COMPANY reviews, take two
COMPANY reviews, take two
#1COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:10pm
Being that the thread Margo started devolved into a rather embarassing Wicked fan-esque display of obsessive idiocy, I'm starting another one for those who want a simple compilation of the reviews, minus the dramatics.
Give me a moment to move them...
#1re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:11pm
The AP is Mixed-to-Negative:
"Bobby baby, why can't you play a musical instrument? Fear of commitment or just not musically inclined?
That nagging question permeates much of director John Doyle's chilly, high-concept revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Company," which opened Wednesday at Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
Doyle, you may recall, is the man who had actors doubling as musicians in last season's critically acclaimed production of another Sondheim classic, "Sweeney Todd." He does the same here, as we watch perpetual bachelor Bobby gaze uneasily at the relationships of several married friends as well as his own dealings with single, available women.
That theatrical multitasking worked well for the grisly tale of Todd, adding a weird dimension to the already creepy story of a murderous barber in 19th-century industrial London. With the more modern "Company," first seen on Broadway in 1970 and revived there in 1995, double duty seems unnecessary, a bit pretentious and limiting to the musical ambitions of Sondheim's fine score.
As a result, the episodic sketches concocted by book writer George Furth loom larger and more lethargically than in previous productions.
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Bobby's indecisiveness is accentuated by Raul Esparza's fidgety, sometimes mannered performance. This man telegraphs his emotions even if he doesn't articulate his feelings.
At one point, Esparza poses like a modern-day martyr, standing weirdly as if he were St. Sebastian against a looming white column that divides the Barrymore stage. Unlike Sebastian, though, he isn't pierced by arrows but by the stinging barbs of his critical friends.
Those friends are played by actors, who, like Esparza, appeared in this revival when it was done earlier in the year at Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Park. They are a likable group, but they rarely raise the show's theatrical temperature.
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The show may not always be joyous, but it shouldn't be funereal, which is what occasionally comes across in this production. Maybe it is the monochromatic costumes. Or the spare, almost nonexistent setting, which has the actors quietly sitting on stage — sort of like in the cemetery scene from "Our Town" — when they aren't performing. There's even a vase of lilies on the baby grand.
By the time Bobby gets to his revelatory moment — "Being Alive" — and sits down at the piano, we are more than ready for his enlightenment. Esparza, who has a powerful voice, gives it his all. The man finally surrenders to his feelings, and for the first time during the evening, we are touched."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/11/29/entertainment/e142146S73.DTL
#2re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:12pm
Talkin' Broadway is up. It was reviewed by the same person who reviewed (and disliked) Sweeney.
Here goes.
"The best that can be said about director John Doyle's new version of Company - and it's not saying much - is that it skates circles around his Sweeney Todd from last season, then throws in some figure eights and triple axles for good measure.
You can rest safe in the knowledge that a trip to the Barrymore, where Company just opened after originating at Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Park last spring, recalls a musical more than the Saturday night jaunt to the Meatpacking District Sweeney evoked. No, it doesn't bear much resemblance to the musical composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and librettist George Furth wrote, but one headache at a time, please."
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"Doyle's meddling never gets more extreme (or more absurd) than having one married couple mime karate while standing on opposite sides of the stage - they're physically touching but not really together, get it? - but his first priority never seems to communicate the story or illuminate the characters in sensible, logical ways.
... Only Esparza even moderately escapes being affected by this: His natural charisma, good-guy grace, and sly magnetism leak out from beneath an affected disinterested exterior that can only be Doyle's work. (Even in dour roles, Esparza has never seemed as joyless as he does here.) If we get no sense of Robert's complete journey from satisfied single to relationship-ready, Robert's conflicted feelings resonate strongly in Esparza's performance and inject his climactic "Being Alive" with a poignant urgency absent in too many renditions."
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"Ah yes, the piano. That brings us to the meat of Doyle's concept: the actors playing instruments. As Company has always been highly conceptual, with most of the scenes swirling into being from the confused corners of Robert's mind, this kind of conceit damages the proceedings less than in the more realistic Sweeney Todd... This gives the production a sense of consistent style that eluded the sloppy Sweeney, though as none of it has anything to do with Company, its dramatic value is nonexistent."
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"Directors of musicals have never before needed to stick instruments in their actors' hands to get them to engage the audience. In directing the original Company, Harold Prince and Stritch made Joanne's "The Ladies Who Lunch" a shattering showstopper with a full pit orchestra, and I've never heard one complaint about it.
