The most revealing moment in Broadway’s new Stephen Sondheim revue is not a musical one, but the opening statement, which, as with those announcements about strobe lighting and theatergoers with pacemakers, is delivered as a warning: “If you are put off by the idea of thinking, go see Cats,” says Bronson Pinchot, dressed as an usher and draped casually over the lip of the Ethel Barrymore’s stage.
Got it, Bronson. This is the thinking man’s Cats, right? Unfortunately, not all my fellow audience members are as smart as I am, so Mr. Pinchot feels obliged to spell it out. Putting It Together, he says, is not a “revue” but a “review.” And why would that be? “Because,” he says, “Stephen Sondheim expects you to think.”
Well, I did. What I mainly thought, about twenty minutes in, was that I’d rather be at Kiss Me, Kate. For thirty years, Sondheim’s act has relied on flattering its audience—by reassuring them that the absence of such traditional Broadway virtues as “a good time” is actually a tribute to their intellectual rigor. But it’s never been spelt out as baldly as it is here. Or as cynically: Putting It Together is, after all, brought to us by the same man who gave us Cats— the producer Cameron Mackintosh. So, indirectly, it’s brought to us by all those dumb schmucks who flock to Lloyd Webber, since, if not for them, Sir Cameron wouldn’t have been able to
