The Stage

Maria Friedman Re-arranged

Published Friday 5 December 2008 at 11:45 by Mark Shenton

Maria Friedman has come home, in every sense. After doing her first solo run at the Donmar Warehouse in 1993, she transferred it the following year to the Whitehall, and now a substantially reworked version of that show - applying the same concept of extraordinary musical arrangements and thrilling musicianship to back them up - that first played at the Menier Chocolate Factory in March, has come back triumphantly to the Trafalgar Studios, as the Whitehall has since become.

And in the decade and a half since Friedman first went solo, she has taken flight as one of our most seriously accomplished of all West End musical actresses, with a pedigree that has since seen her win two more Oliviers (to join the one she got for that original solo show), and appear on cabaret, concert and theatrical stages from London and Europe to Broadway.

All of which means that she totally earns her place back here and she inhabits it with a new sense of ownership, comfort, vitality and vibrancy. She kicks off in full diva mode with a magnificent version of Lloyd Webber’s As if We Never Said Goodbye from Sunset Boulevard - itself currently back in the West End - and makes you long to see her give full reign to the role of Norma Desmond.

But if, for now, she is eschewing the challenges of continuous West End runs in single parts, she sets herself an even bigger one here, which is to perform a repertoire of around 20 songs, each of them a fully-formed drama and character in themselves.

She is by turns delightfully playful - with Randy Newman’s Short People and Charles Strouse’s I Want to Sleep with You Now being used to cheerfully, alternately castigate and seduce members of the audience - and achingly serious (with a haunting rendition of Purcell’s 1689 Dido’s Lament and Sondheim’s tenderly beautiful Goodbye for Now).

She draws on a rich template of musical moods and colours throughout, from the jazz-inspired showcase for the band and her own voice in Le Trombone and an unbelievably tender In Buddy’s Eyes, to Missak Takoushian’s beautiful solo guitar accompaniment, to a hilarious Worst Pies in London - for which another member of the audience is conscripted to help.

The 11-member band, under the musical direction of Gareth Valentine, play their own multiple parts in making this one of the most electrifying musical evenings in London.