Here We Are NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (695)
See it if You are a true Sondheim fan. The music, lyrics, orchestration, casting, direction and set are perfection. SS writes of his own mortality.
Don't see it if If you expect a straightforward, simple, crowd pleaser, where you leave your thinking cap at home, stay home with it. It is 100% complex SS.
See it if You don’t want to miss one of the best shows out there in years. Everything about it was perfect.
Don't see it if You don’t like abstract or surrealist theater, don’t like Sondheim, don’t like dark comedy
See it if You want a really clever and different show. A musical but also tons of great dialogue. Something very different and very Sondheim!
Don't see it if You are looking for a traditional musical. This isn’t it.
See it if you enjoy an experiencing an all-star have fun with Sondheim’s clever and layered lyrics. This is deliciously absurd and existential.
Don't see it if you dislike theatre that requires you to think and stay intellectually present with the production for the whole show. It’s brainy fare.
See it if there is no reason not to see it!
Don't see it if there is no reason not to see it! Read more
See it if You want to see the perfect blend of wit and absurdity (Sondheim and Ives) performed by a stellar ensemble.
Don't see it if the above doesn’t appeal to you. Read more
See it if Hilarious parody and in-joking with a focus on the theatre crowd. Beautiful retrospective goodbye from one of the greatest! Bravo 👏
Don't see it if Seeing both movies in-between my first and second viewing enhanced my understanding and enjoyment to the point that this is one of my ATFs. Read more
See it if like me, you must see all Sondheim. Very clever existential dramedy inspired by a "No Exit" style film/opera. So weird. Loved it!
Don't see it if you have to work hard to "figure it out." Don't do that! Just go with it, enjoy the ride about life, death, privilege, revolution...
Critic Reviews (19)
CRITIC’S PICK: “ ‘Here We Are’ is as experimental as Sondheim throughout his career wanted everything to be...We, too, will always want more, even when we’ve had what by any reasonable standards should already be more than enough.”
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“ ‘Here We Are’ is more broadly funny than the films and also more overtly philosophical, with a recurring theme about the gap between appearances and reality—though it doesn’t go all that deep.”
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“Considering that it’s the final musical by the renowned composer-lyricist who died in 2021, Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Here We Are’ was guaranteed to jolt. Although the show emerges as modestly engaging, it adds a zap of electricity to the theatre season, thanks to inspired work by a dream cast and ace designers who serve up a slim slice of surrealism under Joe Mantello's ('Wicked') direction.”
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“ ‘Here We Are’ is torn between its reasonable desire to obliterate its characters and its aspiration, if not quite to save them, then to remain open-ended as to where they—and we—go from here. If it’s sometimes a muddled impulse, it’s also a humane one. Sondheim certainly didn’t go gentle into the apocalypse of late capitalism, but he didn’t go heartless either. He stayed complicated. He gave us more to see.”
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“ ‘Here We Are’ delights in the flavor of its vapid jet-sets, but ultimately spits them out in a resolution that betrays its own internal logic. It’s too much, and robs the show of its potential teeth. Better to know when the feast is done.”
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“What music there is, is playful and joyous. You wish there were more of it, especially a finale. But Ives and Mantello do heroic work endowing it with coherence and force. Sondheim always insisted on giving equal credit to his book writers, those who fed him and goaded him. It’s fitting that his last collaborator finished the epitaph.”
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“We’ve been through sharper existential crises with convergences of Sondheim characters over the years...We’re consoled in ‘Here We Are’ with one more chance to gather together with Sondheim, to hear his irreplaceable voice on a stage. The resulting evening might not be stranded at square one, but it doesn’t satisfactorily cross the finish line, either.”
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“The novelty of attending Sondheim’s final musical and experiencing its non-stop zaniness wear off long before ‘Here We Are’ ends, and the whole thing falls apart.”
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