Nobody doubted that Lea Salonga could sing.

       She had won a Tony Award at the age of 20 for her breakout role as the besotted Vietnamese teen Kim in “Miss Saigon,” and sung her heart out as éponine, and later Fantine, in Broadway productions of “Les Misérables.” She provided the crystalline vocals of not one but two Disney princesses: the warrior heroine of 1998’s “Mulan” and the magic carpet-riding Princess Jasmine in 1992’s “Aladdin.”

       But could the singer handle Sondheim — a composer heralded for creating some of the most challenging, idiosyncratic work seen on the American stage — on Broadway? Could she inhabit a character like Momma Rose, the monstrous, pathologically ambitious stage mother from “Gypsy”? Or Mrs. Lovett from “Sweeney Todd,” the butcher/baker who breaks down the marketing challenges of hawking pies filled with human meat, in a Cockney accent, no less?

       “Some of it’s hard,” Salonga admitted.

       But she is doing all that and more in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” currently playing at the Ahmanson Theater here in Los Angeles after a 16-week run in London’s West End. Scheduled to begin previews on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater next month, the show features more than three dozen songs from some of Sondheim’s biggest musicals, including “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “A Little Night Music” and “Into the Woods.” The tribute revue also stars Bernadette Peters, who, no stranger to Sondheim, put her own indelible stamp on the character of Momma Rose in 2003.

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       Salonga, center, stars in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” with, from left, Jasmine Forsberg, Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Maria Wirries and Joanna Riding.Credit...Matthew Murphy

       Salonga, Peters said, “has one of the great Broadway voices, and she just brings down the house.”

       For Salonga, “I’m getting the chance to sing some of the most incredible lyrics ever written. I’m getting to dip, not just a toe, but my entire body, into this incredible work.”

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       “Nobody was surprised how terrific she was as a performer,” said the show’s producer Cameron Mackintosh, who also cast Salonga in “Miss Saigon” and “Les Misérables.”

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