Coming out of the 1960s, Broadway was emerging from the Golden Age of classic musical theatre and evolving into the new decade experimenting with a variety of new and different styles. Easing away from big, frothy shows with catchy production numbers and conventional storytelling, creators started delving into more common experiences and styles of exposition, often featuring darker, grittier, sensual, and more realistic themes. (Watch season 2 of Schmigadoon for details.) Turning this corner with the new breed of playwrights was an up and coming composer, Stephen Sondheim, who had had huge mainstream success as a lyricist for two of the biggest productions of the last decade, West Side Story with Maestro Leonard Bernstein, and when banned from writing the entire score for Gypsy by its demanding star Ethel Merman, who insisted Jule Styne write her the big numbers she desired with Sondheim’s words (it was the obviously right decision). After a mild success with his first solo show, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, he headlined a string of flops that Broadway wasn’t ready for. But in his first collaboration with esteemed director Harold Prince, they produced a show that helped revolutionize the movement into modern musical theater, Company.
Sondheim and book writer George Furth ignored all the conventional rules and created one of the first “theme musicals”. Built around a central character, Bobby, a happy bachelor who on his 35th birthday is surrounded by all his closest friends—all married—and, through a series of nonlinear vignettes, we see
Bobby’s relationship with all these “happily married” couples as they press, through “concern”, why he remains single. The original cast was a powerhouse of established stars (frequent Disney movie hero Dean Jones as Bobby, Broadway legend Elaine Stritch as his older, acerbic friend, Joanne) and future stars of all media, including Charles Kimbrough, Barbara Barrie, Beth Howland, and Donna McKechnie. It swept the 1971 Tony Awards with a then record 14 nomination and wins for Best Musical, Score, Book, Lyrics, Direction, and Scenic Design.
In the ensuing years, there have been three Broadway revivals—a fairly straightforward 1995 production starring Boyd Gaines as Bobby, a 2006 revival starring Raul Esparza, most famous for the at-the-time trendy use of the cast themselves providing the orchestral accompaniment (it worked surprisingly well with pioneer 1998 Cabaret revival, where they talk about the Kit Kat girls being the band, it was just bizarre in most other misguided attempts, which also included the infamous Sweeney Todd in a mental institution starring Patti LuPone on tuba).
Then in 2018, a London revival under the meticulous direction of Marianne Elliott broke a new, more logical barrier—recentering the story around a woman. Sondheim aided Elliott in adapting the deceased Furth’s book, and it was surprising what the sexual reversals did for many characters besides the newly conceived bachelorette Bobbie. This production transferred to Broadway and was scheduled to open on Sondheim’s 90th birthday, March 22, 2020, but after nine previews closed with the rest of the industry when Covid hit town. Reopening December of 2021, Sondheim gave an interview five days before his death praising Elliott’s gender switch, because theatre, unlike other media, can reinvent its works over and over as times and social perspectives evolve. This production also dominated the Tonys winning for Best Musical Revival, Elliott for Best Director, Patti LuPone as Joanne for Best Featured Actress, Matt Doyle in the also gender-flipped role of Jamie (now a gay couple, slaying “Getting Married Today”) for Best Featured Actor, and Best Scenic Design.
It is this revolutionary reinvented incarnation of the musical, also under Elliott’s inspired direction and featuring Bunny Christie’s Tony Award Winning scenic designs, that is playing the Opera House at the Kennedy Center for the remainder of the month. And it is time to send your old Company home and open your doors to a fresh new evening with your lifelong friends.