It plays here as the inebriated ramblings of a frustrated social climber rather than protean wisdom from a hardened vet of the battle through life, but worse, Walsh is denied the applause her flailing against Doyle's constraints warrants, and that audience apparently wants to bestow upon her. Allowing the audience to applaud is one way to engage them; denying them the opportunities they crave, instruments or no, is alienating. Judging from what he's already given us, it's no shock Doyle chose the latter."
Full review: http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/Company2006.html
No comment.
ElphieDefiesGravity
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/27/04
#3re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:12pm
I would call this mixed. Maybe?
LA Times
http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/la-et-companywebnov30,0,6086807.story?coll=cl-stage-features
"An enterprising sociologist with a theatrical bent might want to consider studying the Stephen Sondheim effect on marriage. Not to tilt the research in advance, but a certain Broadway musical from 1970 may have single-handedly upped the divorce rate in America.
Robert the commitment-phobe at the jaundiced heart of Sondheim and George Furth's Tony-winning "Company" is once again celebrating his 35th birthday and reviewing the miracles and miseries of monogamy.
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Raúl Esparza's charismatic portrayal of "Bobby" makes it easy to understand why everyone is obsessed with getting him hitched — he's too dangerously tempting a proposition as a single man. Better to have him married, mortgaged and fat. That way the worst he can do is have an extramarital affair, which, in the world of "Company," is a sin hardly worth confessing.
One would expect this kind of Doyle double-tasking to work even better for "Company," a book musical that plays more like a revue. Essentially a series of dazzling numbers thematically linked, the show parades onto the stage a series of married couples who could use something to do while dialing in their despair. So pass out the trumpets and orchestra bells, and let's watch them really make some baleful music together.
Surprisingly, the effect encumbers more than enhances Sondheim's vision. The production has its share of exhilarating movements and is definitely a welcome Broadway sight, but the staging doesn't hang together as a character study.
Yes there are times the band shtick cleverly highlights the subtext, as when Bobby's girlfriends diagnose his shortcomings in "You Could Drive a Person Crazy," with saxophone accents that sonorously indict their man as a repeat offender.
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There's also one vertiginous moment of theatrical gaiety in Heather Laws' bridal basket-case rendition of "Getting Married Today" — the largest organ in the world couldn't stand in this performer's panic-stricken way.
Esparza, who scored a Tony nomination as the cross-dressing narrator of "Taboo," seemingly has it all — looks, a rich tenor and an ambiguous sexuality that lends everyone a little hope. What he needs, however, is a production that would allow him to pierce Bobby's aloofness, so that we could see what's underneath the compulsive push and pull of his amorous life.
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In the "Barcelona" number, we're fleetingly offered such a glimpse. The scene involves Bobby and April (a fine Elizabeth Stanley), the airline stewardess he's just spent the night with. She wakes early to catch a flight to Spain while he, yawningly, tries to keep her from leaving. Esparza reveals what's behind the manipulative gesture — the emotional stirrings provoked by loss, only to be quelled once it becomes apparent what it would mean if she stayed.
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Otherwise, Bobby's growing loneliness accrues somewhat too generically. There's not enough internal subtlety in Esparza's performance to justify his ambivalent epiphany in "Being Alive," the big finale in which he comes to understand that having someone to hold him "too close" and hurt him "too deep" isn't so much a ludicrous luxury as a basic human need.
"Blow out the candles, Robert, and make a wish. Want something. Want something."
Wishes come true, not free.
Updated On: 11/29/06 at 09:12 PM
Wishes come true, not free.
ElphieDefiesGravity
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/27/04
#4re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:19pmGarg, this is so nerve-wracking.
"Blow out the candles, Robert, and make a wish. Want something. Want something."
Wishes come true, not free.
Wishes come true, not free.
#6re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:24pm
Did you not see Emcee's first comment? Please cut out the feigned hysterics and at least keep THIS thread on topic.
Not that anyone cares about their opinions, but for the sake of completeness:
http://www.broadway.com/gen/general.aspx?ci=541138
TheaterMania's is up too:
http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/9538
Like a firework unexploded
Wanting life but never knowing how
Updated On: 11/29/06 at 09:24 PM
Wanting life but never knowing how
#7re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:26pm
Theatermania is pretty positive. This critic also reviewed the show in Cincinnati, so this is a "revised and updated version" of his earlier review.
"John Doyle's thrilling production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, in which the singing actors doubled as the show's orchestra, wowed critics and theatergoers in London and New York. Still, some observers wondered if a similar concept would be work for other shows. The answer, at least in the case of Doyle's reintepretation of Sondheim's Company, is a definite yes."
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"I've always thought of this show as irrevocably tied to the time period when it was written and set, but Doyle and scenic designer David Gallo have effectively placed the action in a more or less timeless space that suggests a trendy Manhattan loft on the night of a swanky social gathering....
