In comes mixed "Company"

On November 9, I saw the current Broadway revival of "Company" on Broadway. I withheld comment on the blog because I knew I'd have to write a more in-depth analysis as the second paper for my musical theatre class. Below, I'm reprinting that analysis, slightly revised, which is pretty much a straightforward review. To the right is my mock-up for an improved poster for the revival (as I promised I would do after my Apple Tree mock-up). Enjoy:


John Doyle’s latest actor-musician revival to hit Broadway, of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 musical Company, works. It works very hard. Whether or not it works well is a different question with no cut-and-dry answer.

Though John Doyle’s directorial style of choice, which utilizes the actors within a musical as the show’s orchestra, originally arose as a financial necessity, this concept was subsequently put to use as a way to shed new light on works of musical theatre that Doyle felt were worth revisiting.

His production of Sondheim’s masterpiece Sweeney Todd last season using the same technique was widely hailed by critics. This new production of Company cannot escape comparison with Sweeney, a juxtaposition which sheds light on Company’s weaknesses, though there are also some considerable assets to be considered.

Company, unlike Sweeney Todd, is most certainly a musical of its time. Though Sweeney has been at a remove from the time period in which it was set – London during the industrial revolution – since its first Broadway production in 1979, Company was created in 1970 as a comment on the current state of things, focusing on a group of Manhattan urbanites, and, more specifically, the relationships between a group of married friends and their bachelor friend Bobby.

Much like Rent will most likely lose its relevance over time as a comment on the AIDS epidemic and the 1990s over time, Company has lost something over the years, perhaps a reason for the limited success of other recent revivals of the show, like those at Donmar Warehouse in London and at Roundabout Theatre Company on Broadway, both in the mid-1990s.

While the show remains funny enough, its jokes land more for their kitschy remove from relevance than for their genuine punchiness. A scene about experimentation with pot between the characters of David, Jenny, and Bobby, which is by all means funny, doesn’t have the same impact that it must have had during the musical’s original 1970 run. Various other period references, as to phone answering services in “Another Hundred People,” leave the show firmly rooted in the past.

Though surely its themes of relationships and connectedness transcend its time period, an attempt to transport the show to a sort of ambiguously timeless setting through the use of barebones black costumes by Ann Hould-Ward are marred by the show’s book. Besides for being dated, the show is also loosely structured, with little in the way of conventional plot, fully fleshed-out characters replaced by stereotypical glimpses at 1970s urbanites.

The show’s drawbacks seem almost insurmountable, and surely the piece is so often revived because of the strength of its score rather than the contributions of George Furth, which serve merely as a frothy mortar for Sondheim’s often incisive musical comments on society.

Songs like “Ladies Who Lunch,” with its cutting criticism of society dames “clutching their copies of Life just to keep in touch,” as well as “Sorry Grateful,” “Another Hundred People,” and the most famous song of the score, “Being Alive,” are like little nuggets of Broadway gold. With effective lyrics that seem effortless in their quick wit and haunting and engaging melodies, it’s hard not to at least relish the chance to hear these songs presented on the Broadway stage, and at the very least I was thrilled to witness this production in order to hear these songs that I’ve grown to love. Energetic songs like “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” (pictured at left), “Side by Side by Side,” and “What Would We Do Without You?” make this one of Sondheim’s most varied and likeable scores, with plenty of variation between more subdued songs of yearning or regret, and angrier or more lively ones.

Conceptually, I enjoyed the use of pared-down orchestrations in last season’s production of Sweeney Todd much more so than in Company. Sarah Travis, the musical director of that production did wonderful work to the end of making the show seem frighteningly claustrophobic, strains of melody acting like haunting shimmers of light reflected and refracted by Sweeney’s razor.

Though Sweeney is better known than Company for the lushness of its sound, I thought that overall the reduction of its orchestrations was more successful. The bold, brassy sounds of Company with which I had become so familiar from repeated listens to the original cast album were sorely missed, the appropriately busy feeling of the music replaced by a duller, more string-influenced sound that seemed inappropriate within the hustle and bustle of the show’s direction.

