The gender-inverted production of the musical Company opened last night on Broadway and the reviews are in. They range from The Daily Beast…
Two and a half hours of sublime entertainment that becomes more sublime and more pleasurable as it continues, it is a transporting experience, an emotional one, a full meal with dessert, and at least two drinks of your choice.
…to The New York Times which called it "confusing, sour remake" and went on to say…
…the revival that opened on Thursday night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater is not the Company Sondheim and the book writer George Furth (along with the director Hal Prince) unleashed on Broadway in 1970. Sure, the score remains great, and there are a few perfectly etched performances in supporting roles, especially Patti LuPone's as the undermining, pickled Joanne. As directed by Marianne Elliott, however, in a gender-flipped version abetted by Sondheim himself, what was once the story of a man who is terrified of intimacy becomes something much less interesting: the story of a woman who is justifiably tired of her friends.
Most of the reviews found something to love but even the raves don't make me yearn to see it…which is fine because I probably won't. I do have some curiosity if the lack of coherence I felt in the productions I've seen has been remedied…but I won't be going East for quite a while.
There don't seem to be any good clips from the show online yet so here's the big number — "Being Alive" — performed by a man. This is from the 2010 BBC Proms in concert version and the man is Julian Ovenden…