Review: ‘Company’ at the Cadillac Palace has a stellar cast — though this will never be my favorite ‘Company’
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Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s “Company” is a most extraordinary 1970 musical, charting as it does the central character’s journey from a cynical attitude about relationships and marriage, birthed by watching too many crazy married people, to an awareness of the great Sondheim creed that life has no meaning without love.
Or, to explain that central narrative journey through Sondheim lyrics, Bobby goes from singing “Marry me a little, love me just enough. Cry, but not too often. Play, but not too rough” (with the erroneous notion that such an approach is a viable marital option) to, at the show’s climax, “Someone to hold me too close. Someone to hurt me too deep. Someone to sit in my chair, And ruin my sleep, And make me aware, Of being alive. Being alive.”
The late, great Mr. S. forged music and lyrics in service of a life journey toward understanding that, to quote another of his lyrics from a different show, “Loving you is not a choice, it’s who I am.”
That is what I believe “Company,” which I’ve seen many times and adore above almost all other musicals, is about. I don’t think it’s what the director Marianne Elliott’s 2021 Broadway revival (which actually originated in London) believes about the show. On the contrary, her show mostly suggests the opposite. And thus I resisted it when I reviewed this production on Broadway, and, notwithstanding my great respect for this gifted director and for a touring cast with such talents in the ensemble as Ali Louis Bourzgui (Tommy in the Goodman’s “Tommy”) and local favorite James Earl Jones II, I resisted it again when I saw the Broadway tour.
Fixed ideas about musicals are always dangerous for critics, of course and Sondheim himself approved this new concept before he died. But this one just crosses a fundamental line for me. The director’s ideas overwhelm and undermine the material. I have a bucketload of examples.
Instead of just having a performer sing “Another Hundred People,” one of the greatest theater songs ever written and letting her voice and Sondheim’s lyrics sear the soul work, this staging offers a fussy, semi-comical romp around oversized letters. “Barcelona,” a ruthless and agonizing dissection of the loneliness of one-night stands, is played most for laughs. In the final moments of “Being Alive,” there is no evidence that the central character has changed her point of view on anything. And time and again, the themes explored remain on the surface, despite all the boxes, props and clever ideas on display. The show is consistently fascinating and often funny, but it is stone-cold with two distinguished exceptions.
Elliott attempts two radical ideas, neither of which really work. One is to turn the central character into a woman, named Bobbie, which is fine except that it necessitates gender swaps throughout, meaning that we now get male voices singing some of Sondheim’s best songs for women and it brings us a different set of issues that the show can’t fully explicate. The second is to update the show. That can work and I’ll certainly acknowledge, after listening to the audience, how the idea refreshes the piece for a new generation. But my view is that we can deal with the 1970s just fine; none of the issues that matter the most to New Yorkers have changed all that much.
The exceptions? Joanne’s Act 2 “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Judy McLane is fabulous, as was Patti LuPone on Broadway. And, especially on the tour, “I’m Not Getting Married,” here recast as a scene involving two gay men, one of whom gets very nervous: Bourzgui and Matt Rodin stop the show.
For Sondheim die-hards, those moments might be enough, along with the chance to hear this great score and muse on the ideas that Elliott brings to the table. Most certainly, this is a first-class tour, now starring the very classy and charming, if hardly emotional revelatory, Britney Coleman as Bobbie.
But unlike the fantastic new Broadway revival of ”Merrily We Roll Along,” which is one of those productions that make you feel like you never need to see this material done any other way, this “Company,” born in a now-departing moment when anti-emotionalist deconstructions of old musicals were all the rage, feels more like an experiment of interest that just did not fully work.
Sondheim was all about love in all its pain, beauty, dysfunction and necessity; what is to be gained from fighting that?
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Company” (2.5 stars)
When: Through Nov. 12
Where: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $27-$108 at 800-775-2000 and www.broadwayinchicago.com
