Company, Opera House, Kennedy Center, Washington, DC

 

Britney Coleman as Bobbie (center) and the North American Tour of Company. Photo credit: Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade.

Director Marianne Elliott’s “gender swapped” production of Company was in previews on Broadway in March 2020, scheduled for an official opening on the 90^th birthday of its composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, when the pandemic caused the closure of all theatres. Previews resumed in November 2021, just a few days before Sondheim’s death. The production was acclaimed, winning five 2022 Tony Awards, including Best Musical Revival and Best Director of a Musical. Sondheim had worked on (and approved of) Elliott’s production in London when it opened in 2018.

In truth, though, I would argue that this production, the national company of which is currently playing in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, is not, in fact, a revival, but a significant revision. It shares the score and most of the libretto with the original, but it is a total re-conception, updating the 1970 book by changing the gender of the main character (from the male Bobby to the female Bobbie), updating the language to include advances in technology (the landline telephone busy signals, so important in the original, ceased to be significant sometime in the 50 years between the original and the revision), and incorporating a more inclusive, multi-ethnic cast, as well as changing one of its couples to two gay men preparing for their wedding.

Company featured a libretto by George Furth, focused on about-to-be-35-year-old bachelor, Robert (Bobby), and five couples who are his friends, all of whom are determined that Robert should be married. We also meet three of his girlfriends. The five couples provide varied examples of marriage, but Robert is still trying to figure it out: when you’re married, just what do you get?

Company was different from most of the musicals of the 1950s and 1960s that had a through-line plot. Sometimes referred to as a “concept musical,” Company instead unified around a single character (Robert) and variations on the theme of marriage, with recurring images of a birthday celebration that may or may not take place. It was not universally acclaimed when it first appeared, but it brought Sondheim to prominence as the premiere American composer/lyricist of the last half of the 20^th century.

James Earl Jones II as Harry, Kathryn Allison as Sarah, Britney Coleman as Bobbie, and Judy McLane as Sarah in the North American Tour of Company. Photo credit: Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade.

In the revisionist Company, more is changed than just a few pronouns: Bobbie is now a woman and her and the couples’ circumstances are affected by 50+ years of societal change. Gender roles are reversed for one of the five couples, Jenny and David; this time the husband is the “square” who, when smoking pot with Bobbie and his own wife, protests that he is incapable of getting stoned while his behavior tells the opposite story. Nervous bride-to-be Amy becomes the neurotic man, Jamie, about to marry his long-term boyfriend, but noting that “just because we can [get married] doesn’t mean we should.” The other three couples are fairly unchanged: the outspokenly sardonic Joanne and her third husband, Larry; Sarah, perennially dieting, and Harry, an alcoholic, to whom Bobbie unwittingly gifts brownies and a bottle of whiskey; and Susan and Peter, happier than ever now that they are divorced and still living together.

Bobby’s three girlfriends, Marta, Kathy, and April, have been replaced by male counterparts: the worldly PJ, who sings about “Another Hundred People” arriving in Manhattan constantly and who has his own measure of how just uptight Bobbie is; Theo, who decides that New York isn’t for him, just as he and Bobbie realize that each was interested in the other “that way,” only to fail to act on it; and Andy, the not-too-bright flight attendant who may best be described as a kind of “himbo” – the male version of a “bimbo.” In the original, the three girlfriends sing “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” in the manner of the Andrews Sisters, now the three boyfriends sing somewhat different lyrics in a barbershop-style harmony.

The boyfriends: Tyler Hardwick as PJ, David Socolar as Theo, and Jacob Dickey as Andy, with Britney Coleman as Bobbie in the North American Tour of Company. Photo credit: Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade.

Thanks to Elliott’s sure-handed direction and the cast’s full commitment, this revisionist Company works. Bobbie, as a female turning 35, has the added dimension of focusing us on the clock imagery of the play, as marriage for her is connected not just to her psychology but also her biology.

