Patti LuPone and Rosalie Craig in Company at the Gielgud Theatre, London. Picture: Roy Tan
Company continues at the Gielgud Theatre, London until 22 December 2018.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Fuddy-duddy traditionalists who don’t normally like great works being tweaked or updated will be approaching this gender-bending revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical Company with trepidation but they needn’t worry – it’s wonderful.
This most audience-friendly and accessible of all Sondheim musicals (book by George Furth) was always funny and chock full of terrific songs but it’s now even funnier and all those songs are still there in director Marianne Elliott’s brave reworking.
When Company first opened, one New York critic biliously wrote: “The songs, for the most part, are undistinguished and as it stands now it’s for ladies’ matinees, homosexuals and misogynists.”
He must have got out of bed the wrong side because it’s hard to think of any Sondheim (maybe Follies) with more top-class songs. For starters, how about ‘Getting Married Today’, ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’, ‘Being Alive’, ‘Sorry-Grateful’, ‘The Little Things We Do Together’ and ‘Another Hundred People’?
In the first West End revival since Sam Mendes’ 1995 production, we have a female Bobby, now Bobbie, the single central character for whom his New York friends, all happily (?) married or engaged, are throwing a surprise 35th birthday party.
Instead of Bobby’s girlfriends, the airheaded air hostess April, homely Kathy who would have married him if only he’d asked, and hip Big Apple lover Marta, we have Andy, Theo and PJ as dithering Bobbie’s unsuitable past boyfriends.
And with Sondheim’s approval – he even worked on the script with her – Elliott introduces a same-sex couple: Jamie (for ‘Getting Married Today’ Amy) and Paul, have joined Bobbie’s circle of friends.
That works a treat with Jonathan Bailey’s hilariously OTT Jamie getting the loudest applause of the night, along with Patti LuPone’s drunken showstopper ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’, a number she must have sung a thousand times but still imbues with the viperous bite of a vodka stinger.
For Broadway legend LuPone alone Company is worth the price of a ticket and, of course, her name guarantees the attention of American tourists who won’t be familiar with the rest of the cast, headed by the admirable Rosalie Craig as Bobbie.
Craig it is who brings the show to a close with ‘Being Alive’, a triumphant finale leading to her blowing out the candles on the birthday cake, a masterpiece of timing.
Bobbie’s bedroom scene with butterfly-brained airline steward Andy reveals Richard Fleeshman’s impressive six-pack, much to the delight of both sexes in the audience.
Their ‘Barcelona’ duet is an absolute hoot and Bobbie’s reaction to Andy changing his mind about going to work and staying for more rumpy-pumpy is simply priceless.
The friends, foodie Sarah (Mel Giedroyc) and alcoholic Harry (Gavin Spokes), whose karate duel doesn’t quite work; Susan (Daisy Maywood) and closet gay Peter (Ashley Campbell), already divorced but still living together; square Jenny (Jennifer Saayeng) and David (Richard Henders); and the older Joanne (LuPone) a lush on her third husband, the forgiving Larry (Ben Lewis), are much the same as Sondheim envisaged.
In turn, they have disconnected vignettes with Bobbie, showing her marriage in all its forms, trying to get her to join the “club”, but she’s not interested just for the sake of it.
For a single 35-year-old in the New York of today, a woman probably has more difficulty in making meaningful relationships than a man, which makes this Company even more relevant.
Alex Gaumond as Paul, Matthew Seadon-Young as Theo and George Blagden as PJ (excellent in ‘Another Hundred People’) complete the immaculate cast.
It is all done so seamlessly in this polished, almost perfect production that every scene comes up natural and fresh. The sets, with separate fluorescently-lit square and rectangular boxes, are a creation Bunny Christie can be proud of and the 15-strong orchestra under conductor Joel Fram perched high above the stage is right on the money. Choreography is in the hands of Liam Steel.
As one friend who was a Company virgin, never having seen it before, commented afterwards: “It’s hard to imagine it with Bobbie as a man.” Mission accomplished!
Jeremy Chapman
Tickets for Company are available HERE.
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