Here We Are - a musical that's fascinatingly flawed

Still a work in progress when Stephen Sondheim died in November 2021, Here We Are feels like unfinished business. That's sort of fitting for a show about a bunch of friends' thwarted attempts to find somewhere to eat in its first act and their being stuck in a room they can't escape from in its second.

And the result is fascinatingly flawed – a curate's egg of a musical that's muddled but magnificent, pushing boundaries of form as it comes up against brick walls in the narrative, full of those magical Sondheim melodies in act one and mostly devoid of them after the interval.

Had he lived to see the 2023 Off-Broadway premiere in 2023 and this year's scaled-up production at the National Theatre, I'm sure the composer and lyricist would have fine-tuned his score and maybe included more of it in the somewhat sketchy second half. Or maybe not, since director Joe Mantello has said it was always Sondheim's intention to have the songs drain out of it.

Either way, what remains is second-tier Sondheim for sure. But then an off day for the master of musicals during his astonishing career was most others' peak.

Nobody could match him for complex rhythms and witty wordplay, and both are in glorious evidence here as he and writer David Ives assemble a cast of comic grotesques for a social satire that's by turns scathing and surreal.

The surrealism comes from moviemaker Luis Buñuel, two of whose films inspired the story. In his The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, a group of French folk are trying to find somewhere to dine.

Here it's a clutch of brash, entitled Americans and the lecherous ambassador of a fictional country, dashing from one eatery to another – such as the Everything Cafe, where nothing is left in the kitchen, and a "French deconstructivist" bistro, where a funeral takes precedence over the feeding of hungry customers.

The satire here is stealthily done as the terrific cast  – including an hilariously caustic Martha Plimpton, a fabulously air-headed Jane Krakowski and Tracie Bennett firing on all cylinders in various roles - are shunted around David Zinn's brightly minimalist set to jaunty Sondheim tunes and the lyrical tongue-twisters he was famous for.

Based on Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, act two shoves them all into a forebodingly baroque embassy salon which, for some unexplained reason, they can't leave. A bishop with a foot fetish is in there with them, along with Richard Fleeshman's lovestruck soldier, Denis O'Hare's unhinged revolutionary and a hulking great bear.

Why? Because this is anything-goes surrealism, as directionless as the trapped crowd and as out-there as anything Sondheim ever tackled, the dwindling score meant to signify the bleakness of existence, maybe?

Who knows? Our curiosity is roused but never fully sated in a show that's like a two-course meal where the starter is delicious, the main is a bit disappointing and the dessert never arrives.

Nonetheless, as a swansong for arguably the greatest theatrical composer of all time it tickles the taste buds and leaves you wanting more.

Here We Are is at the National Theatre until 28 June.