Washington Post - Recommended
"...Three singers and two pianists are our enjoyable guides for this tour of what amounts to roughly the first half of Sondheim’s career, the music and lyrics he wrote for assorted shows between 1957 and 1976. The actor-vocalists, Nancy Anderson, Sherri L. Edelen and Matthew Scott, make for a hard-working, eager-to-please trio. If you are sometimes overly aware of those efforts, that is because of a sunny artificiality in conception that they are forced to maintain by the evening’s director-choreographer, Matthew Gardiner."
Washington Examiner - Recommended
"...Director and choreographer Matthew Gardiner does a fine job of keeping the revue moving smartly from number to number while creating interesting visual patterns onstage. Kathleen Geldard's attractive costumes are as contemporary and free of time constraints as are Sondheim's songs."
DCist - Recommended
"...The production strikes a nice balance between comedy and pathos. Scott is pure optimism and hopeful anticipation as he sings the gorgeous "Something's Coming" from West Side Story, but he's just as fun to watch strutting in his scanties during Gypsy's "You Gotta Have A Gimmick". Each performer boasts a similar range (Edelen brings down the house with "I'm Still Here", Follies' ode to one broad who's seen it all). Side By Side succeeds by using a formula that you really can't mess with -- throw some of musical theatre's greatest songs at a group of impressive, charming performers, and you can't help but have a good time."
MetroWeekly - Recommended
"...Speaking of masterpieces, few would argue that Sweeney Todd is Sondheim's. And if it feels far away from the Side by Side milieu, just hold out for ''Pretty Lady,'' from 1976's Pacific Overtures, when three 19th century sailors (Anderson and Edelen have to do a bit of gender-bending, too) lust after a Japanese girl: ''Pretty lady with a flower, give a lonely sailor half an hour.'' It hints at the darker turn Sondheim will take by decade's end, when ''Pretty Lady'' matures into ''Pretty Women,'' the full-on creepy ode to the bleak realms of male desire. And remember that even if you never get to a master chef's main course, you can most certainly get fully sated along the way."
Washington City Paper - Somewhat Recommended
"...That last number, from the magnificent oddity Pacific Overtures, is a reminder that what I'm picking nits about is an excess of riches: Thirty songs from musical theater's modern master, drawn largely from a set of shows that rank among the 20th century's high-water marks, performed without too much in the way of amplification, by people who do seem to love them. If that's your sort of thing, maybe Signature is where you'll want to be this spring after all."
Washingtonian - Recommended
"...It isn’t always warm. It isn’t always rosy. Frankly, the show would benefit from a few more voices. But it is such a treat to hear that wonderful music, and an added bonus to see Signature’s multi-award-winning musical director, Jon Kalbfleisch, in the spotlight—with a speaking part—instead of hidden behind a screen."
Fairfax Times - Highly Recommended
"...This show is selected by Signature as a salute to its own “signature” composer, Sondheim, 81, who is perhaps the greatest talent in Broadway’s musical theater in the past four decades."
TheaterMania - Recommended
"...It's a challenge, at first, not to think of Signature Theatre's production of the revue Side by Side by Sondheim as a mere musical appetizer, with the main course being the Kennedy Center's ambitious, grand-scale version of Sondheim's Follies. As it turns out, though, there is plenty here for Sondheim aficionados to chew on in this often engaging look at the master's work from the first 20 years of his career."
Curtain Up - Highly Recommended
"...Side by Side is sung by a very strong trio of voices: Nancy Anderson, Sherri L. Edelen and particularly Matthew Scott , who sings and dances with a sexy finesse, delivering pathos as smoothly as humor. Admittedly his closing solo, "Being Alive," from Company is a faultless song but Scott's rendition exposes nuances that might have been missed previously. His imitation of Laverne, one of the Andrews Sisters, is highly amusing as is his Chaplinesque dance in "You Gotta Have A Gimmick" from Gypsy. "
Alexandria Gazette - Somewhat Recommended
"...At $55 to $81 a seat, this is an expensive but enjoyable collection of highlights from the first half of Sondheim's brilliant career delivered with just a touch of explanation. It lacks any effort to use the songs in a story-telling context, however. That is a failing that later revues based on Sondheim's songs, such as "Putting It Together" which Signature's Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer directed on Broadway and then brought here, tried to correct."
DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended
Signature’s bright, bouncy revival of Side by Side is breezy, enjoyable, and, at times, genuinely moving. That’s due not only to Sondheim’s obvious talents but to the terrific set of skills Signature’s indefatigable cast has brought to this show.
