A Sondheim Musical That Runs in Reverse
Signature Theatre stages the Sondheim musical that opens on the wreckage and works back to where three friends began.
⏪ The Story Moves Backwards
🎼 Why the Reverse Order
The show opens on three people who have already fallen out and then walks back through twenty years to the night they met. Each scene lands earlier than the one before it. Knowing how it ends changes how every hopeful line reads. Sondheim built the score around motifs that arrive stripped down and grow fuller the further back you go. Familiar melodies turn up in their earliest form late in the evening. Signature has built its reputation on this repertoire.
🏗️ Inside The MAX
Signature runs two rooms on Campbell Avenue in Shirlington, and this production takes The MAX, the larger of them. The space is a converted industrial shell with exposed steel overhead. Seating wraps close enough that the orchestra is audible as players rather than a recording. Sightlines hold from the sides. The lobby bar stays open before curtain and through the interval. Doors to the house open about half an hour ahead of curtain.
🎟️ Planning the Night
The performance runs Wednesday, September 30 at half past seven at 4200 Campbell Avenue. Garage parking under the block is free after six in the evening. Shirlington sits off the Metro grid, and the 22A bus from Pentagon City is the transit route. Allow time for the walk from the garage. Anyone expecting a conventional forward-running book musical should know this one refuses that shape. Tickets for weeknight performances tend to hold longer than weekend ones.