Seeing Company on the wide Opera House stage gave me something of the same experience I wrote about after seeing tick, tick…Boom! earlier this year: a show too small for the space in which it is staged. Company’s set contains its own ”false proscenium,” a frame that takes up between two-thirds and three-fourths of the expansive stage, and in which all of the action is contained. Much of the staging involves cramming people (and action) into severely confined spaces, such as when Bobbie and the 13 other characters are crowded into the block representing her apartment: what better way to present the “crowdedness” of New York City? The Kennedy Center Opera House seats approximately twice as many people as the standard Broadway theatre, which gives you an idea of the difference in available space.

Even so, scene designer Bunny Christie (who won a Tony for her scene design and also designed the costumes) creates spaces that allow Elliott and the actors to soar: my favorite by far is the kitchen setting as Paul and Jamie, assisted by Bobbie, prepare for their wedding. As Jamie begs the audience to leave in his rapid-fire number because he is not “Getting Married Today,” the determined officiant/priest and other characters pop up through the various doors on the set, including the refrigerator and other appliances. Lighting designer Neil Austin helps keep us focused where we should be. Choreographer Liam Steel creates unexpected synchronized moves, including hand choreography.

The cast is superb, led by Britney Coleman as Bobbie. Coleman is winsome and inherently charming and likable, adeptly negotiating her way through extremely varied relationships with the married couples and her boyfriends. Coleman’s voice soars, seemingly without effort, especially as she performs one of the show’s most famous songs, “Being Alive.” I have seen and/or heard dozens of performances of that song and would absolutely put Coleman’s version at or near the top of the list.

Derrick Davis as Larry, Judy McLane as Joanne, and Britney Coleman as Bobbie in the North American Tour of Company. Photo credit: Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade.

Judy McLane, whom I remember seeing as Tanya in Mamma Mia! on Broadway about 2010, has graduated to one of the “grande dame” roles of musical theatre: Joanne, the often-married, older friend, who seems to have worked out a solid, if unconventional relationship with husband Larry, played with unwavering strength and patience by Derrick Davis. McLane clearly relishes her 11:00 number, “The Ladies Who Lunch,” including herself as one of the ladies she disdains.

Kathryn Allison as Sarah and James Earl Jones II (cousin of the “other” James Earl Jones) as Harry are entertaining as a couple whose indulgences may be at odds but who find their groove (practicing jiu jitsu moves) anyway. Jed Resnik as David, unrecognizably giddy while high and shocking himself, and wife Jenny, played by Emma Stratton, have established a marriage with different gender roles, but their underlying devotion to each other is readily apparent. Javier Ignacio as Peter and Marina Kondo as Sarah find themselves well-matched as a couple thriving while divorced. (Kondo does double-duty as the priest officiating for Jamie and Paul, using her booming soprano to great comic effect.) Jhardon Dishon Milton as Paul is a sane and stable counterbalance to Matt Rodin’s manic Jamie and, though Jamie sings that he is not “Getting Married Today,” when he chases after Paul, who has left in the rain without his umbrella, you know that somehow, they will make their marriage work. Rodin richly deserves the thunderous applause he earns in his show-stopping number.

Among the boyfriends, Tyler Hardwick as PJ is a great counterpoint to Bobbie, keenly attuned to the city. David Socolar as Theo is more mellow as he and Bobbie realize that they might have been “right” for each other at one point, but neither admitted it to the other at the time. Jacob Dickey as Andy manages to be appealing and innocently sexy as well as somewhat air-headed, even as he tells his rambling tale of a butterfly evolving from a cocoon.

The original cast album of Company was one of the first I ever purchased. It has always been one of my favorite Sondheim musicals, as well as one of my favorite musicals, period. I believe the original script still holds up, but only as a period piece, a snapshot of life in the early 1970s. It may be startling to realize that we are, today, as far from 1970 as 1970 was from Woodrow Wilson’s second term as president. Considering all that changed in the 54 years from 1916 to 1970, even more changed between 1970 and today. This revisionist Company is a musical for the 2020s.

Company continues at the Kennedy Center through March 31.