Two years after Stephen Sondheim’s death, “Here We Are” will premiere Off-Broadway in a 526-seat theater. Previously titled “Square One,” the show is based on Buñuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel.” The producers are advertising it as “the final musical by composer Stephen Sondheim;” it will open this week and run until January.

Sondheim, however, never finished the musical. In fact, when he announced that he had given up on writing it, Ethics Alarms saluted him, praising the Broadway icon for “doing the responsible thing, quitting….Virtually no composers and very few artists generally do anything but decline after the age of 60, though many try to keep churning out wan imitations of their best work as long as someone will pay them.” Sondheim’s last reasonably successful Broadway musical was “Passion,” in 1994, when the composer was 64. Before “Here We Are,” he labored for a decade over a musical that hit the stage in multiple versions with several titles. None of them were successful. Asked days before his death if he foresaw when his final musical would be finished, Sondheim curtly replied: “No.”

Yet now, mirabile dictu, his collaborators are announcing that the musical is complete. Interesting: Sondheim had said he finished all the songs in the first act, but had been stuck on writing songs for Act II. No problem! The show’s producing team now says that two months before Sondheim’s death, he had agreed to let the show go forward following a well-received reading of the material that existed at that point. That reading, however, contained no music. I’ve directed and organized many readings of new works, and the amount of rewriting, cutting and re-conceiving a show that takes place after that starting point is always massive–and often a show never makes it to production.

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