Worlds To Win: SSSSPOTY 2024
Dispatches from this year's Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year final
The walk from Piccadilly Circus to London’s Sondheim Theatre is a short one: five minutes at most. But on that brief journey, your mind might wander a good deal further.
As you emerge from the tube, you might catch a glimpse of the Piccadilly Theatre, where in 1989 Dorothy Tutin and Susan Hampshire starred in a revival of A Little Night Music. Walking up Shaftesbury Avenue, you soon pass the Lyric Theatre, currently home to Hadestown. In 2001, one of Sondheim’s most revered interpreters stood on that very stage night after night for Barbara Cook Sings Sondheim—and last year, Mandy Patinkin sang “Being Alive” there in his own solo show. Just before reaching your destination, you pass the Gielgud Theatre, which has been something of a Sondheim house in recent years. It was home to the star-studded 2018 Company revival (its cast including Rosalie Craig, Patti LuPone, Jonathan Bailey and Mel Giedroyc). More recently, it played host to Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga, and so many other stars for Sondheim’s Old Friends. In London, you don’t need to search the sky to find giants.
The Sondheim Theatre itself was The Queen’s Theatre until a few years ago, renamed when it reopened after its 2019 refurbishment. Since reopening, The Sondheim has remained the London home of Les Misérables, wrapped in its blue-purple-yellow-red billboard. Consequently, it rarely plays host to the work of its namesake. But on one glorious day each year, its stage is alive with the sound of Sondheim—and that is thanks to The Stephen Sondheim Society.
The final of the Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year, or SSSSPOTY (like a snake with acne), has been held annually (save for the COVID years) since 2007. Each finalist performs two numbers: one by Sondheim himself, and a new piece of theater writing too. The latter choice is made in partnership with New UK Musicals, an organization founded by multi-award-winning composer-lyricist Darren Clark, whose own work includes the brilliant The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
I was thrilled to take my seat for today’s final, hosted by the wonderful Bonnie Langford (you can read our recent interview with Bonnie by clicking here), and with musical direction by Nigel Lilley. And this year’s judging panel was quite something to behold, a marvel in its own right: Jenna Russell, Jak Malone, Callum Scott Howells, Fra Fee, Alex Parker, and chair Edward Seckerson.
Any ghosts haunting The Sondheim will have long since grown accustomed to Les Misérables’s “Lovely Ladies,” having heard it eight times a week since 2004. One hopes that their ears were suitably refreshed by today’s opener, the similarly named but altogether different “Beautiful Girls,” performed by all 12 finalists and two reserves. There is something thrilling about hearing a familiar number presented in a new way: this was memorably true of the ensemble version of “Being Alive” performed in Old Friends, and was equally true here. By giving every person on stage their chance to shine, John Haslam’s new arrangement itself shone equally brightly. And when an opening number is this strong, and so well-received, it has a palpable effect on everyone present, both on and off stage. In its afterglow, everyone is maximally able to relax, let go, let fly. And if you cannot fly… Well, you know the rest.
Today we were treated to such a dizzying array of talent that the world still seems to be spinning just a little. Holly Adams, up first, was utterly charming in “What More Do I Need?”, and so bloodthirstily characterful in Eamonn O’Dwyer’s “Off with their Heads,” from Alice in Winterland. Brooke Bazarian, in her powerhouse performance of “Sunday in the Park with George” and “Lost in Translations” (from Craig Adams’ Lift), soared as she so wholly inhabited both characters. Oliver Halford’s “I’m Calm” was brilliantly, disarmingly funny, and then his performance of Josh Sneesby & Sarah Middleton’s “Infinity” had such tenderness and vulnerability to it. With “Love, I Hear” and Stiles & Drewe’s “There’s Always Tomorrow,” Harrison Langham offered up a performance of such beguiling poise and moving defiance. Katie Leach found so many colors in The Miller’s Son, and then “It’s Been A Year” was bittersweet and raw in all the right ways. Madeleine Morgan had such an effortless command of the stage from the very first bar of “Moments in the Woods” to the very last note of Gus Gowland’s “Running on Empty,” from Mayflies—every moment was a joy.
Offering up “Being Alive” and Hilmi Jaidin’s “Esc/Enter,” Rowen Newsome found so much to say in both numbers, with a performance that was intimate and powerful in equal measure. I felt lucky to witness Tumi Olufawo’s “Broadway Baby” and “Press Hash to Re-Record” (from Alex James Ellison’s Fiver); she owned the stage from the moment she began to sing. With “Talent” and “My Day” (also from Fiver), Thomas Oxley shone, his two characters so vividly and memorably realized. Daisy Pearson’s sheer range was remarkable, from her heartbreaking “Stay with Me” to her winningly evocative “The Botanical Garden Gate,” from Rachel Bellman & Josh Bird’s Game Theory. Gavin Rasmussen was such a charming, believable Bobby in “Marry Me a Little,” and then he offered up one of the best comic performances I’ve ever heard with “Tartarus,” from Luke Bateman & Michael Conley’s The Sorrows of Satan. Last up was Josh Rosewood, who achieved the near-impossible by making it feel as though we were hearing “Finishing the Hat” for the very first time, and closed the show with style and panache with “Mr Right,” from Verity Quade & Rob Archibald’s Thirtysomething.
Along the way, we were also lucky enough to see 2023 winner Milly Willows perform “Worst Pies in London,” and to hear Molly Osborne and Jack Quarton perform “Time” from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, ahead of its West End transfer later this year. Teasers don’t come much better than that. We heard too from the phenomenal Joaquin Pedro Valdes, who was so brilliant as Manjiro in the recent Menier Chocolate Factory production of Pacific Overtures. Today he performed “Giants in the Sky” alongside NYMT member Ronav Jain, who was outstanding. It was a privilege to see this familiar solo number so triumphantly realized as a duet.
I’m really happy to say that Joaquin will be this week’s guest for our “A conversation with…” series here on The Sondheim Hub. If you’d like to be the first to read that interview—and indeed all of our upcoming interviews and essays—please do consider subscribing! You can do so for free (or, optionally, for a small fee, which helps to keep the lights on), and you don’t need a Substack account—just an email address. You’d be so very welcome!
It was fantastic to see the cast of National Youth Music Theatre’s upcoming Into the Woods production perform en masse too. They’ll be bringing their production of Into the Woods to the Southwark Playhouse in August; on the strength of today, I would heartily encourage every UK-based reader to go. More details are available by clicking here. If these are the names in tomorrow’s papers, the future looks very bright indeed. And, thrillingly, we got to hear Bonnie Langford’s “I’m Still Here” one more time, after the nightly triumph of her performance of that very number at Old Friends.
To paraphrase Beadle Bamford, speaking after a rather more cutthroat London-based contest, “The winner is Morgan!” The totally brilliant Madeleine Morgan wins the £1000 first prize, as well as the opportunity to to headline her own Sondheim-infused cabaret. The £500 second prize was awarded to Gavin Rasmussen, and Oliver Halford was highly commended too. I think Joaquin Pedro Valdes said it perfectly, though, in our soon-to-be-released conversation: “I get to see all of these amazing students that are vying for a title—but all of them have already won.” I couldn’t agree more. Here’s to many, many more years of SSSSPOTY.