This time it’s personal. With a plethora of compilation shows showcasing the genius of composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim, Angelina Réaux’s new collection adds a different take. In The 3 Faces of Steve: Sondheim in Concert, the three participants will show how Sondheim affected and even changed their lives, through story and song.
The revue will have its world premiere Friday, Sept. 6 (with one low-priced preview on Thursday, Sept. 5) and run through Sunday, Sept. 29 at The Odyssey Theatre with Réaux joined by baritone Michael Sokol and bari-tenor Bernardo Bermudez. (For details, see below.)
“We’re the three faces. We each have our own point of view about Steve and individual experiences,” says Réaux.
The Right Time
Compendiums of Sondheim’s oeuvre are not new. There’s Side by Side by Sondheim, Putting It Together, Celebrating Sondheim, Sondheim on Sondheim and even Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, coming to Broadway next year. Not to mention all the singers who’ve devoted entire recordings to the man who changed American musical theatre.
Photo courtesy of Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
So why do the show now? “It’s been three years since Steve’s death,” says Réaux. “I do a lot of repertoire, and I just missed singing Steve’s songs,” says Réaux on creating the show. She hadn’t sung Sondheim since a Side by Side eight years ago. “My main reason is that I’ve done very little musical theatre since Sweeney Todd in 1981. And I love the whole kit and caboodle.”
A Local Debut
Réaux has long wanted to bring a show to the Odyssey, “but it never worked out. They had a slot open and asked if I had anything. So now I have this Sondheim show that’s getting its premiere there.”
Sokol, Réaux’s husband, is “a wonderful singer and great actor who’s worked at Steppenwolf and is primarily a voice teacher in San Diego;” and Bermudez is “a triple threat and opera singer with roots in musical theatre,” Réaux says.
“We’re all fans with histories we can tell, like the first times we performed his songs,” Réaux adds. Sokol will share insights into Sondheim’s relationship with legendary lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, who was Sondheim’s mentor.
Meeting The Challenge
Photo by Cooper Bates
Singing Sondheim is a challenge “vocally, dramatically and comically,” says Réaux. The compendium, starting with the lyric Hey, Up There from Follies will include solos, duets and trios from 14 of Sondheim’s classics including Follies, Company, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music and Merrily We Roll Along.
Hits like Send in the Clowns, Being Alive and I’m Still Here, will join less well-known selections like Finishing the Hat, Me and My Town and the tongue-twisting The Boy From…
She and her husband will add A Little Priest from Sweeney Todd, while the men will do Can That Boy Foxtrot! (cut from Follies) and Not Getting Married Today from the 2021 Company revival.
The show’s musical director and pianist William Ah Sing has joined Réaux for a Kurt Weill program. “He can play anything,” she says.
Photo by Cooper Bates
Close Encounters
Réaux has a long list of interactions with Sondheim and his music.
While a student at Northwestern University she auditioned for a production of Side by Side with Paul Gemignani. He told her she was way too young and to contact him when she moved to New York. Also, while in school she took part in a Sondheim show with fellow student John McGlinn, who went on to become a respected conductor and musical theatre archivist.
Her first Broadway show experience was Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, which she attended with her friend and Northwestern classmate Charles Busch (she stayed with the actor/playwright’s aunt). “It changed my life,” Réaux says.
She got to know Sondheim when she was cast as the Beggar Woman in the national company of Sweeney Todd in 1981. During rehearsals, “He would come to everybody’s dressing room. He fed me caramels and talked about this new show he was writing about children’s fairy tales and which ones should he do? And we know what that turned into Into the Woods.”
He gave her the hook for the character, she says, and “and helped her glean the humanity. He said, ‘what are you thinking of when you sing ‘alms, alms?’ You’re a little lost choir boy on a lonely London street with one streetlamp lit.”
Changing Gears
Réaux will also relate how being in Sweeney Todd changed the trajectory of her career. At the 13th tour performance at Kennedy Center the famed barber chair mechanism failed. Instead of falling through the chute her boots got stuck in the padding. “My body folded up like an accordion. You could hear the leg bones break.”
During her recovery in the hospital for a month and learning to walk again, director Hal Prince told her she was really an opera singer. Encouraging her, he sent her a copy of William Weaver’s book, The Golden Century of Italian Opera from Rossini to Puccini.
So, she started taking vocal and language classes and attending courses from opera director Stephen Wadsworth.
Finding A Mentor
After an apprenticeship with Santa Fe Opera, Réaux came to the attention of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, who knew her as an actress. (She premiered Tony Kushner’s one-act But The Giraffe at the New Victory Theatre in New York City).
He cast her as Francesca, the “I know you do” girl in America, in his recording of West Side Story. Then as part of the ensemble and understudy to Dede in his and Stephen Wadsworth’s opera A Quiet Place in Vienna.
She auditioned for Bernstein’s Deutsche Grammophon recording of La Bohème singing Mimi’s Sono andati?, her farewell and declaration of love, instead of the more well-known Sì, mi chiamano Mimì. When Réaux finished smiling, Bernstein asked her why. “I said, ‘I’m finally warm.’ He said, ‘you’ve got the part.’”
She also recorded three of his songs on Bernstein: A Jewish Legacy, including the song he wrote for his own Bar Mitzvah.
Photo courtesy of Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Putting Them Together
Her current show is the latest in the long line of programs she’s created, usually one-woman concerts to showcase her singing and composers she loves.
Réaux has a particular affinity for Kurt Weill. She was first introduced to his music when she performed in the revue Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill at Northwestern.
“There’s something in his songs that just appeals to me,” says Réaux. “When I started taking voice lessons at 10, I refused to sing in German. So, they gave me all these little songs and ariettas and I was drawn to German repertoire and Weill.”
Her show, Stranger Here Myself: Songs of Kurt Weil, conceived with director Christopher Alden, was produced by The New York Shakespeare Festival and recorded on Koch Classics. At the New York Philharmonic’s urging, she created Dancing on A Volcano: Ein Berliner Kabarett (the music of Weill and his contemporaries).
“Lenny was influenced by Weill and an early advocate,” says Réaux. He conducted a concert performance of his seminal piece The Three Penny Opera in 1952. “When I was first doing shows in New York, Lenny insisted I sing a Kurt Weill song like Youkali.”
She conceived, directed, and participated in the premiere of There Is a Garden: A Bernstein Celebration. And later Bernstein Tonight!
Coming Full Circle
Adding a Sondheim show to her canon is a logical step for Réaux.
“I met Sondheim at Bernstein’s home at the Dakota in New York City,” says Réaux. “I was just in awe of both of them.” She was honored to take part in Sondheim’s 75th birthday celebration. Part of it was a 12 -hour marathon of his music at New York’s Symphony Space. She sang Losing My Mind and You’ll Never Get Away from Me.
Réaux admits to doing “a heck of a lot of Side by Sides” and one day hopes to assay the role of Mrs. Lovett.
“Weill, Bernstein and Sondheim, who represents the best of musical theater, have all enriched my life,” says Réaux. “And I hope I’ve done service to them in some way.”
The Odyssey Theatre is at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Performances are at 8 p.m., Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and at 2 p.m., Sunday (except Sept. 29 at 5 p.m.) Tickets are $50 Thursday and Friday and $45, Saturday and Sunday ($25 for the preview). For more information, call 310-477-2055 or visit OdysseyTheatre.com
Steve Simmons is an accomplished writer and editor who writes about a wide array of topics including entertainment. His successful experience at The Beverly Hills Courier and other publications set the stage for his blog. Contact Steve at steve.simmons0211@gmail.com or 626-788-6734.
