Interview: Logan Vaden of COMPANY at THE GARDEN THEATRE

On April 10th at the MATCH facility in Midtown Houston, THE GARDEN THEATRE will open a special production of Stephen Sondheim’s COMPANY. It will run through April 19th. Artistic director Logan Vaden will play the lead character, Bobby. In an ironic twist, the show is about Bobby turning 35, and when this opens, Logan will be turning 35. In addition to that, his company, THE GARDEN THEATRE, will be celebrating five years! BROADWAY WORLD writer Brett Cullum got a chance to talk to Logan about being alive at thirty-five.  

Brett Cullum: Yeah! Okay, now, let's talk about the elephant in the room. 35 sounded old, probably, when this piece was written, but it's really not that old anymore. I think of it as the age that you can officially run for president (most don’t until they are 80 and above!), and it has this mythical resonance of being a full-on adult, but what does that birthday mean to you? Why is 35 so significant?

Logan Vaden: You mentioned old, and I don't feel old! I feel like high school was yesterday. There are certain parts of the show that are a little bit more physical that make me feel old, like falling on the ground, or in the karate scene, and that stuff. I wake up the next day, and I'm like, oh my god, my hips! This is awful. But… but 35? I feel like I've lived a life, you know? Like, the GARDEN has been around for five years, but before that, I produced and directed other theater, and I've been engaged multiple times, and …

Brett Cullum: Wait. HOLD THE PHONE! Have you been engaged multiple times?

Logan Vaden: Oh, yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, of course!

Brett Cullum: We should make this whole interview about that and that alone! No, no, no. I am kidding. Carry on. I am beginning to know why you are perfectly cast as Bobby! 

Logan Vaden: You know, there's just been so much that I've done that feels like… not to be morbid, but if I were suddenly gone from this plane tomorrow, I think people would say, “Well, he did a lot!” And that feels nice and lovely, and I feel like I have surrounded myself with great people throughout the years, some of them still here, some of them not. Relationships drift apart, but that's kind of what the show is about. And so I get to bring all of that to the show and be age-appropriate. I've been lucky enough to have played so many of my dream roles, and Bobby was kind of the one when I was 20 to 25. I was like, “Oh, eventually, like, when I'm older, maybe, hopefully,” but I think I knew back then, I can't do this right now. Some community theater down the street could have been doing it, and maybe I could have sung it back then! II don't think it would have been good, because I needed to experience all of this to play this role.

Brett Cullum: It's so interesting, because it is. It's 35, and it's literally there in the script, and you're doing that right when you turn 35, so that is perfect timing and perfect casting. But why COMPANY now for the Garden Theater?

Logan Vaden: COMPANY was always an idea since year one, and I think I was just bored one day, and was looking at calendars, and was like, for the next few years, what day of the week is my birthday going to fall on? And I was looking through the calendar, and I saw that my 35th fell on a Saturday. And I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to do COMPANY and open that weekend of my birthday? That's the jumping-off point of how we got here. Also, INTO THE WOODS was our very first full production back in October of 2021. And we've also done ASSASSINS, and when we opened ASSASSINS, the reception was really warm, as was the case with our production of INTO THE WOODS, and Sondheim is my go-to. I feel like I want to be inspired; I will put on PBS's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, INTO THE WOODS, PASSION, or all of the ones that have been recorded, and because I feel such a bond to his material, we decided during ASSASSINS that we're going to make our way through all of Sondheim's, licensable work. So you will be seeing a Sondheim show from the GARDEN at least once a year for the foreseeable future. COMPANY is about anniversaries and birthdays. It's also our 5-year anniversary. The day that we start tech will be our official 5-year anniversary from our first opening night of our first concert, which was in April of 2021. So, not only is it my birthday, it's also the theater's birthday, and it just felt very appropriate to wrap all of these celebrations up in this show about celebrating life, the passage of time, relationships, and moments, and all that jazz.

Brett Cullum: Well, I'm excited because I have this policy, you can never have enough Sondheim. There's never too much, so I'm glad that you're committed to doing all of his licensable work. I was looking through the cast and noticed a slight twist in one of the roles. Have you updated Amy's role? Tell me a little bit about that.

Logan Vaden: Amy is being played by Daniel Edwards, who, if you've ever seen a show or a musical with us, you've probably seen Daniel on stage before, playing male-presenting characters. What we're doing with Amy is we are making Amy a non-binary character, still the name Amy, none of the words have changed, nothing… nothing has changed with the script. They're just a non-binary character now, and you know Amy's “Not Getting Married Today.” The super-fast, like, very anxious, over-the-top, like, I do not want to get married, there are all these reasons that I don't want to get married, and we thought, what an interesting twist of them being non-binary, would be, because I can imagine that a non-binary person getting married, that probably is really stressful. That's somewhat new to our society, and to put yourself on display in front of 100, 200 people in your own fashion, in your own way, is a little stressful. There's probably family there who doesn't agree with it, and there's probably friends asking really inappropriate questions on top of all of that. There are a lot of layers to it that can add to the anxiety, I think. And so we've decided to kind of make that approach. 

We are also doing the show in 2026, which means the show's setting. Again, not changing the words at all, or anything like that, but in 2026, these people exist. I mean, they've always existed, but we want to make sure that they're included in this story, because if we are telling this in 2026, it's not just about straight Bobby and his straight friends. There's no way that there wouldn't be some level of queerness or something in 2026 if you have that many people in your life who are all from different corners. It just felt appropriate.

Brett Cullum: Yes. Well, I'm gonna be very interested to see your take on it. I've always enjoyed THE GARDEN THEATRE. It's one of my favorite theater companies. Your musical work and your presentation of Sondheim works are always very strong, so I'm excited to see COMPANY. I'm excited by the prospect of THE GARDEN THEATRE going forward, producing Sondheim, and getting even more under your belt. But definitely. Break legs, happy birthday! 

COMPANY will run at the MATCH through April 19th. There is a special birthday celebration show for Logan on Saturday, April 11th. Tickets can be purchased through the MATCH’s website.