Among the many tributes that followed Stephen Sondheim’s recent death, more than one admirer noted that the shows of the preeminent composer-lyricist of American musical theater in the second half of the 20th century tend to acquire different shades of meaning when seen at different ages. Also that the best of them are open to reinterpretation, which allows for a nonlinear concept musical that was ground-breaking 50 years ago to still seem incisively modern today in the right hands. That’s the case with Marianne Elliott’s imaginatively trippy update of Company, which turns 35-year-old bachelor Bobby into Bobbie, a woman torn between fears of marriage and of loneliness, surrounded by couples urging her to settle down.
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In 1970, the musical defied convention by being virtually plotless — a series of vignettes stitched out of a half-dozen one-act plays by librettist George Furth — but also by questioning standard ideals of marital fulfillment, instead eyeing the prospect of lifelong vows with gnawing circumspection. Even the character around whom everything revolves, at that time Bobby, broke the traditional leading-man mold by appearing almost as a cipher, a largely passive observer. He weighs the pros and cons of his inner circle’s relationships, gradually arriving at the realization that there are more reasons to open himself up to love and commitment than to remain alone.
While staying faithful to the original material, Elliott and Sondheim tweaked lyrics, visual references and Furth’s book scenes, transforming the show into a portrait of a contemporary single woman, an Alice in Wonderland with an itchy Tinder finger, who values her independence but clearly is not immune to the pressuring of her friends to find a stable partner, nor to the ticking of her biological clock. The production played to rave reviews in London in 2018; its Broadway transfer was just over a week into previews when theaters went dark due to pandemic lockdown in March 2020.
A year and a half later, the revival resurfaces as a rejuvenated triumph, mounted with insights both touching and stinging, and a canny understanding of the complicated mechanics of a show that takes place largely in the abstract. Elliott brings a pleasingly light touch as she guides an ensemble of top-notch New York stage regulars to hit every note of comedy and poignancy.
The design contributions of Bunny Christie’s sets and costumes and Neil Austin’s lighting are invaluable in showing the compartmentalized yet overlapping lives of the characters within the “city of strangers.” The designers and director also find playful ways to indicate that the version we’re seeing of these interactions is what’s playing out in Bobbie’s head as she contemplates her future while awaiting her friends’ arrival for a dreaded “surprise” 35th birthday party. The weight of her peers’ meddling expectations crowding in on her perhaps makes even more sense with the central gender switch.
The production is so vibrant, so alive and stimulating, reconceived with such cleverness and humor, that even a conspicuously miscast lead doesn’t cancel out its pleasures. That would be Katrina Lenk, who in Indecent and, in particular, The Band’s Visit was a divinely enigmatic stage presence — sultry, graceful, languid, combining a veil of melancholy with a spark of mischief. The latter show landed her a well-deserved Tony Award for best actress in a musical.
As talented as Lenk is, however, to this longtime fan of Company she seems jarringly wrong for Bobbie, regardless of the character’s gender. A darkening touch of cynicism can work with this recessive protagonist, as Raul Esparza showed in the terrific 2006 Broadway revival. But Bobby/Bobbie’s yearning has to be apparent, too, and Lenk makes her inaccessible. Without the sense of an ache inside for something more emotionally satisfying — a quality by all accounts not missing from London lead Rosalie Craig’s performance — the internal conflict that drives the show has a fuel shortage. Lenk mostly seems aloof, casting a quizzical, sometimes bemused eye over her married friends while remaining too opaque about Bobbie’s own needs.
That means her songs — the wistful reflection of “Someone is Waiting,” the tentative longing of “Marry Me a Little” and the ultimately hopeful, ripped-open self-reckoning of “Being Alive” — have to do all the work. Elliott clears the stage to heighten those moments, effectively leaving Bobbie alone in a void. But Lenk is also an imperfect fit vocally for the role, which has been transposed from the original baritone range. Her voice sounds underpowered, occasionally straining and hitting pitch problems when anything approaching a belt is required. She acts the songs with too little sign of genuine feeling. This is the rare production I’d love to go back and see again with an understudy.
