Here We Are review

There is an immediate, and fundamental, problem: not only are these shallow idiots – here a bunch of vacuous urbanites in search of a place to have brunch – too thinly drawn to feel properly human, but there’s not a single compelling or convincing relationship between them. Obviously, the piece is highly stylised in an effort to replicate Buñuel’s off-the-wall aesthetic. But – in a slick, soulless production by director Joe Mantello – as theatre, it makes pretty thin gruel, leaving us as hungry and dissatisfied as the show’s perpetually frustrated posse.

Marianne (Jane Krakowski) and Leo Brink (Rory Kinnear) are a self-satisfied couple surprised by the Saturday morning arrival of their pals, who are under the impression that they all have a brunch date. Paul Zimmer (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) is a cosmetic surgeon, celebrating his 1,000th nose job; his waspish wife Claudia (Martha Plimpton) is a showbiz agent. They are joined by Raffael Santello Di Santicci (Paulo Szot), the priapic ambassador of a fictional foreign state, and Fritz (Chumisa Dornford-May), Marianne’s left-wing firebrand younger sister. Marianne is still in her nightie when they all pitch up, but undeterred, she leads them as they sally forth, rhapsodising about the “perfect day” and seeking something to tickle their jaded tastebuds. Instead, they are met with a dead chef and establishments devoid of food, staffed by eccentrics portrayed by Tracie Bennett and Denis O’Hare, among them a Piaf-like, overwrought chanteuse waitress at a French bistro and an Italian maitre d’ who presents them with plastic fish.

For all the polish of Mantello’s staging, this really just feels like a purposeless waste of time

Further complications ensue with the arrival of an incompetent bishop with a women’s footwear fetish (Harry Hadden-Paton) and two soldiers (Cameron Johnson and Richard Fleeshman), one of whom (Fleeshman) has an irksome habit of reciting his dreams and becomes smitten with Fritz. There are subplots of extramarital affairs, drug dealing and revolutionary politics that quietly fizzle out. And much of the second half, which takes place at Raffael’s lavish embassy and features considerably less music than the first, is given over to maudlin existential ramblings, as food and water run out and the characters contemplate the parameters of their own reality, with a hefty dose of fourth-wall fracturing metatheatricality.

It’s all pretty tedious, and although the score is immediately recognisable as Sondheim – that bouncy chromaticism, those rising modulations from major to minor – it’s not especially memorable. Still less arresting are the lyrics, given that there’s no reason for anyone to sing since nothing has any sense of urgency or intensity. Krakowski’s winsome airhead Marianne and Bennett and O’Hare’s mugging as the various grotesque functionaries supply the occasional eye-catching moment. Mostly, though, you just feel as if the performers are flailing about helplessly, with no guidance from Ives’ aimless book.

David Zinn’s sets, which transform from glossy white tiles and glass to various neon-lit eateries and then to the marble and gilt embassy, have a certain chic panache, and choreographer Sam Pinkleton arranges the cast in some wittily cartoonish tableaus. But for all the polish of Mantello’s staging, this really just feels like a purposeless waste of time – an experiment that should have stayed in its masterly creator’s bottom drawer.

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