COMPANY
(Gender Reversal Version)
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by George Furth
Directed by Marianne Elliott
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
The revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s trailblazing 1970 musical Company, re-imagined as a gender-reversal update by director Marianne Elliott, is very much an eye-of-the-beholder experience and you should take the word of absolutely no one, including me, as to how it might hit you. Perhaps least of all me, because my reaction was all over the place.
In part, this is because I had decent and mostly lovely student-becomes-friend relationship with Steve Sondheim that was intermittent but spanned decades; and his recent, sudden passing hit me in obvious ways I might have expected and associative ways I didn’t…and in part because at the tender age of 16, I saw the original production of Company with most of the original cast, twice. (I say most because Dean Jones, as you know, left early, but I did see his immediate replacement, Larry Kert; and later, on purpose, went to see Kert’s standby, John Cunningham, my second favorite Bobby, who otherwise played Peter.) And I subsequently saw some memory-reinforcing video footage of the national tour (starring George Chakiris), which was a replication of the Broadway staging; and in 1972, very shortly after the Broadway production closed, I saw the Music Fair tour which was not a replication, but very much in the spirit and sensibility of the original (starring that other Greek George, Maharis, my favorite Bobby,, and Vivian Blaine, who had replaced as Joanne on Broadway). Seminal, mind-bending stuff, right at the age when you’re an influence sponge. I remember most of Hal Prince’s direction down to the nuance.
And my reaction is fragmented and hard to assess coherently, because there’s so much about this new production of Company that’s interesting and fascinating through the filter of all that.
As I’ve always maintained, any revival of a musical that seeks to reinvestigate is a conversation with the original production (even if the new creative team never saw the original production); the very act of RE-investigating suggests conscious intent to bring out things that were not in relief the first time. And certainly, turning bachelor Bobby of 1970 into bachelorette Bobbie of 2021 is among the most extreme reactions.
Here’s a brief, incomplete hit-list of the things done to accommodate the notion, in no particular order: the three singles who Bobbie dates are of course men (Manu Narayan, Claybourne Elder, Bobby Conte); of the couples she “dates,” David and Jenny (Christopher Fitzgerald and Nikki Renée Daniels), in the pot smoking scene, aren’t gender-reversed, but dialogue-reversed; betrothed couple Paul and Amy have been turned into the gay Paul and Jamie (Etai Benson and Matt Doyle). “Tick Tock” is not a solo dance number representing a sexual encounter, but a time-loop nightmare about the countdown of Bobbi’s biological clock. And there are of course dialogue and lyric tweaks and updates, some subtle, some blatant.
A path that seems not to have been taken, however, except for “Tick Tock,” which is a non-verbal sequence, is one that veers away from the beat-for-beat progression of the late George Furth’s original libretto, which is very much a thing of its time, and which, one could argue, was dated almost immediately after it opened, as increasingly sophisticated three-camera sitcoms took over the reins of humorously looking at modern relationships. Which means the gender-reversal never truly gets to break free; Company is thus less reinvented than reconfigured, and so only in a passage here or a passage there does it get to own its renovation.
Subsequently, while the production itself is as coherent, smooth, musical, well-performed, well-staged, well-designed and inventive as it can be…the update itself—the thing of which everything else is in support—is uneven, and less militantly feminist than it means to be, with some of the revised moments working surprisingly well and others a stretch, if not downright labored.
And Bobbie is still the underwritten problem-lead; very hard to play because very hard to fill. The songs provide the character with dynamic energy because the richness and propulsion of the music, and the ability of the lyrics to find the exploitable passion in a cipher by taking more POV refuge in subjects than subtexts (each song is a vigorous thesis on a topic, but none of them actually tell you who Bobby is), provides an inner life an actor doesn’t have to verbalize or justify; but the spoken role is still that of an observing emcee with no apparent, background career or bio: she sets things up, she navigates factions, she editorializes a bit and she avoids personal exposure. And that’s among the reasons why you’ll hear divided opinions about how Katrina Lenk plays her. Because she faces the same challenges of every Bobby (and the West End Bobbie) who came before her.
In fact, to sortakinda come full circle, she reminded me of George Maharis. The thing I loved about watching him as Bobby is that he made you forget how underwritten the role is. He had a natural theatrical edge (he was the original menacing Jerry in Albee’s The Zoo Story) combined with the leading man charisma that made him a TV star, and he was able to fill Bobby on sheer persona. And as I write about it, I realize that such may well be the key to Bobby, the thing that makes him so attractive to all the other characters: an inexplicable but insistent magnetism that comes with the actor.
Or in this case the actress, for Ms Lenk has it…but it proves of much less benefit to her when the updates and gender-reversals ring false. Because in the context of Company, Bobbi’s/Bobby’s magnetism is the one true thing s/he has. It’s both his/her shield and his/her weapon keeping commitment at bay, while still being a lure. And when the updates and reversals ring false, the magnetism rings false. And it’s in those moments where the new approach tries to justify itself, that I found myself very aware of an actress at work; exposed, on a high-wire and doing whatever she could to bring authenticity to the inauthentic.
But as I say…there’s much to be impressed with, in spite of that. And this reworking isn’t just a revival novelty; it adds a new approach to the repertoire. Doesn’t happen often; not such a bad endgame, for all the obvious reasons. Add ‘em up, Bobbie. Get ‘em while they’re young, Eva. See and decide for yourself.