Words and Music by Stephen Sondheim
The Foundry Theatre
33 years after its world premiere, the Stephen Sondheim review – Putting It Together made its Aussie premiere at Sydney’s Foundry Theatre. What the enthusiastic opening night audience saw on Thursday was a masterclass in interpreting the songbook of the undisputed genius of the American musical theatre – Stephen Sondheim. Set against the background of a glamorous cocktail party (as many Sondheim shows and revues are), Putting It Together features a collection of some of the composer’s best-known work (and a few surprising deep cuts) performed by a top-notch cast of Australian music theatre royalty and rising stars.
With songs from Merrily We Roll Along, A Little Night Music, Company, Sweeney Todd, Follies, Anyone Can Whistle and the 1990 Madonna / Warren Beatty movie Dick Tracey (to name a few) the cast – Caroline O’Connor, Michael Cormick, Bert Labonte, Nigel Huckel and Stefanie Caccamo are lightning in a bottle proving once again that Australian talent is some of the best in the world.
In fact, everything about this show is world-class. Caroline O’Connor has returned from New York City and a recent engagement as the lead in Hello Dolly at the Lido in Paris to headline Putting It Together in Sydney, proving exactly why she has had such a stellar career. I first saw her as Velma in the 1999 Australian revival of Chicago. She was brilliant then (indeed, I still remember the feeling of total awe when she performed I Can’t Do It Alone in that production). Now nearly 30 years later, she is even better – a total master of her craft and a bona fide theatrical triple threat. With charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent it would have been very easy for O’Connor to steal the spotlight from her fellow performers but she does not do this and instead knows when to go big and deliver signature Broadway belt (in the style of the greats – Merman and LuPone) and when to pull it right back and capture every single nuance in Sondheim’s tongue twisting lyrics.
Her Ladies Who Lunch was a biting commentary on New York high society and her Getting Married Today was equal parts hilarious and desperate. Both of these numbers have been performed countless times by countless performers, so they are well known. O’Connor made them seem fresh and new with a unique delivery and point of view. Her genius is the ability to emphasise a different word or phrase in her delivery, which gives the song a whole new layer for the audience to lap up. Indeed, as I was waiting in the foyer to go into the theatre, I overheard a well-known Sydney performer say to his friend about O’Connor’s imminent performance, “I am so excited and can’t wait to see mother chew up the scenery.
Australia’s original Beast from Beauty and the Beast and a performer who I will always view as the “hot” pharaoh from a 90s production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Michael Cormick plays opposite Caroline O’Connor as the husband. What a delight it was to see this mesmerising and powerful tenor, another in this show at the top of his game, so self-assured and confidently holding the audience in the palm of his hand. Cormick smoulders on stage with both talent and sex appeal. His smooth, suave, velvety voice in Hello Little Girl (from Into the Woods opposite a brassy Stefanie Caccamo taking the Little Red part) made this number all the more menacing and sinister, bringing it back to how it was originally delivered in the show (unlike recent productions where the wolf has turned into a camp cockney chimney sweep). Cormick proves that he is a performer who not only understands the complexity and subtlety of the material and isn’t afraid of diving deeper into the subtext.
Bert Labonte is the glue that holds Putting It Together’s loose narrative thread together and opens the show with a very funny “bit” delivered directly to the audience before he leads the company in the title number. His star turn comes in the second act with the frenetic Buddy’s Blues from Follies, which requires simultaneous physicality and clarity of diction while handling one of Sondheim’s most lyrically complex songs. He is likeable and lets the audience feel safe as the cocktail party guests begin to unravel.
Nigel Huckle, fresh off the Asian tour of Sunset Boulevard, plays the young man and is as likable as he is handsome. His vocals soar – especially in Marry Me A Little (one of my favourite Sondheim numbers). Huckle is at home on stage and holds his own in a supremely talented quintet of actors.
Steffanie Caccamo rounds out the cast as the young woman and gives us some of my favourite songs in the show – Sooner or Later and More from Dick Tracey (which, in this reviewer’s opinion, were performed a million times better than by Madonna in the movie). I had not seen Caccamo in anything before and was blown away by her huge, brassy Broadway vocals (reminiscent of a young Patti LuPone), sharp delivery, and on-point comic timing. When Caccamo was on stage, I could not look anywhere else. She is a mesmerising actor and can whisper a phrase with quiet, determined intent just as easily as she can belt a high note to the heavens. Caccamo is going to be a HUGE star – you heard it here first.
The small band – two pianos (Kevin Wang and Nicholas Till) and percussion (Richard Gleeson) support the show beautifully, with Guy Simpson’s innovative arrangements giving the complex material the expert precision it demands. Cameron Mitchell’s direction and choreography are insightful and slick and let the tight quintet work seamlessly with some of the best musical theatre numbers ever written. And this is the tricky thing about Putting It Together – it would be all too easy to hang the whole show on one or two internationally renowned actors, be it Julie Andrews, Carol Burnett or even Caroline O’Connor. But when all the moving parts click and work in synchronicity, magic happens.
It took Putting It Together more than 30 years to make its Australian premiere but my oh my was it worth the wait!
Putting It Together is directed by Cameron Mitchell and produced by Craig Donnell for Impresario Productions. It is playing a strictly limited 6 week season at the Foundry Theatre through 15 February 2026
Production shots (c) Daniel Boud
In his past lives, Damien was a drag queen and musical theatre actor. He made his stage debut as a fat cow in a school production of Joseph in 1984. He holds a BA with a major in drama from the University of Newcastle. He is completely obsessed with musical theatre – especially Broadway divas.
Since relocating to Sydney at the beginning of 2024, he attends every musical he can get to and lives with his partner and grumpy 12-year-old poodle.
His claim to fame is that he once met Patti Lupone in New York and she was nice to him.