In addition, the actor-musicians left much to be desired in comparison to those of Sweeney. Where Company got its musical concept right was in the decision to use orchestral pairings to set the various couplings of characters apart from the central character of Bobby, who restrains from joining the band until his triumphant final song, “Being Alive.” It was in the fleshing out of the relationships between characters (Johanna and Anthony as a couple of young string-playing lovers, Sweeney’s deliberate guitar like a conspiratorial whisper behind the tense duet of “Not While I’m Around” between Mrs. Lovett and Tobias) that I thought Sweeney was most successful in utilizing this construct, and this felt less affecting within the cacophonous company behind Company, with orchestrations and musical supervision provided by Mary-Mitchell Campbell this time around.

On the positive side, there are several winning elements to the credit of this production of Company. Most notable are the fine leading performance of Raul Esparza as the prolonged bachelor Bobby and some winning contributions on the part of the design team and director Doyle.

Like a diamond in the rough amongst an otherwise satisfactory if mostly unimpressionable cast, Raul Esparza (pictured at right) stands out as a charismatic and nuanced Bobby. He is able to keep the audience firmly on his side and in the palm of his hand while remaining at a measured distance from the company of the couples that he keeps at hand for dinner parties and other social functions.

My biggest disappointment in the cast was in Barbara Walsh’s one-note portrayal of Joanne. Standing in the daunting shoes of Elaine Stritch, who originated her role, Walsh (pictured at left) seems overwhelmed by the task of making her mark, and, in doing so, ends up just another voice in the crowd, failing even to land her biggest number, “The Ladies Who Lunch.”

Jane Pfitsch, who played Amy on the night I saw the show, on the other hand, stopped the show with her brilliant and manic performance of “Getting Married Today,” and Angel Desai was fine as Marta in her spirited rendition of “Another Hundred People,” oddly split into segments by book writer George Furth, which detracted from the full impact of the song’s build.

The design of the show and some of the elements of its staging were the most thrilling parts for me. Manhattan, the general setting of the show, can seem a cold and unforgiving place, and David Gallo’s set is brilliantly simplistic in its delivery of this impression. The bulk of the action takes place on a wood-paneled diamond set at center stage. Upstage left on this main platform stands a prominent white column atop a circular radiator, serving as a sort of arguably phallic presence looming over the proceedings.

Surrounding this main playing area is a field of black reflective marble, spare like the void of the city at night and capturing the flashes of light from the action on the main platform. At a remove from the central wooden playing are two matte black diamonds, one on either side of the stage, where Bobby can stand at a remove when necessary, as when he is encouraged by his male friends in “Have I Got a Girl For You.”

Behind all this sit a number of ice cube-like platforms serving as a sort of orchestra pit to which the musicians retreat when not involved in the proceedings. Reflected in the black of the stage floor, the cubes almost seem to take on the quality of half empty (or half full) glasses.

The sets work well with Doyle’s directorial style, allowing for divisions to be set between the characters. Sending actors in various processions around the outer edges of the center diamond, Doyle’s production pulses with an underlying collective energy much like that of the rhythms of a New York City street; his design team has most certainly aided in putting this across.

David Gallo's impressive minimalist set.

Another inventive choice in this production was the use of a single spotlight onstage by lighting designer Thomas Hase to serve as a symbolic birthday candle for Bobby. Serving as a beacon of isolation early in the piece, it is with the use of this device in the final birthday scene that Doyle strikes at the heart of the piece. After joining in on the collective orchestra of the production in the song “Being Alive,” the lights onstage fade to only that of the candle and an atmospheric blue on the looming pillar upstage. Bringing the show to a thrilling close, the lights fade to black just as Bobby steps in a new direction into the flickering spotlight and blows out his candle.

Though some of the urgency of the piece may have been lost over time and his assembled cast may not be ideal, Doyle makes an attempt to enliven and enrich Company through this current production. It’s possible to pinpoint successes and failures throughout this anticipated revival, which had the daunting challenge of living up to the success of Sweeney Todd. In the end, however, it was a more exhilarating experience, for me at least, to witness a revival that makes a daring attempt to reinvigorate a troubled show with mixed success than a cookie-cutter production of a show that makes little attempt to present anything new as food for thought for its audience. This may be a mixed Company, but what’s a party without its oddballs and mishaps?