Company (Broadway) (2021)

I'll start by saying I love Company. I'm a little biased. I played violin in the pit of my college production of Company so I'm very familiar with it; it's one show-stopper after another. In retrospect, we were all a little young for Company. The protagonist is turning 35, anxious about aging and still being unmarried. The brilliance of the new production is that male Bobby becomes female Bobbie. Marianne Elliott astutely realized that in 2021 there is nothing so special about a 35-year old bachelor but there are interesting things to say about a 35-year old bachelorette. Tick-Tock takes on a new meaning with Bobbie's biological clock. It mostly works. Some of the characters' names have gone through gender changes. Some of the lyrics were changed a bit ("life" doesn't rhyme with "fella"). I think there are two big gender hurdles. The first is when Bobbie proposes to her gay friend Jamie, which is less convincing and comes off more like a joke than male Bobby seriously proposing to Amy. The bigger one is when you get to Bobbie's 11 o'clock number, Being Alive. In the original, the older, jaded, twice-divorced Joanne propositions Bobby. She says she'll take care of him and he responds, "But who will I take care of?" In the new version, Joanne instead offers her husband Larry. It doesn't quite work the same. She tells Bobbie to take care of Larry, and she responds "But who will take care of me?" Don't change the line! It's 2021. We've just spent two hours questioning marriage and gender roles. Bobbie is a liberated woman. If she desired to get married, it's certainly not to be taken care of like some damsel. The scene with Jenny and David demonstrates that wives do not need to be taken care of and indeed can be the ones who take care. Elliott swapped them, with now David the uptight spouse. It is Jenny that takes care of David, pushing him to not partake further in the marijuana he dislikes. 

Necessarily there are brand new arrangements of the songs for gender-swapped voices. Songs previously sung by men are now sung by women and vice versa. I am not really a fan of the barbershop trio-style You Could Drive a Person Crazy. But I love the male Another Hundred People and Getting Married Today. It's now a gay marriage and in perhaps the best, most raucous scene. There are lots of surprises in the kitchen set piece with the priest popping out of all sorts of unexpected places. There isn't much dance, per se, but the blocking is highly choreographed. There are a lot of swiping and selfie motions; it kind of gets a smirk the first time in Bobbie's cramped apartment. But I like the musical chairs/tables bit in Side by Side, which is very precise. I also thought that Company and Side by Side were a little slow, maybe because of the simultaneous choreography.

The set design is stellar. It's like Alice in Wonderland with the big rooms and small rooms and rabbit holes. I love the interchanging rooms and hallways that attach to each other. There are hidden 35s everywhere.  I'll say again the kitchen secrets are hilarious. I love that the band sits above the sets and are in full view. I did have an issue with the neon lighting, which was kind of distracting. It also casts bad shadows in the jiu-jitsu scene. The big neon "COMPANY" letters in Another Hundred People was unexpected but I think works, and appropriately recognizes the song as New York's solo.

Katrina Lenk is on stage nearly the whole show. Even when she's not singing, she is there reacting non-stop.  She is actually kind of old to be playing 35-year old Bobbie, as she is approaching 50 (and fittingly supposedly unmarried), not that you could tell from the mezzanine. She is beautiful dressed in a solid red jumpsuit, contrasted with the blues of the set. Her red bra and panties also contrasts Andy's blue briefs. She is a great actor and a capable singer but I found her solos to be a bit breathy. Matt Doyle as Jamie stood out for me. And Patti Lupone is the diva that steals the show whenever she's on stage, even just swinging her legs from atop a high barstool. Her Ladies Who Lunch is very different from Elaine Stritch's but her style works. She enunciates all the consonants at the end of every lyric.

Overall it's very entertaining. It's way funnier from the audience than from the pit. The vignettes are all great. And the songs are some of Sondheim's most hummable. Very happy we got to see this on a Thursday, after they canceled two performances on Sunday due to non-COVID illness, supposedly Patti Lupone had rotavirus. Broadway generally seems to have lowered the non-COVID sickness threshold for cancellation. So much for the show must go on. But glad ours did.