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Kieron Quirke's rating
Reader rating
Description: The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra are joined by Olivier Award-winning actors Maria Friedman and Daniel Evans for an evening of music by Stephen Sondheim, including songs such as Broadway Baby, Losing My Mind and Being Alive.
Phone: 0207730 4500
Website: www.cadoganhall.com
Trains: Tube: Sloane Square 
Extra info: Party Hire, Pub
Stephen Sondheim's brilliant, clever musicals are still not a cert in the West End, but he can fill a concert hall in a tick. This decent compilation show at Cadogan hall offers fans all they could ask: excellent singing, a great band in the Royal Philharmonic, and that all-important dash of intellectual smugness.
Yet if the air of superiority is there, there's argument to back it up. The links between songs are a forthright and analytical set of mini-paeans to the master, complete with pops at nameless lesser composers. Cheap sentimentality, narrator Stephen Green declares, is not a Sondheim thing.
With that in mind, the John Rutterish choral arrangements of Good Thing Going and songs from Sweeney Todd, sung by a shiny-toothed choir from Arts Ed, are sweet but inconsistent.
There's rather more steel in the individual performances. Maria Friedman and Daniel Evans are both famous Sondheimists, and Evans in particular brings a fresh, intelligent eye to each solo number - his Giants in the Sky a particular highlight. Friedman milks Losing Your Mind for all its worth, and it's worth a few Friesians. But she can't make a silk purse out of I Must Be Dreaming. A banal little Forties ballad which was Sondheim's first published work, it is at best a reminder of just how far back the man's career stretches.
Mary Carewe and Graham Bickley get less chance to shine, but she plays against type to deliver a fine Miller's Son, and he aces the very beautiful I Remember Sky. The encores include a Send In The Clowns murdered with love and four-part singing. No cheap sentimentality? Ah well.
• Until 11 August (020 7730 4500, cadoganhall.com).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
