refurbished Queen’s Theatre in London’s West End was renamed the Sondheim Theatre to commemorate his 90th birthday, by Sir Cameron Mackintosh.
Devisor / Producer
Cameron Mackintosh
CAMERON MACKINTOSH (Devisor / Producer) has been producing shows since 1967 and remains the world’s most prolific producer of musicals in theatre history. As well as producing three of the world’s longest running musicals – Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats – his legendary productions also include Miss Saigon, Oliver!, Mary Poppins (co-produced with Disney), Side By Side By Sondheim, Little Shop of Horrors, The Witches of Eastwick and Five Guys Named Moe. He has produced several hugely acclaimed revivals of My Fair Lady, Oklahoma! and Carousel as well as reinventing long-running new productions of Les Misérables, Miss Saigon, The Phantom of the Opera and Oliver! Cameron is also co-producer with Jeffrey Seller of Hamilton in London and on Tour in the UK. In 2012, alongside Working Title Films and Universal, Cameron produced the hugely successful Oscar®, Golden Globe and BAFTA award winning film adaptation of Les Misérables, which is one of the most successful movies ever of an original stage musical. To celebrate over 10 years since its release, the movie has been remixed and recently rereleased in full Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision in selected cinemas around the world, as well as a new home vision 4K Blu-ray disc and iTunes download version of the film. The staged concert version of Les Misérables has proved to be just as successful as the original musical and is returning this autumn to stadiums and stages around the world in a much-anticipated spectacular Arena Tour – which is already mostly sold out in the UK. The concert version of Les Misérables has been filmed three times – at the Royal Albert Hall, the O2 Arena and the Gielgud Theatre – and is continually rescreened on TV and in cinemas throughout the world and, alongside his spectacular Royal Albert Hall production of The Phantom of the Opera, regularly breaks attendance records for live recording performances of musical theatre. Cameron owns and operates eight historic London theatres, which have all been spectacularly rebuilt and refurbished for the 21st century. They house many of London’s most successful hits. The Sondheim, formerly known as the Queen’s, now has a glorious auditorium and backstage and has been renamed in honour of Cameron’s great friend, theatrical legend Stephen Sondheim, who passed away in 2021. The last show he and Cameron were working on, Old Friends, had an all-star gala premiere at the Sondheim Theatre in 2022 and was later screened on BBC TV. In 1990, Cameron inaugurated the Chair of Contemporary Theatre at St Catherine’s College in Oxford University, with Stephen Sondheim as his visiting professor. The current Professor is world-renowned director, Gregory Doran. Music Theatre International, one of the world’s oldest and largest libraries of secondary rights of the greatest musicals ever written, is now one of Cameron’s companies. Cameron was knighted in the 1996 New Year’s Honours for his services to British theatre and in June 2023, was awarded the Freedom of the City of London. He is the first British producer ever to be elected to Broadway’s Theater Hall of Fame.
Musical Staging & Direction
Matthew Bourne
Side by Side with
Julia McKenzie
On screen, Julia McKenzie is perhaps best known for playing Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s Marple. More recently, Julia starred in The Queen & I, BBC’s adaptation of J.K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, Gold Digger, ITV’s The Town BBC’s Cranford and the hugely popular British sitcoms Fresh Fields and French Fields. Julia is also recognised for her work on stage having starred in many productions in the West End and on Broadway, including Promises Promises and On The 20th Century. Julia is well known for her work with Stephen Sondheim, Company, Side By Side By Sondheim, Follies, Into The Woods, and Julia went on to win the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical in Sweeney Todd. Julia also won the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Guys And Dolls at the National Theatre, and the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress for Woman In Mind by Alan Ayckbourn.
Film work includes: Allelujah, Notes On A Scandal, Bright Young Things and Shirley Valentine. In 2018, Julia was awarded an CBE for her services to Drama.
Choreographer
Stephen Mear
Stephen has won the Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer three times, twice for Mary Poppins (London, Broadway & UK tours; Co-Choreographer with Sir Matthew Bourne – they also received an LA Drama Critics Circle Award, a Helpmann Award in Australia, and a Tony and Drama Desk Award nomination) and the third for Hello, Dolly! at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. Olivier Award Nominations include: Gypsy (Chichester Festival Theatre/Savoy), Kiss Me, Kate (Chichester Festival Theatre/Old Vic), Crazy for You (Regent’s Park/Novello), Sweet Charity (Menier Chocolate Factory/Theatre Royal), Sinatra (Palladium/UK tour), Singin’ in the Rain (West Yorkshire Playhouse/ National; received the WhatsOnStage Award in 2001 for Best Choreography) and Soul Train (West Yorkshire Playhouse/ Victoria Palace).
Theatre includes: as Director/ Choreographer: Guys and Dolls and Funny Girl (Théâtre Marigny, Paris), Guys and Dolls Live in Concert and The Best of the West End (Royal Albert Hall), 42nd Street (Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), Top Hat and Thoroughly Modern Millie (Kilworth House Theatre), She Loves Me (Chichester Festival Theatre), Little Shop of Horrors (Storyhouse Theatre, Chester) and Shoes (Sadlers Wells/Peacock). As Choreographer: La Cage aux Folles (Regent’s Park), The Witches (National Theatre); Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends (Sondheim Theatre), Chess (ENO), Sunset Boulevard (ENO, Broadway), On the Town (ENO, Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), Singin’ in the Rain (Grand Palais/Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), City of Angels, The Vote and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Donmar Warehouse), White Christmas (Curve/Dominion), Scrooge: The Musical (Curve), Mack and Mabel (Chichester Festival Theatre/ UK tour), The Pajama Game (Shaftesbury), Amadeus, Music Man, Funny Girl, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Putting it Together and The Grapes of Wrath (Chichester Festival Theatre), Guys and Dolls, Dreamgirls and Ragtime (Milwaukee Rep), Die Fledermaus and The Little Mermaid (Broadway), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (West Yorkshire Playhouse/ UK tour), Gigi (Regent’s Park), Stephen Ward (Aldwych), Betty Blue Eyes (Novello), Me and My Girl (Sheffield Crucible), Anything Goes (National/Theatre Royal) and Acorn Antiques: The Musical (London/UK tour).
TV credits: Gypsy Live at the Savoy, The Tracey Ullman Show, Psychobitches, Acorn Antiques: The Musical, So You Think You Can Dance? and Victoria Wood’s Christmas Special.
Music Videos: Number 1 (Goldfrapp) and The Importance of Being Idle (Oasis).
Producing Partner
Daryl Roth
DARYL ROTH is honored to hold the singular distinction of producing 7 Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Anna in the Tropics; August: Osage County (2008 Tony Award); Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award); How I Learned to Drive; Proof (2001 Tony Award); Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women; and Wit. The proud recipient of 13 Tony Awards and London’s Olivier Award, her over 130 productions include Kinky Boots; Angels in America; Between the Lines; Company; Funny Girl; Gloria: A Life; Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia; Indecent; Into the Woods; It Shoulda Been You; Life of Pi; Love, Loss, and What I Wore; The Normal Heart; The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife; Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; and War Horse. Currently: The Picture of Dorian Gray (West End) and Appropriate. Upcoming: Left on Tenth. Trustee, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Lincoln Center Theater. She is proud to have been inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
Music & Lyrics
Stephen Sondheim
Devisor / Producer
Cameron Mackintosh
Musical Staging & Direction
Matthew Bourne
Side by Side with
Julia McKenzie
Choreographer
Stephen Mear
Producing Partner
Daryl Roth