Many years ago the Missus dragged me to see a Broadway musical, Sunday in the Park with George. I prefer drama, of course, but I thought she said it was based on Saturday in the Park by Chicago, so I went. Hoodwinked! But I was blown away and became a big Sondheim fan. Saw it two more times. Also Company, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Sondheim on Sondheim, Merrily We Roll Along, etc. So when Stephen Sondheim’s posthumous play, Here We Are, opened at The Shed in Hudson Yards, we had to go, catching a matinee the day before Thanksgiving.

To our surprise, it was a farce, only his second – 61 years after A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the first Broadway production for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics and music. Thus, Sondheim made his exit by sending in the clowns, and he left me laughing hysterically. For the first hour, anyway. The second act, tacked on after his death, has no music, few laughs, and a stupid resolution, loosely based on Luis Buñuel’s surreal film Exterminating Angel, released the same year as Forum…But I laughed so hard during the first act, inspired by Buñuel’s 1972 comedy classic, The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie, I think I hurt my belly. What a gift that glorious hour of theater was, even if we had to pay through the nose for it.

The lead character, Leo Brink, played perfectly by Bobby Cannavale, is a loud bigshot real estate developer who takes his ditzy half-dressed wife and three of their rich self-important friends out for brunch, with a sister-in-law tagging along to advocate a violent revolution. But at each fabulously new eatery featuring a niche cuisine, something is seriously askew, none more so than at Café Everything, where nothing is available, to the uproarious chagrin of Denis Patrick Seamus O’Hare, playing a waiter so obsequious he kills himself as an apology for the poor service. O’Hare has multiple roles, all hilarious.

Finally, this is my second trip to The Shed. Most seats are comfortable but the sightlines are not always great. Worst of all, the bathrooms are unaccountably minuscule for 500 humans, leading to the longest lines I’ve seen since early pandemic vaccine sites. Add to that no place to hang out between acts and no refreshments unless you take an escalator down six flights to an always overwhelmed lobby bar. The Shed’s FAQ page points out that no food or drink may be taken into the six story building and why should you, they point out, given the (understaffed) bar in The Doctoroff Lobby, named for Daniel L. Doctoroff, the President and COB of The Shed, a big shot real estate developer, naturally. The entire building and Hudson Yards itself in which it is embedded is a testament to all the societal over-indulgence, greed and entitlement being satirized by Sondheim (Manhattan edition) by way of Buñuel. I gotta think Stephen would have enjoyed the irony.