Review: TheatreWorks’ season closer is ‘Alive’ and kicking

Musical revues can be tricky things, lining up a parade of songs that may often be well-loved, but are stripped of their original context. With a composer such as Stephen Sondheim, whose shows typically come with such a vivid sense of place, that’s even trickier territory. For instance, whether you know the musical or not, try to think of the name “Sweeney Todd” without imagining dark, Victorian visuals. Nonetheless, the music of Sondheim has been the subject of about half a dozen revues throughout his long career and with its season closer, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is adding to that number.

A revue can highlight the particular talents of the featured composer(s), but rarer is the chance to hear their songs in a whole new way. Happily, TheatreWorks’ “Being Alive: A Sondheim Celebration,” falls into the latter category. Perhaps that’s not a surprise, as the world-premiere show was co-conceived by TheatreWorks’ Founding Artistic Director Robert Kelley and Resident Musical Director William Liberatore, who together have helmed 18 of the company’s 20 Sondheim productions. Kelley directed “Being Alive,” with Liberatore as musical director. They know and love the material, and it really shows. 

Like the characters that Sondheim’s insightful lyrics bring to life, the show does have some flaws, but is full of love.

A musical revue focusing on the theme of love — primarily romantic love — in Sondheim’s works, “Being Alive” uses a show-within-a-show conceit to explore the many facets of this complex emotion. The setting for “Being Alive” takes audiences “behind the scenes” for the final rehearsals of a musical revue featuring Sondheim’s songs. Wilson Chin’s realistic set brings all the trappings of a rehearsal to the stage, with racks of costumes and a cluster of scenic backdrops (though seen only from the back, labeled with various Sondheim shows featured in “Being Alive”).

In a nice touch, before the curtain for each act, as the audience is getting seated, actors dash into the theater alongside them, rushing not to be late to “rehearsal,” and chat onstage about the production while crew members hustle at the stage’s periphery.

To start it all off, even the curtain speech is a song: “Invocation and Instructions to the Audience,” with music from “The Frogs” and lyrics from “Putting It Together.” Sondheim, who died in 2021, was a giant of the theater, and created some musicals about the theater, so the setting is a good fit. 

The ensemble cast of six (Sleiman Alahmadieh, Noel Anthony, Solona Husband, Nick Nakashima, Anne Tolpegin and Melissa WolfKlain) turn in solid, energetic performances, nailing Sondheim’s famously demanding melodies while making it look effortless in the process. Skillfully accompanying them was Liberatore on piano, with Artie Storch on drums. The duo provided an impressively full sound that suggested a bigger group. 

Tolpegin and Husband bring some especially gorgeous harmonies to “There Won’t Be Trumpets.” Tolpegin adds extra poignancy to an arrangement of “Send in the Clowns” that perfectly captures the song’s haunting, regretful beauty. Anthony and Alahmadieh summon just the right amount of cringeworthy bravado for “Pretty Women.”

Alex Perez’s choreography helps bring the songs to life, conjuring everything from a city street that’s convincingly bustling with just six people (“Love Is in the Air”) to a cheeky interlude at a spa that’s the scene for a playfully risqué inventory of a guy’s, uh, charms (“Can That Boy Foxtrot”). 

The show-within-a show conceit is clever, but can also sometimes prove so meta that it’s confusing. Keeping the premise consistent and believable is the show’s weak point, as is true for so many revues. 

And although love is maybe as strong a theme as you can find in Sondheim’s body of work, the way it’s presented is strangely limiting. “Being Alive” narrows the broad subject a bit too much by musing on a single trajectory of love stories, from dating to divorce.

The focus of “Being Alive” is on romantic love, but what was most meaningful to me as an audience member was that the lyrics all revealed what seems to have been Sondheim’s great understanding, compassion and love for the flawed state of just being a human. It was something truly beautiful that I hadn’t heard before in these mostly familiar tunes.

Through June 30 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets start at $27. For more information, visit theatreworks.org.