‘Putting It Together’ Reworks Sondheim

“Putting It Together,” the Stephen Sondheim revue now at the Colony Studio Theatre in Silver Lake, owes its existence to people who cannot get enough of the maestro and who delight in any excuse to listen to his songs. As an ex-Sondheim junkie (cured somewhat by the pretensions of “Passion”), I feel for these people.

Still, “Putting It Together” is an extremely thin excuse to listen to some Sondheim songs, or snippets of songs, some of which have been outfitted with witty new lyrics. The show--conceived by Sondheim and by Julia McKenzie, who co-conceived and starred in “Side by Side by Sondheim,” an earlier such revue--opened off-Broadway in 1993, where it was a major hot ticket, marking the return of Julie Andrews to the stage after a 30-odd-year absence. This revue cries out for stars. It is a showcase for people to hit difficult theater songs out of the park, to show off. With actors just getting a hold of their art, however, the songs have the opposite effect. They expose flaws.

The “plot,” and I use that word lightly, unfolds at a sophisticated New York dinner party. There are the hosts: a bickering husband (Doug Carfrae) and wife (Barbara Passolt). Bickering couples account for most of the songs from “Company” and “Follies.” Also, there’s a bland single guy (James Matthew Campbell), an impish gay single guy (Todd Nielsen) and a sexy waitress (Michelle Duffy) invited to stay by three leering men (who promptly sing “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” and never mind that one of them’s gay).

Full knowledge of the Sondheim canon is expected of the audience--otherwise you might be confused when the wife calls the husband Paul, for example, when she’s singing a song from “Company,” and then Charlie, when she moves on to “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Fandom is supposed to hold an indulgent audience together even when the revue is at its most coy. Far too much of the time, characters sing while others busy themselves with flowers or candles or just sit lost in their own thoughts. Things get worse in the second act, when the characters play a party game. The question posed: “Whom in this room would you shoot?” (an excuse to sing a song about guns from “Assassins”). It proceeds (not quickly enough) to a game in which the sexy guest-cum-maid sings “The Miller’s Son” from “A Little Night Music” in response to the question, “Whom at this party do you want to marry?” If you don’t know the song, it would be difficult to explain just how stultifyingly literal-minded this moment is. Duffy, who acts as though she’s posing for a magazine cover for much of the evening, does not help.

Barbara Passolt, as the hostess, gets closest to the kind of confidence needed to carry off these songs, though not close enough in the most difficult number, “Getting Married Today” from “Company.”

Played out on Susan Gratch’s credible set, with the Chrysler Building featured prominently off the terrace, the play is an awkward exercise in faux nonchalance. Director Nick DeGruccio and musical director Laurence O’Keefe (who plays in the three-man offstage band), can take some comfort in the fact that “Putting It Together” didn’t get put together well enough in the first place.

* “Putting It Together,” Colony Studio Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Silver Lake, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 13. $25-$27. (213) 665-3011. Running time: 2 hours.