It’s a notable validation of the vision of Elliott — a Tony winner for War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, last on Broadway with Angels in America — and of the gifts of her ensemble that the protective fondness and warmth shown by the other characters for Bobbie helps soften Lenk’s remoteness in the role. And it’s a testament to the artistry of the musical itself that it works even with a less than ideal lead.
Dressed in flowing red palazzo pants and top, Bobbie floats from one neon-edged box to another, at one point literally “dropping in” on one couple, Peter (Greg Hildreth) and Susan (Rashidra Scott), on their typically neglected New York terrace, just in time for them to deliver the news that they’re divorcing. Her visit to another pair starts out as regular socializing, with Harry (Christopher Sieber) struggling to stay on the wagon while his competitive wife Sarah (Jennifer Simard) wrestles with the tyranny of diet and exercise. But once the other characters start parading through their living room singing the barbed marriage ditty, “The Little Things You Do Together,” and only Bobbie sees them, it again becomes clear that we’re inside her head.
While that aspect has always been built into the show’s psychological construction, the emphasis on it here gets around the unlikelihood that these dissimilar New Yorkers would all be part of the same social circle. They may just be mere acquaintances, their affection for Bobbie being the one thing they have in common.
There are five couples in all, including David (Christopher Fitzgerald) and Jenny (Nikki Renée Daniels), whose personalities have been switched to make him the sweet “square” who’s ill-at-ease when Bobbie gets them stoned, while Jenny is cool and relaxed. In addition to the seamless adjustment of making three of them mixed-race couples, the big change is transforming neurotic Amy and lovey-dovey Paul into a gay couple, now Jamie (Matt Doyle) and Paul (Etai Benson).
That update serves to expand the show’s ambivalence toward marriage by voicing the doubt familiar to many queer couples about adopting heteronormative rituals — especially in the early days of marriage equality — when Jamie tells his longtime cohabitant partner, “Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.” It also makes sense that Jamie would be Bobbie’s best friend, prompting a moment of awkward tenderness when she half-jokingly suggests they should tie the knot.
Doyle seizes ownership of the rapid-fire wedding-jitters song, “Getting Married Today,” in a hilarious whirlwind turn that leaves him — and conceivably, Jamie — drenched in sweat. It’s the revival’s standout comic showstopper, enhanced by ingenious staging from Elliott and Christie that has Jamie shrieking in terror every time the priest conducting the service (Daniels again) pops out of an increasingly unlikely place in the guys’ kitchen.
Elliott dials up the frantic, almost farcical business at regular intervals throughout the production, underscoring the escalating confusion in Bobbie’s head. The Alice in Wonderland theme is conveyed in the visual gag of her tiny apartment at first threatening to explode with the entire cast crammed in there, then seeming to engulf her as her birthday cake and silver helium balloons grow to giant proportions, later miniaturized so she can barely get through the door. The number 35 looms large everywhere Bobbie turns, from the balloons to street addresses to artworks, tormenting her just like her friends’ cacophonous refrain of “Bobbie, baby,” which here sounds ghostly, disembodied.
The celebratory “Side by Side by Side” becomes a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, with the actors shuffling tables and chairs, performing choreographer Liam Steel’s whimsical moves in couples, which leaves Bobbie on the outside, getting soused on bourbon. And the instrumental number, “Tick Tock,” is inventively staged as a nightmare in which Bobbie, asleep in her bed with dumb-hunk flight attendant Andy (Claybourne Elder), watches in a crescendo of alarm as multiplying versions of herself dash in and out of the room suggesting alternate paths for her future, motherhood being the most terrifying of them.
