Still A Fair Lady

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

TITLE: PUTTING IT TOGETHER

AUTHOR: STEPHEN SONDHEIM

WHERE: OFF-BROADWAY

THE BOTTOM LINE: Julie Andrews, back on stage at 57, still looks and sounds great in a wistful revue about love and marriage.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM SAYS HE'S never been in love, but he writes better than any other living composer or lyricist about the pleasures of passion, the pangs of jealousy, the durability and disillusionment of life in partnership -- the state he describes, in a characteristic song title, as perpetually Sorry- Grateful. It's been more than five years since he last brought a show to Broadway (his unpleasant Assassins, about John Wilkes Booth et al., had a brief sold-out run off-Broadway), and the next best thing to a new Sondheim score is a thoughtful revisit to old ones. It's a measure of the consistently high quality of his work that after giving rise to three anthologies -- Side by Side by Sondheim, Marry Me a Little and You're Gonna Love Tomorrow -- there is enough left for one more.

The new show, Putting It Together, is loosely conceived as a party at which old flames flicker and new ones spark. To quote Sondheim's nearest intellectual forebear, Cole Porter, what a swell party it is. With new material from Sondheim, designs by three Tony winners, choreography by Bob Avian (A Chorus Line, Miss Saigon) and a cast headed by Julie Andrews in her first New York stage appearance since Camelot in 1961, the show seems absurdly overabundant for its venue, a nonprofit house seating 299. But then, impresario Cameron Mackintosh (Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables) has been showing up night after night, pondering a transfer when the sold-out run ends May 23. Mackintosh, the wealthiest producer in theater history, launched his U.S. career with Side by Side, and is keen to take a sentimental journey, provided reviews allow it to be a profitable one.

That seems likely. To be sure, there is much to cavil about in conception and execution, above all the fact that Andrews does not get enough to do. Looking chic and ageless, taking command without commandeering center stage, she electrifies the audience at the first-act curtain with Could I Leave You? and again near the finale with Getting Married Today. She acts rather than belts, taking time and not challenging her vocal reach as she did at the 1991 Tony Awards (satirized by Forbidden Broadway, to the tune of I Could Have Danced All Night, as "I couldn't hit that note"). But two other numbers that would suit her quiet intensity -- the lovelorn Losing My Mind and the show-biz survivor's anthem I'm Still Here -- are left out, apparently because they appeared in Side by Side. Adding one in each act would make audiences happier without thwarting Andrews' gracious insistence on an ensemble show.

The piece was "devised" (there's not enough dialogue to constitute a libretto) by Sondheim and directed by Julia McKenzie, who starred in London and on Broadway in Side by Side. The emphasis on courtship means six songs from Company and four from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum but little from more venturesome shows -- one song each from Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George, none from Pacific Overtures. For aficionados, that shortcoming is balanced by five numbers from the short-lived Merrily We Roll Along and two items, never before heard on Broadway, from the 1988 London revision of Follies. For the ordinary theatergoer without a personal rooting list of favorites, any sampling of Sondheim seems witty, and this one is notably hummable. In the current season of musical mediocrity, this evening glows like a candlelight supper, intimate, tasteful, sophisticated and romantic.