Being alive!

“The alchemy is extraordinary – everyone is learning from everyone.” -Cameron Mackintosh

Being alive was my intangible, take home gift after watching Sondheim’s “Old Friends” at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles on February 22, 2025, which happened to be Lea Salonga’s birthday.

Her unmistakable popularity has been fueled by her “continuously improving” talent and her desire to be responsible, disciplined and someone reliable to put on a good show, as she shared her thoughts, with the New York Times’ Robert Ito, in an article published February 18, 2025.

Our community’s excitement in watching Lea Salonga perform in the U.S. is quite high — even for this writer, who was persuaded by others to watch “Flower Drum Song,” opposite Jose Llana in 2002-2003 in Los Angeles. Then, again in New York in “Allegiance” in 2015-2016, my first to watch her dance onstage.

Ted Benito would always ask, ”Have you seen a Filipina become a worldwide acclaimed talent?” “Hmm,” I pause and very few come to mind, since she has performed to thousands in Soraya, Cerritos Performing Arts, Disney Hall, and Ahmanson Theater. Even in Cerritos, barely recovering from crutches.

As soon as Lea Salonga sang, “Loving You” it felt familiar. The lyrics moved me to tears. Every lyric was sang pitch perfect and enunciated well. The sounds to our seats in Row W resonated quite well. At times, I heard the audience exclaim loudly their satisfaction. That included my unabashed bravos!

You in Sondheim’s lyrics are my grandchildren, born in the USA, and because of the color of their skin, are being excluded by White House policies torching the diversity, inclusion and equity’s progress we all have worked hard for, since the civil rights movement in the 1960s, to make America a nation we love.

Though this is our temporary political situation in America, in our blessed state of California, I cannot lose sight of and truly appreciate that the theatre cast is diverse, of various ethnicities, and ages, and their highest caliber of performances are at par with royalty Broadway stars, namely Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga.

Sondheim’s “Old Friends” reflects the artistic ambition of Ahmanson: “We create and present a broad range of outstanding live theatrical work that is bold, authentic, provocative, engaging, entertaining and inspiring. We support artists working at the highest levels of their own experience and craft, “ and triumphantly exceeded that afternoon. Even Los Angeles Times’ Charles McNulty on Feb. 14, 2025 describes Lea Salonga’s performance as superior.

To me, her “less is more” style allowed her voice to be heard, as pure and pristine, with depth of emotions, that days later, I can still hear her sing and convey that love to the audience in my heart’s memory. A love she found in Robert Chien, in 2004, whom she married at the Cathedral of Angels, witnessed by some of her fans, and the YouTube piece viewed by the millions, endearing and loving exchange of vows, with tears that accompanied their “I do.”

When Bernadette Peters sang her solo of “Send in the Clowns,” Sondheim became more and more familiar to this writer. With such a rawness and emotional intensity in singing these lyrics, the relevance and the resonance to today’s circumstances were palpable. Mind you, this song has been sung 500 different ways, but Peters’ version just hits your heart, boom, bullseye and you are broken again.

When some of the cast got interviewed in London, they were asked about the most difficult song in Old Friends. Their consensus formed around the song, “Getting Married Today” a rap at a fast pace, that a mistake with just a word would have unraveled the effect and impact of this song. Yet deftly sang to perfection by Joanna Riding, with Kevin Earley and Maria Wirries.

Here is the surprise for me, when Lea Salonga sang “The Worst Pies in London,” in East London’s Cockney accent. Her vintage costume as a baker made her unrecognizable at first, I had to ask our seatmate, Akiko, “That was Lea, right?”

She played Mrs. Lovett in the musical Sweeney Todd, in Manila, in Singapore, such that her Los Angeles’ performance elicited the longest applause from the audience for her animated singing and “baking onstage.” Imagine her singing as she kneaded and bagged loaves of bread, and with a credible East Londoner’s Cockney accent.

Each Sondheim song was brilliantly written to describe the complexities of the human condition, that one finds resonance and relevance with the lyrics, and from these Broadway stars: Jason Pennycooke, Jacob Dickey, Kevin Earley, Jasmine Forsberg, Kyle Selig, Gavin Lee, Joanna Riding, Jeremy Secomb, Bonnie Langford, Kate Jennings Grant, Beth Leavel, Paige Faure, Alexa Lopez, Peter Neureuther, Maria Wirries, and Daniel Yearword, who are moved to give their all to animate each song number, as if a playlet.

