COMPANY reviews, take two- Page 6

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 12/6/06 at 11:18am

A few more:

Village Voice -

That final moment brings an intense emotional release, and Esparza, having held doggedly to his grim task till that point, plays it for all it's worth. Still, getting there is a very hard haul for a show already as spiky in its writing as Company. The writing is New York-y, mixing sass and brass with its bleak outlook and snotty repartee; Doyle's production, dark and hieratic, offers a distinctly European take on it.
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But often, again as in Sweeney, the gimmick creates a gray area in which you aren't sure whether the staging is a matter of intent or of instrumental convenience. And the singing and dancing, which are the normal procedure in musicals, get considerably hampered when actors have to blow into a mouthpiece or sit scraping away at a cello. Doyle's production looks and sounds impressive. But it also adds an extra layer of aridity to the bleakness that was already there, pushing the piece a little further away from us. I'll probably remember it all my life; I'm still not sure if I enjoyed it.

http://www.villagevoice.com/theater/0649,feingold,75202,11.html
Updated On: 12/6/06 at 11:18 AM

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 12/6/06 at 11:24am

The Cincinnati Enquirer revisits it:

Reason enough for a solid Broadway run is a sublime marriage of actor, role and director. Esparza is again heart-stopping and show-stopping - there's a Tony Award nomination in this performance, at the least. His performance of "Being Alive," the show's viscerally glorious finale when Bobby breaks from his cocoon, pulled a one-minute ovation from the audience.

On Broadway, "Company" is the same but different - what was tightly staged on the Playhouse thrust stage has been spread across a proscenium. Doyle and his ensemble are confident enough now to play up the comedy, but never at the expense of what it is at its soul - wry and melancholy, painfully aware, romantically redemptive.

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061130/ENT/611300337/-1/CINCI

[touchmeinthemorning]

Posted: 12/6/06 at 4:58pm

Showbusiness Weekly is a rave:

"The visionary Doyle, deploying the same actors-as-musicians technique that won him a Tony Award for last year’s revival of Sweeney Todd, unleashes kinetic colors onto the stage through the instruments that the performers lug around. With thrilling new orchestrations by Mary-Mitchell Campbell, Sondheim’s sumptuous melodies and cunning lyrics are rendered freshly and poignantly by this accomplished cast. In the trill of a trumpet or the sigh of a violin, Doyle defines characters as much by what they sound like as by what they say. In the soaring ballad “Sorry/Grateful,” a cheekily ambiguous defense of married life, the couples play instruments both at and with each other to create intriguing levels of theatricality. Such flashes of humanity turn this otherwise chilly production into a poetic return from the (relationship) graveyard."


http://www.showbusinessweekly.com/archive/412/company.shtml

[Ariella]

Posted: 12/10/06 at 1:04pm

The New Yorker review is pretty good. The staging is described as "superb" and Raul is described as "excellent," but the reviewer writes that the use of actors as musicians "underscores the weakness of the book" and "novelty stands in the way for personality." I'll try to find the link.