Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends starring two-time Tony Award winner Bernadette Peters is coming to Broadway with previews beginning on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. Watch Peters chat on Jimmy Kimmel Live as she gears up to perform in her new musical at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
Old Friends is a great big Broadway show born out of Cameron Mackintosh and Stephen Sondheim’s lifetime of friendship and collaboration. The two of them came up with the idea during the pandemic, drawing on the many shows that they had done together in collaboration with their good friend Julia McKenzie. Once theatres reopened in London and New York in the fall of 2021, Mackintosh was able to visit Sondheim again and this new show remained something they continued to discuss; but, sadly, shortly after, Sondheim passed away in November 2021. It fell to Mackintosh to pick up where he and Sondheim left off, collating their notes, and structuring the show that would initially become a spectacular star-studded gala at the Sondheim Theatre in London’s West End in May 2022 to celebrate Sondheim’s life and work, and also raise funds for the newly formed Stephen Sondheim Foundation. The gala won Best Theatre Event at the 2023 WhatsOnStage Awards and was subsequently broadcast on TV by the BBC.