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One wonders what the Broadway maestro would have made of “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” which opened Thursday at the Ahmanson Theatre in preparation for its move to Broadway in the spring.

I wasn’t expecting to write such a sentence about an abstract and some might even say abstruse Sondheim musical that has had only one short-lived Broadway revival.

The Kennedy Center joined in the mourning of the actor, whose work at the Washington, D.C.-based organization dated back to 2003 when he starred in Stephen Sondheim’s “Bounce.”

Before the burial, a "lovely" and "solemn" ceremony was held in which Send In The Clowns – written for Johns by legendary composer Stephen Sondheim – was played, said Chris Owen, minister of the chapel.

The show burrows into the character’s psyche while surveying the mixed blessing of marriage in a kaleidoscopic revue that boasts one of Sondheim’s most irresistible scores.