....Looming overhead is a huge lighting fixture that resembles a bunch of old camera flashbulbs/reflectors suspended upside down. Ann Hould-Ward's stylish costumes are virtually all black. Thomas C. Hase's lighting helps to create the sense of different spaces on the unit set and isolates the central character at key moments."
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"Raúl Esparza is superb as Robert, underplaying the part with offhand humor and the occasional wry observation until the penultimate scene. Bobby pretty much functions as a blank slate upon which the neuroses of his friends and lovers are writ, but in this extraordinary performance, the guy obviously has a whole lot going on beneath the surface. When he finally shouts "Stop!" to silence the nattering of his married friends, it's a primal scream from the soul, so violent and seemingly throat-searing that Esparza's subsequent, gorgeous singing of the cathartic "Being Alive" is all the more astounding."
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"he show simply wouldn't work without the excellent orchestrations of Mary Mitchell-Campbell. One's mind boggles at the effort involved in rejiggering the great Sondheim score according to the abilities of the various performers. (I don't even want to think about what happens when a standby has to go on."
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"Many thanks to Doyle for again proving it's possible to present a classic show in a bold, new way that doesn't violate the spirit of the work as originally conceived. "
Full review: http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/9538
That's more like it. 
#9re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:28pm
When he finally shouts "Stop!" to silence the nattering of his married friends, it's a primal scream from the soul, so violent and seemingly throat-searing that Esparza's subsequent, gorgeous singing of the cathartic "Being Alive" is all the more astounding."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
ElphieDefiesGravity
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/27/04
#10re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:29pm
It'll be interesting to see if people who previously reviewed it will have the same opinion, or if they'll even write new reviews. Theatremania kind of combined the two things.
"Blow out the candles, Robert, and make a wish. Want something. Want something."
Wishes come true, not free.
Updated On: 11/29/06 at 09:29 PM
Wishes come true, not free.
#11re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:45pm
LA Times:
"Raúl Esparza's charismatic portrayal of "Bobby" makes it easy to understand why everyone is obsessed with getting him hitched — he's too dangerously tempting a proposition as a single man. Better to have him married, mortgaged and fat. That way the worst he can do is have an extramarital affair, which, in the world of "Company," is a sin hardly worth confessing."
------------------------------------------------------------
"One would expect this kind of Doyle double-tasking to work even better for "Company," a book musical that plays more like a revue. Essentially a series of dazzling numbers thematically linked, the show parades onto the stage a series of married couples who could use something to do while dialing in their despair. So pass out the trumpets and orchestra bells, and let's watch them really make some baleful music together.
Surprisingly, the effect encumbers more than enhances Sondheim's vision. The production has its share of exhilarating movements and is definitely a welcome Broadway sight, but the staging doesn't hang together as a character study.
This may reflect an inherent flaw in the material — just what the heck is Bobby's problem with women, anyway? — but layering an additional level of abstraction on an already abstract work makes the protagonist's inner psychodrama seem that much more elusive. Too often a woodwind comes between us and an actor's truth and there's a flute where a revelatory expression should be."
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"But somehow the various elements don't coalesce the way they did in Doyle's "Sweeney Todd." Granted, "Company" doesn't make it easy, with its segmented book and mysterious protagonist. But the actors aren't given many opportunities to fill in what missing."
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Esparza, who scored a Tony nomination as the cross-dressing narrator of "Taboo," seemingly has it all — looks, a rich tenor and an ambiguous sexuality that lends everyone a little hope. What he needs, however, is a production that would allow him to pierce Bobby's aloofness, so that we could see what's underneath the compulsive push and pull of his amorous life...
Otherwise, Bobby's growing loneliness accrues somewhat too generically. There's not enough internal subtlety in Esparza's performance to justify his ambivalent epiphany in "Being Alive," the big finale in which he comes to understand that having someone to hold him "too close" and hurt him "too deep" isn't so much a ludicrous luxury as a basic human need."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"It's as if Doyle has blindly followed the advice in Sondheim's haunting ode to committed love, "Sorry-Grateful," and not bothered "to look for answers where none occur." Yet the composer earns his existential sentiment, whereas the direction is too busy foisting instruments on the actors to dramatically tune into the silent concert of longing."
Full review: http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/la-et-companywebnov30,0,6086807.story?coll=cl-stage
ElphieDefiesGravity
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/27/04
#12re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:46pmWould you call this mixed?
"Blow out the candles, Robert, and make a wish. Want something. Want something."
Wishes come true, not free.
Wishes come true, not free.