Elliott has worked magic on what had become, despite what Sondheim devotees say, an incredibly dated book. What was groundbreaking in 1970 has become routine to passé—stereotypical even—25 years later. Furth’s structure bookends the show with Bobby’s friends gathering for his 35th birthday. All the scenes in between are a series of vignettes of him reflecting on his relationships with each of the “concerned” couples, as well as the three girls he’s juggling on the side they know little about. All this self-exploration on his 35th birthday adds to his confusion over his relationship status and any motivation to change it. Furth’s innovation in pre-Stepford 1970 was that these “perfect” couples that all want to see Bobby married and “happy” like them are, upon getting to know them better, increasingly imperfect. Furth and Sondheim expose these five couples with all their rawness, flaws, complexities, and insecurities intact and on full musical display. We watch them disagree, argue, criticize, and even betray their better halves as they figure out the boundaries and direction of their own marriages. Are they so insistent on Bobby sharing what they have because they envy his carefree lifestyle and need him to be as unhappy to miserable as they are?
Elliott’s revised show adds some depth to the issues by the gender switch. Bobby has always come across as a happy-go-lucky playboy nearing the end of his charming stage who needs to examine his fear of commitment and reevaluate his life choices. Why won’t he settle down with one of these perfectly nice girls and be like all his friends? Bobbie, as a woman, comes across stronger, more discriminating, unwilling to settle for men who don’t meet all her needs. She seems to see through her friends’ ruses easier than her male counterpart, and is content to be her own woman. There is also, as many women friends have told me over the years, something traumatic that effects women as they approach 35. We men reserve our aging anxieties for the decade turnovers.
The show has traditionally been a star vehicle for the central character plus many of the supporting friends. Former Bobbys have included, besides Disney star Jones and Tony winner Esparza, pop singer Larry Kert, Academy Award winner George Chakiris, TV star and Tony winner Boyd Gaines, West End and Dr. Who/Torchwood star John Barrowman, and the ubiquitous Neil Patrick Harris. Even the Broadway gender flip starred Katrina Lenk fresh off her 2019 Tony winning performance in The Band’s Visit. But despite her lack of any star-making turns beforehand, Britney Coleman as Bobbie is a delight. Engaging, breezy, and strong enough to navigate her own way through life without bending to her “dearest friends’ ” expectations, her path is a more determined choice. As an actor, she conforms to her role in each of the three’s-a-crowd relationships she has with each couple, as well as each of her part-time boyfriends, giving each the part of her that they like, and reserving the rest for herself. She ascends through the story gaining strength and momentum and peaks where she should with the ovation-bait finale of the show, Sondheim’s revered “Being Alive”. And again, from a woman’s perspective, the song takes a different meaning. Before, it seemed Bobby approached the idea of settling down more from a “why not?” point of view. Coleman’s Bobbie spends the show in our presence asking “why?” and comes up with a more introspective answer.
The rest of the cast is a perfectly balanced ensemble (Kathryn Allison and James Earl Jones II as ever-dieting Sarah & recovering alcoholic Harry, the couple who, through therapy, have learned how to—minimally—tolerate each other’s idiosyncrasies; Marina Kondo and Javier Ignacio as Susan & Peter, the “perfect” couple quietly preparing for divorce; Emma Stratton and Jed Resnick as Jenny & David, an uptight preppy couple who loosen up and begin to grill Bobby under the influence of marijuana (another dated plot point that was urban edgy in 1970, but perfectly legal and commonplace in DC today); Judy McLane and Derrick Davis as the jaded Joanne and her third younger token husband Larry; and Matt Rodin and Jhardon DiShon Milton as gay newlyweds Jaime—formerly Amy—& Paul), each perfectly matched with their stage spouse and perfectly matched to their newly redefined characters. The boyfriends, Jacob Dickey as hot flight attendant Andy (formerly April), Tyler Hardwick as avowed urbanite PJ (formerly Marta), and David Socolar as Theo (formerly Kathy), the small town transplant who wanted to get married and is now moving away to marry another girl, are all strong and different, each representing one third of Bobbie’s perfect man—Andy the physical beauty, PJ the confident spirit, and Theo the gentle heart to settle down with.
