LAMDA is having a busy old festival. Its spin off, Mycelium Theatre’s A Microscopic Odyssey, is a triumph over at the Pleasance and this lively production by LAMDA’s musical theatre ensemble poses the question: What happens when you take Sondheim’s most beloved music and turn it on its head? An intriguing question for lovers of the undisputed king of musical theatre.

The answer is, it’s painful to say, a disappointment.

The premise of the show is that most (but not all) of the singers appear to be gender-swapped, with the young men of LAMDA singing female songs and vice versa (although this isn’t made explicitly clear in the show publicity). So it’s surprising when Mrs Lovett’s ‘A Little Priest’ is performed by a female and the same could be said of ‘You Could Drive a Person Crazy’. It’s all a bit puzzling really as to what the real point is.

But, this failure to comply with the show’s conceptual theme is the least of its problems.

The sound mix is way off with the pre-recorded instrumental track much too loud for most of the show and the radio mics give the performers a tinny, sometimes murky, quality. The lighting is, to say the least, basic. Now, both of these might be a consequence of the quality of the venue. That would be forgivable in a preview but the show is 10 days into its run and these technical failings should have been overcome by now.

The direction is minimal and looks pretty much thrown together at the last minute, which surely can’t have been the case for an important showcase like this.

But the biggest failing of all is that most of the performances do not do Sondheim’s music justice. With the exception of the penultimate ‘Being Alive’, ‘The Miller’s Song‘ and ‘Ladies Who Lunch‘, many of the performances lack conviction and in places tuning is problematic.

Admittedly it feels a little harsh to critique a student production this negatively, but paying audiences would expect a little more from an Academic Institution as feted as this one.

Miscast Sondheim is at Forest Theatre at Greenside @ George Street until Sat 22 Aug 2026