Putting It Together

The Stephen Sondheim revue "Putting It Together" isn't really a revue; it's an artfully designed assemblage of songs from the Sondheim canon that, with the addition of minimal dialogue, have been rearranged to tell a new --- if slight --- story about an evening of fun and games in a Manhattan penthouse.

The Stephen Sondheim revue “Putting It Together” isn’t really a revue; it’s an artfully designed assemblage of songs from the Sondheim canon that, with the addition of minimal dialogue, have been rearranged to tell a new — if slight — story about an evening of fun and games in a Manhattan penthouse. Making its West Coast debut at the small Colony Studio Theatre after London and New York stints, the show comes off fine in a less-than-inspiring production.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Sondheim’s songs can be so elegantly rearranged to suit a new story; much of his work shares the same smart-sad-cynical tone. When he strays outside it, he risks triteness, as with “Sooner or Later” from “Dick Tracy,” somewhat willfully included here among much more distinguished work.

The fun and games involve mostly the exploration of love’s delusions and disappointments as seen through the eyes of a middle-aged Manhattan couple (Barbara Passolt and Doug Carfrae) and their friends (James Matthew Campbell, Todd Nielsen and Michelle Duffy, whose transformation from maid to party guest — to accommodate the inclusion of “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid” from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” — is the show’s only klutzy device).

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If the Sondheim idiom really doesn’t require great vocalists, it does require great interpreters, and though the Colony’s production boasts no bad performances, it doesn’t boast any great ones either.

Passolt comes closest in her cool, resonant singing on “Every Day a Little Death” from “A Little Night Music,” and “Could I Leave You?” from “Follies,” but her acting isn’t always sufficiently subtle. Nielsen is winning in the rare, introductory “Invocation” from “The Frogs,” instructing the audience with steely charm to be on its best behavior. He also captures best the blithe and mildly bitter sophistication the show’s steeped in.

Carfrae and Campbell are serviceable singers, if rather bland, and Duffy is also just adequate in the ingenue role.

While small companies here have had success with such challenging Sondheim shows as “Into the Woods” (the Interact theater’s current production), “Sweeney Todd” and even “Assassins,” doing justice to the postmodern urban vaudeville of shows such as “Company,” “Follies” and “Merrily We Roll Along” — and the patchwork of “Putting It Together” — requires a level of artistry and, well, urbanity, that’s not easily approximated on a small scale.

Susan Gratch’s set holds up its end of the bargain, but the synthesized musical accompaniment (Laurence O’Keefe) is charmless and at times overbearing.

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