But within this display of peak balance, there are some who manage to stand out in stellar moments with Coleman. The sweet, handsome, and charming Dickey, who makes the gender-flip work to his advantage as the pretty but none-too-bright flight attendant Andy, makes the best of every minute of his stage time. The ditzy woman as April was written is today an insulting stereotype to be avoided. But it’s still OK to poke fun at men, and the dim but hunky himbo Andy is funny, likeable, and unashamedly hot. He owns his extended story in the second act (and he owns the bulk of it in nothing but a pair of TWA-blue speedo briefs, which also comes across somehow as less sexist than parading a ditzy stewardess around in bra and panties). Making Andy the male innocent also makes the dynamics between the two a little more diffuse and the balance they struggle to find a little more interesting to follow.
Rodin benefits most from the gender swap as now gay fiancé Jamie who has cold feet, and his case of wedding day jitters stops the show. The scatterbrained woman that was Amy who flakes out on her own wedding day is another archtype that hasn’t age well. Elliott’s decision to try the character as a monogamy-averse gay man in this day of open relationships being the norm is inspired and gives Jamie a completely fresh take that couldn’t be more 2020s. Rodin runs with the opportunity and is unabashedly the comic highlight of the evening, nailing Sondheim’s tour de force of the score, the machinegun-fire, full-on panic attack wrapped in a song, “Getting Married Today”, as he confesses to best person Bobbie his intent to be a runaway groom. Beth Howland became a star singing it. Artists as varied as Julie Andrews to Madeline Kahn to Carol Burnett have performed it to their own comic advantages (Burnett is the expected manic genius, Kahn her standard neurotic mess, and Andrews just nails it with the most precise Eliza Doolittle diction that it’s amazing). Doyle won the Tony, and his Olivier Award winning predecessor in London who originated the role as Jamie was this year’s toast of the TV Awards Circuit, Jonathan Bennett of megahits Bridgerton and Fellow Travelers. Rodin has huge shoes to fill and wears them with the ease of Cinderella (Cinder-fella?). Britney Coleman is the show’s undisputed star, but Matt Rodin is the performance you’ll be talking about after.
But if Rodin has huge shoes to fill, Judy McLane has an impossible pair to wear. Toe crushing, arch destroying, heel blistering impossible. The closest of the friends Bobbie has to a costar is the jaded, affluent, shocking-just-to-be-shocking Joanne, pro-marriage but from a more disposable perspective, being on her third trophy husband. Broadway royalty Elaine Stitch defined and placed her stamp on the role, and has made a small cottage industry out of her 11:00 number “The Ladies Who Lunch” (brace yourself for the upcoming barrage of social media memes featuring Stritch screaming the song’s finale “Everybody RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE” in the coming weeks for Easter). And for the last fifteen years, no one in any major revival on either side of the Atlantic has played her except reigning Broadway grande dame Patti LuPone, tearing down the house nightly (in what she claims is her retirement form the stage, after destroying her Equity card?). Here Judy McLane, as strong as she is—and that’s exceptionally strong—suffers from the gargantuan weight of the expectations set by her iconic predecessors (other major Joanne’s have included minor Broadway divas Deborah Monk and Barbara Walsh, and international movie star Lynn Redgrave). Mind you, McLane is wonderful, a strong actress who gets the sarcastic humor, a powerful vocalist. She does everything right. She drops all the acidic one-liners effortlessly. She wraps her voice tightly around the cynical showcase song, which lays perfectly in her belt. Let me make it clear, she does everything the material and Elliott’s multi-layered direction calls for her to do, and she adds her own unique contributions, to succeed on every front. She unfortunately just doesn’t have the heavyweight offstage persona to bring onstage with her that has become associated with the role. We’ve been spoiled. We know Stritch and LuPone, and they are Joanne. McLane may very well be too, we just don’t own the benefit of that knowledge going in. Thus, “The Ladies Who Lunch”, always considered with little doubt the showstopper of the score, may not really be all that. Turns out the success of the number may be due less to Sondheim’s dead-on viciously biting writing than to the well-chosen legendary actresses who have delivered it gift-wrapped for him. What McLane does have going for her is the fact that without all that heavy luggage to cart on stage, she functions throughout the show as the Samantha to Coleman’s Carrie, helping her to navigate through her Sex in the City misadventures. Another new twist that the old dynamics didn’t have and didn’t lend itself to a male Bobby. So this smart production peaks with Coleman and Dickey’s extended one night stand, and the showstopper is inarguably Rodin’s deliciously manic “Getting Married Today”, and that’s alright. It’s just another thing that sets this new version apart from its previous incarnations as effective, fresh, and revitalized from what is expected by the dinosaurs who think they know Company.