#13re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:47pm
We're not that stupid, Emcee, are we? As I mean we, the ones on the original board. We're just losers... forgive us?
Would you call LA times 'mixed'... or 'mixed to positive'?
SondheimGeek: Is it slightly pathetic that you guys get to be Jedi bitches, and I'm Bitchy the Hutt?
LizzieCurry: No, you're more memorable
LizzieCurry: No, you're more memorable
#14re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:48pmI would say that was mixed. Not all bad, but not all good either.
The choice may have been mistaken, The choosing was not... "Every day has the potential to be the greatest day of your life." - Lin-Manuel Miranda
#15re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:50pm
Oh, whoops, I didn't see that Elphie had already gotten it.
No, I wouldn't give it the benefit of calling it positive. He's basically saying that the concept doesn't work. In fact, he straight-up says it's cumbersome and hurts the material.
ElphieDefiesGravity
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/27/04
#16re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:51pm
'Sokay.
Yes, definitely not "positive", but more positive than "Mixed-to-negative", right?
"Blow out the candles, Robert, and make a wish. Want something. Want something."
Wishes come true, not free.
Wishes come true, not free.
Ariella
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/10/06
#17re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 9:54pmWell, I guess it could be worse. Raul's reviews generally seem pretty positive, but they're saying his performance was hampered by the staging. I can't tell - do the reviewers have a problem with any of the score/book, or are the complaints largely with the staging?
#18re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 10:09pmI think the problem is not the material -- it's Sondheim -- but rather the combination, and how the staging services (in some opinions, poorly) the score and the book.
Yankeefan007
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
#19re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 10:23pm
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/theater/reviews/30comp.html
A present for all of you. Raul should start finding that spot on the mantle.
--
Excerpts:
"But if Bobby the bachelor, embodied with riveting understatement by Raúl Esparza, at first comes across as a man of ice, it becomes apparent that he is in a steady state of thaw. Given the subliminal intensity that hums through Mr. Esparza’s deadpan presence, you sense that flood warnings should probably be posted.
Mr. Doyle’s staging repeatedly and ingeniously echoes this isolating difference. Mr. Esparza is often found climbing onto the top of a Steinway or one of those transparent cubes as others crowd him. Sometimes he stands at a skeptical, uneasy remove as different groups serenade him: the married men with the haunting “Sorry-Grateful”; three girlfriends, all playing saxophones as if they were assault weapons, in a scintillating version of “You Could Drive a Person Crazy.”
But Mr. Esparza is anything but a cipher. Though his Bobby can seem as laconic and drolly unresponsive as Bob Newhart, you are always aware that this is a man in pain. As anyone who saw him in “Cabaret” or “The Normal Heart” knows, Mr. Esparza is generally a pyrotechnic actor, sending sparks and smoke all over the place.
In keeping the lid on such volcanic energy, he makes Bobby’s climactic explosion inevitable. Though he sings beautifully throughout — in ways that define his character’s solipsism — he brings transporting ecstasy to the agony of the concluding number, in which Bobby finally joins the band of human life."
Updated On: 11/29/06 at 10:23 PM
#20re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 10:25pmWell... I'll just say... it's amazing. Sorry for that post. I got too excited.
SondheimGeek: Is it slightly pathetic that you guys get to be Jedi bitches, and I'm Bitchy the Hutt?
LizzieCurry: No, you're more memorable
Updated On: 11/29/06 at 10:25 PM
LizzieCurry: No, you're more memorable
#21re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 10:25pmI seriously doubt anyone is going to be weighing in on the book and score. If someone had a problem with it, they'd have addressed it in 1970. I'm assuming anyone reviewing theatre now has at least seen a production of it before and are expecting anyone reading the reviews has as well. Kind of like how you don't have to site sources in research papers for facts that are common knowledge.
Like a firework unexploded
Wanting life but never knowing how
Wanting life but never knowing how
#22re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 10:25pmHOT DAMN! HE LIKED IT, HE REALLY REALLY LIKED IT! Oh I couldn't be happier for all involved that the TIMES gave this very deserved COMPANY thumbs way up. Esparza & Walsh also rightfully deserved their high praise! Bravo!
ElphieDefiesGravity
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/27/04
#23re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 10:26pmYES! YesyesyesyesyesYES!
"Blow out the candles, Robert, and make a wish. Want something. Want something."
Wishes come true, not free.
Wishes come true, not free.
Yankeefan007
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/20/04
#24re: COMPANY reviews, take two
Posted: 11/29/06 at 10:27pmSondheimGeek - I get your enthusaism, but I'd delete that post...it's all copyrighted. Excerpts with quotes are okay, though.
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