Typical of astute curation is including the spoof Bossa Nova song The Boy from …, in which a young woman holidaying in Rio laments the romantic inaccessibility of a young man from a 64-letter village in Brazil who later emigrates to a 58-letter town in Wales, these athletically tongue-twisting locations sadistically repeated. There are also surprises, such as Live Alone and Like It (written for the movie Dick Tracy) performed by Clive Rowe, while Michael Ball’s version of Could I Leave You?, a female heterosexual song from Follies, makes the character explicitly male and gay, thus, as the show often subtly does, acknowledging Sondheim’s life while respecting his art. Performers bow at the curtain call of the gala performance.
