Company will come home to New York this season, with opening night set for March 22, 2020 at Broadway's Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. The production will officially open on Stephen Sondheim's 90th Birthday following previews, which begin Monday, March 2. The production, directed by Marianne Elliott, will not be a replica of the version that recently ran in London's West End. It will feature an American cast, and some updates.
At Bobbie's 35th birthday party all her friends are wondering why she isn't married; why she can't find the right man and why she hasn't settled down to have a family. The multi-award winning musical comedy about life, love and marriage includes Stephen Sondheim's iconic songs, "The Ladies who Lunch," "Being Alive," "Side by Side," and "You Could Drive a Person Crazy."
Should directors flip gender on other Sondheim classics? I don't know how much we'd gain from a Ms. Sweeney Todd or a male-model Dot. In Company, human properties of trust, love, and loneliness are transitive across male, female, straight, and gay lines. One thing I am certain of: Company is the most sophisticated fun I've had in a theater in ages. It's sexy, hilarious, and hits home in a way that's honest and shockingly resonant. Sondheim fanatics already know what a genius score it is, an explosion of wit and insight and addictive melodies. I can't wait to go again and tear up as Lenk bares her soul in 'Being Alive' or the phenomenal ensemble slays the house in the maniacal razzle-dazzle of 'Side By Side by Side.' The great man passed away two weeks ago; there is no more fitting tribute than a breakthrough work given a whole new life.
Magnetic and devastatingly droll in The Band's Visit, Lenk plays the part of the charismatic chameleon compellingly, holding her own coyly, wryly, boisterously with each of the zany couples with which she spends her time. But she doesn't let her guard down enough in the moments in between for a more transparent, fully sympathetic Bobbie to come through. That's in large part because she sings most of Sondheim's soliloquies for Bobbie with an overt crooniness and rather affected vowels that give the sense that the character is still performing for us even when she's alone; the songs also tend to sit too high in her voice to allow much warmth to enter in. Only in 'Being Alive,' the show's final number, does Lenk offer a shivering, small-scale intimacy, as if she's learning the words for the first time. It's too little, too late, though, to buy that this is the Bobbie who we've been wanting to get to know all along.
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