Marry Me a Little at Stage Door Theatre

As the inaugural show at Stage Door Theatre, Marry Me A Little has all of the trappings of a great piece of theatre. Music by Stephen Sondheim, a 65-minute song cycle and an intimate space to tell a story of love, complications and the beloved composer.

It follows a man and a woman who live one floor apart and their discontent with being home on a Saturday night. Under the direction of Robert McWhir, both Shelley Rivers and Markus Sodergren take on these roles vigorously and bring great energy to the show. Their stories are happening simultaneously, though separately, and Rivers and Sodergren do a fantastic job at making this evident. The artistry with which they navigate around each other on stage and yet never interact helps to evoke the sentiment of two different lives lived here, though the room is a cosy one.

The beauty of Sondheim is his lullaby-esque ballads contrasted with his feisty, punchy numbers. Unfortunately, in this song cycle, which extracts and whittles at music from various Sondheim shows, the music can become indistinguishable and almost as though all flow into one. Due to the lack of variety, it is hard for the actors on stage to evoke more than one emotion throughout. However, they do their best to break through the monotony to give us a performance worth watching.

One would not be wrong to say it reminds them of Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, because even though almost 20 years Marry Me A Little‘s junior, they both follow the same theatrical tropes, with a man and woman whose lives are seemingly separate. Where Brown’s work differs is in the characters eventually meeting in the middle of the performance for one number and parting ways again for the rest of the musical. In some ways, this is preferable to the completely separate lives portrayed in Marry Me A Little, as the song numbers feel cobbled together to force them into a narrative rather than coming about naturally.

All in all, though the vocal talent of both Sodergren and Rivers is pleasant to listen to, the blandness of both the music and the story create a regrettably tawdry watch and leaves the audience feeling as though this may have been better simply in concert as an ode to Sondheim, rather than trying to manufacture a tale out of bits from other musicals.

Natallia Pearmain
Image: Peter Davies

Marry Me a Little is at Stage Door Theatre from 28^th February until 13^th April 2024. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.