Andy is one of three casual boyfriends, along with gym bunny PJ (Bobby Conte) and nature lover Theo (Manu Narayan), who make a delightful trio, harmonizing on “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” in which their thoughts on Bobbie’s unattainability are refracted through her own self-doubts. Her haunting morning-after song with Andy, “Barcelona,” dilutes some of the snarky edge that’s present in the treatment of the character as originally written, April. Making Andy a soft-hearted himbo with rock-hard abs seems more acceptable in 2021 than the dim “stewardess” whose sentimental blather Bobby just wants to silence.
The one song that arguably doesn’t fit the adaptation so well is “Another Hundred People,” Sondheim’s double-edged salute to Manhattan as one of the most densely populated cities in the world but often one of the loneliest. Elliott again handles the physical staging with dazzling dexterity as the giant neon letters that spell out the show’s title spin around to double as subway cars, eventually falling away and reforming to read “NYC.”
But as originally performed by one of Bobby’s semi-regulars, Marta, the song progressed from wide-eyed awe to increasingly unsettled intensity as the singer contemplated the sheer volume of people descending on the city each day — hinting at the difficulty of making a real connection with any one of them. Here, it’s sung by PJ, and while Conte navigates his way around the tongue-twisting lyrics with confidence, the character is presented as an upbeat, gregarious type, with a muscular physique and a man bun, which pretty much neutralizes the song’s ineffable solitude and sadness.
The mixed feelings so intrinsic to much of Sondheim’s writing are better served in “Sorry-Grateful,” beautifully sung by Sieber, Fitzgerald and Terence Archie as Larry, the three husbands reflecting on the paradox of marriage as both restriction and reward.
Some audiences back in 1970 found Furth and Sondheim’s take on marriage a touch too acerbic and unforgiving, echoing the plays of Edward Albee. But Company has ripened over the decades to reflect a world in which questioning the balance in all types of relationships has become a more open part of the conversation. As Bobbie surveys the idiosyncrasies and compromises that keep her friends together for better or worse, it’s perhaps no wonder she’s scared.
The scariest of all, and the one whose bitterness finally jolts Bobbie into being honest with herself, is Joanne, magnificently played by Patti LuPone in an imperious star turn to be treasured. Older than the rest of the gang, including her handsome, determinedly devoted third husband Larry, Joanne wears her voluminous fur coat and jewels like a battle-scarred warrior. The scorn she pours out over vodka stingers in “The Ladies Who Lunch” for the Stepford wives, desperate to keep up with every cultural trend new and old, is directed with equal vehemence at herself.
As much as she casts a benevolent, quasi-maternal gaze on Bobbie and seems invested in the younger woman’s happiness, Joanne is a complicated survivor of the marital trenches; she has contempt for contentment. So in a show as deeply anchored in ambivalence as Company, who better than this fabulous, ferocious creature to snap Bobbie out of her inertia? This first major stage revival of a Sondheim work since his death may not be perfect, but damn it’s good.
Venue: Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York
Cast: Katrina Lenk, Patti LuPone, Matt Doyle, Christopher Fitzgerald, Christopher Sieber, Jennifer Simard, Terence Archie, Etai Benson, Bobby Conte, Nikki Renée Daniels, Claybourne Elder, Greg Hildreth, Manu Narayan, Rashidra Scott, Kathryn Allison, Britney Coleman, Jacob Dickey, Javier Ignacio, Anisha Nagarajan, Heath Saunders
Director: Marianne Elliott
Music and lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
Book: George Furth
Set and costume designer: Bunny Christie
Lighting designer: Neil Austin
Sound designer: Ian Dickinson for Autograph
Illusions: Chris Fisher
Music director and supervisor: Joel Fram
Orchestrations: David Cullen
Choreographer: Liam Steel
Executive producer: Tim Levy
Presented by Elliott & Harper Productions, The Shubert Organization, Catherine Schreiber, Nederlander Presentations, Crossroads Live, Annapurna Theatre, Hunter Arnold, No Guarantees, Jon B. Platt, Michael Watt, John Gore Organization, Tim Levy, Jujamcyn Theaters
