Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1
The tiny Chocolate Factory is used to squeezing a quart into a pint. But an 11-piece band who between them play over 40 instruments in a venue of just 180 seats is almost enough to make you reach for the Guinness Book of Records. What makes this evening much more cosy than cramped is the down-to-earth diva Maria Friedman, who makes her audience feel like the chosen people. Friedman is taking a possibly permanent break from the kind of big production musicals — Chicago, The Witches of Eastwick among others — in which she made her name.
In a sense, though, this warm-hearted cabaret concert is a return to Friedman’s roots and echoes the 1995 Donmar show that won her the first of three Olivier Awards. As then, this gig is as much about the arrangements as the songs.
“Anyone who knows anything about me knows how important Stephen Sondheim is to me,” she says. No other composer has influenced Friedman as much as Sondheim, and he features prominently here. But there is also something for fans of Jacques Brel, Adam Guettel, Leonard Bernstein, even Randy Newman.