A play in itself in each song, there lies the genius of Sondheim, who in many interviews, refuses to believe his great creative reputation, as he continued to create during the pandemic, unceasingly, even months before he passed away in 2021 at age 91 years old. Imagine sustaining your creativity for close to a century, and staying more relevant as time goes. Even more so, years after, as his legacy lives on in our collective psyches.

Take Jason Pennycooke who got the audience laughing with his comedic lines that preceded his piano playing. As he sang “Live Alone and Like It” we recall our human conditions during the pandemic, alone, and struggling to live, to give to others, and to like our quiet and reflective moments.

Herein is Lea Salonga’s generosity of spirit, who collaborated with Ryan Cayabyab to raise funds for the 11,000 struggling artists and workers of ABS-CBN who found themselves without jobs during the pandemic. Lea’s diligence was enviable, singing to her digital audience, and a smaller technical crew. It made her happy to sing, she said. It was my daily source of inspiration to be alive, to stay alive and to keep on giving to others.

Sondheim’s genius gifts to me got actualized when Kate Jennings Grant sang with Daniel Yearwood, “The Boy From,” a parody of “The Girl from Ipanema” in bossa nova style. When Kate sang, “The Boy from Carrambola, etc.” I had just visited the generous Brito family who lived in Carrambola Place, Bakersfield the day before with my very generous gay friend, Rod.

Talking about serendipity and convergences for me to truly dig deep into Sondheim’s work genius and the high caliber of performing arts excellence! It was a bit redundant some would say to pair high caliber with excellence, but truly the superior performances were undeniable, even from a relatively new artist and vocalist, Jasmine Forsberg who nailed her solo “On the Steps of the Palace” with the same caliber of excellence as her idol, Lea Salonga.

The brilliance even got more heart-catching as Bernadette Peters sang “Losing My Mind”, described as a “giving a masterclass in song interpretation with Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends at the Gielgud Theatre on December 28 2023.”

Then, to transition to Lea Salonga’s rendition of  “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” you suddenly realize you are in the hip pocket of Sondheim, but also the brilliant curation of Cameron Mackintosh who clearly has the insight to allow the performing vocalists to take the songs and fully interpret them, as if a play. A play by itself with layers of emotions roller-coasting in one’s heart.

Truth, truth, truth that if we simply remember we are “Old Friends”, that we are here on earth, “Side by Side” and that “Love Is in The Air”, Sondheim left us with a legacy of multiple gifts to give and to share in an exemplary generosity to others, much like his bequest to his husband, Jeffrey Romley, and his musical legacies of 21 musicals to: Smithsonian, Museum of New York City, the Library of Congress, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Dramatists Guild Fund, the Irish Repertory Theatre Company and the Stephen Sondheim Foundation.

Akiko Tagawa — a very good long-time friend of three decades — shared this moving impact on her: “It was just what the doctor ordered. I’ve incorporated music into my holistic wellness of emotional, physical, and social well-being. To get to a show like ‘Old Friends’ with a friend I’ve known for 30 years hits every aspect of that holistic wellness. I am familiar with most of the Sondheim music, but one particular song hit differently was Bernadette Peters’ rendition of  ‘Send in the Clowns’ from the musical ‘A Little Night Music.’ The well-known literal meaning of the song is to send clowns into a show that is falling apart and tell a few jokes to distract the audience from the failures.  However, the emotional way Peters sung the song, ending with ‘And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe next year…’ tapped into a part of my emotions that I’ve tried to suppress – my distress over the current plight of democracy and the chaos of our government. I quietly wept. I felt so much better to have had the moment to process my emotions next to a good friend and mentor who makes me feel safe. It also helped that the song was followed by The Worst Pies in London sung so amazingly by Lea Salong to get me back to a joyous state.  This is exactly what the doctor prescribed.”

A wall plaque by the lobby of the Ahmanson reads: “The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.”

May those words live in my heart, while Being Alive!