This production trusts the material and there are no extravagant technical aspects showing off and overshadowing Elliott’s vision. Neil Austin’s lights and Bunny Christie’s costumes do their jobs, and Christie’s Tony-winning set design is just a clever series of interlocking cubes that lay out different apartments and, in the Andy sequence, the remainder of Bobbie’s apartment—subtly and cleverly designated apartment 35 on the door—a typical cramped Manhattan living room, huge bedroom play space. Nothing impressive, but in a way that’s refreshing after seeing contemporary tour after tour blow us away with high tech elements to mask the show’s imperfections with effects that can never be replicated on smaller stages to fill creative voids.
The best birthday gift Bobbie could ask for is one that keeps giving the entire evening—Marianne Elliott’s thought-provoking and inspired fresh take on the over 50-year-old, dated material and her spot-on ability to reinterpret it for us with a present day sensibility. In addition to brilliantly updating all the sexual politics for a new age, her innovative staging gives new life and new momentum to the scenes, camouflaging to erasing the creaky vignette structure of the original script. Her notable contributions include a reconception of “Another Hundred People” where PJ leads us through the number and scenes amidst a set comprised of just the giant letters of the title, populated by the cast, reconfiguring and changing as we go throughout the city (subtly highlighting the letters N, Y, and C). Or her hilarious employment of Kondo as an overly-intrusive officiant cutting in and out of Rodin’s big wedding day breakdown with the deteriorating gay Jamie having none of it. But her big success is the one night stand, which goes from seduction to passion to awkwardness, with a powerful dream to nightmare wherein Bobbie envisions what life with Andy would look like. Elliott fleshes it out using the full company in faux Bobbie and Andy drag going through the repetitive motions a la Groundhog Day once passion has faded, as mundane as putting the toilet seat down every few measures. This sequence is also the group effort success of the show, where Austin’s best lighting and Christie’s best costume designs along with what I am assuming Chris Fisher is credited for as “illusions”, and David Cullen’s expanded “Tick Tock” arrangements that all enhance and elevate Elliott’s concept to the most captivating and realistic segment of the show. Turns out Elliott’s award-worthy gift is to make much-needed major alterations to a show look like no more than a neat little series of nips and tucks. Something for the new audiences to embrace, without losing the old loyal fans.
At the end of Bobbie’s transformational birthday journey, we get the sense from Coleman and Elliott that she’ll be just fine. As will her friends, each surviving in their own controlled environments as they navigate their own life adventures in today’s New York. It’s rare to see a revival toy with the material so much, definitely improving it, without destroying the heart that made it worthy of reviving to begin with. But Marianne Elliott, with the luxury of having had the original creator alive to guide and give her his blessing, finds that perfect middle ground to make modern day sense of a very structurally and thematically dated piece. Be one of another hundred people getting off of the train to the Kennedy Center in the next two weeks before the party’s over.
And think of me when, as a musical theatre fan, your social media is overrun with Elaine Stritch memes as the show closes Easter weekend. #EverybodyRIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes with one intermission
Company currently plays through March 31, 2024, at the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street NW, Washington DC 20566. For tickets, call the box office at 202.467.4600 or purchase online