Company Previews Thread — Page 21

TaffyDavenport said: "HeyMrMusic said: "I’m curious how others think about this. I thinkCompanyworks best now as a period piece. So much of the script and the sound of the songs are very much of its time. I’m currently in the Bobby/Bobbie age range and no one I know is obsessed with getting married or settling down, many of my friends are maybe just getting married and maybe just having their first child. I’m not sure if many of the pressures on settling down are as dire as they were when the piece was written. The biological clock is a real thing, of course, and an interesting layer for a female Bobbie to deal with. Otherwise, people in their mid-30s in NYC are just starting to couple up. (I also don’t think many of the gender swaps truly work here: swapping Peter and Susan greatly diminishes Susan’s character and singing role, the change in the Joanne scene lowers the stakes of the following song, etc.) This is not a dig at the cast, more of the concept as a whole in this production and the specific changes they made to the characters."

I get what you're saying. What might have been really insightful in 1970 simply isn't groundbreaking anymore, and, right now, it's a very surface-level commentary on relationships that feels somewhat anachronistic. Gender-swapping Bobby/Bobbie only enhances that, since entertainment has been inundated with sex and the single girl in NYC stories for years, most notably Sex and the City.Granted, Monday night was the first time I'd ever seen the show, and I really enjoyed it, but it didn't feel modern to me, regardless of the updates that were made, and I agree that it would be more effective if it was set in the past."

This is precisely why I have long felt that Company set in today's Bombay would be far more effective. Indian parents, friends, cousins, and hell even your much younger nephew/nieces are *obsessed* with getting you married as soon as you graduate college. Plus Another Hundred People as written could literally be about Bombay right now.

I've seen two productions, Davis Gaines at the Huntington in Boston in 1997 and Aaron Tveit at the Barrington in the Berkshires in 2017, plus numerous others on video.

bwayphreak234 said: "I fell in love with this production back in March of 2020 when I saw the second preview. I saw the show again last night (my first Broadway show since the shutdown), and what I considered to be a perfect production last year, has somehow become 1,000 times more perfect.

Where do I even begin? This production is so incredibly polished and the performances are even bigger and better than they were before. I loved Katrina Lenk's Bobbie before and was even willing to overlook the somewhat shaky vocals. However, last night Lenk sang the score absolutely flawlessly. Gone are the traces of the strange accent and slight straining. She is hilarious, charming, sexy, and heartbreaking. Jennifer Simard is still giving what I consider to be one of the funniest performances I have ever seen on a Broadway stage. Her comedic timing and physicality are spot on. Matt Doyle's Jamie has become even more frantic and insane. Patti LuPone just proves once again that she is a Broadway legend.

The direction is even tighter and the pacing flows seamlessly. Marianne Elliott is simply a genius. Her vision is so incredibly cohesive, fresh, and unique. The design elements are sleek, slick, and sexy. The set is a wonderland of jigsawed neon frames and boxes that appear and disappear in and out of darkness. The only change to the set I noticed was the the terrace now actually has sliding glass doors and a railing. The costumes are great, and I loved some of the little changes they made.

I gushed about this last year, and here I am gushing again. This is quite possibly one of my favorite theatre experiences I have ever had. The show's message and themes hit me even harder last night than they ever had before. On a personal note, I lived in NYC for 5 years prior to the pandemic, and lost my home and job fairly early on into the pandemic last year. I have since built a new life, home, and career out of state. The line that Theo says about there being a time to come to New York and a time to leave hit me right where it hurts in the best way.

All in all, this show and this production are so incredibly special. It demands to be seen. It is simply miraculous.

"

I wanted SO badly to see this show,as I'm a big fan of Sondheim,LuPone,and Lenk,but I was affected financially by the pandemic like so many. I can relate to your story in that way and I'm so glad and thankful that things are better for you. I wish you all the best.

It is nice to read positive comments about Katrina Lenk. I realize that not every performer is everyone's cup of tea,but I really like her a lot. I like that she's different,quirky,and has a less-common type of "Broadway" voice. I've seen and heard bits of her performance of Bobbie online and on a bootleg,and I liked it. I've seen so many negative comments about her that I wondered how many people's bowls of Wheaties she had peed in!

Glad you had a great time and enjoyed the show! I enjoy your comments in general.

 

Updated On: 11/20/21 at 08:35 AM

Thanks for your take, bwayphreak234. That scene with Theo is such a reality and a heartbreaker, especially considering the last couple of years. I thought it was handled so sensitively by Manu Narayan and can’t even imagine what it was like before he took over the role.

I’ve sat in the front row and the stage is pretty low, not a lot of straining. Second row should be great. I prefer sitting close for this show because there’s so many intricacies in the staging and acting that are really highlighted up close. 
Sitting further back or in the mezz will give you a better picture of the entire set and a great view of the orchestra. 

I could've sworn Nikki Renee Daniela covered Bobbie but now it looks like it's Brittany Coleman only? 

Nikki is listed in my Playbill from Monday.

I fully agree with HeyHerMusic's issues with the updating. As a boomer, I can attest that no one in our generation would sing "The Ladies as Lunch," even with the changes. I saw the OBC (well, Russell replaced Stritch) when I was 19, and knew that Joanne was my mother's generation. There's simply no way a boomer woman of Manhattan -- where I lived 24 years, adjacent 45 -- would sing "clutching a copy of Time, just to keep in touch," and that's just for starters (no one clutches a copy of anything, unless it's to swat a buzzing insect). It's an analog lyric in a digital age and though nitpicky points up how ludicrous it is to assume that words can be slipped into another demographic. Joanne trades on being observant and savvy, pithy and accurate, and the lyrics reflect the worldview of a woman born in 1925, not 1951. The entire prism on Manhattan women is without contemporaneity, the breath of 2021 reality. I just feel we ride the good intentions of the update without really stopping to accept the disconnect. Joanne today would have weathered Vietnam, gone to college, had a career, not languished on the Upper East Side with nothing to do but lunch. If she's just Larry's wife, why is she friends with this young woman Bobbi? The show, pre second wave feminism, reflects a view of married women in the generation prior to ours. You can argue til you're red faced, but Joannne is not a boomer, certainly not in Manhattan. And the ladies, if they lunched, would be all over cell phones, without clutching.   

Updated On: 11/20/21 at 10:17 PM

This production is great because it's clearly set in both 2021 and 1970, Bobbie is both a woman and a man, and everything both is and isn't what it seems!

Auggie27 said: " I just feel we ride the good intentions of the update without really stopping to accept the disconnect."

When I saw a local production that was updated ( with modern dress and set but the original lyrics) I felt it worked precisely because I didn't "stop to accept the disconnect" and just appreciated the timeless aspects of the piece. I felt that the dated references kind of melted into the background. It just worked for me but I know others get hung up on the dated phrases in Company. 

If I'm not mistaken you wrote something similar about the 2014 revival of A Delicate Balance which was also updated.  

 

 

Good memory, KFC1991. Funny, I just watched the wonderful Hepburn-Scofield Delicate Balance again last night, and got into the discussion about the play not working in an update. Tobias and Agnes were conceived as people born in1902-1904; all references to their one percenter life track, and brilliantly. Having them born in 1950-1954 -- my demographic -- is just not remotely possible. But I'm no fan of "timeless" productions of material tethered to the cultural norms of a specific era.  Company was decidedly of the moment when it arrived. In its view of emotional resistance to sequential monogamy -- regardless of gender -- It may well prove to be of this moment, too, with a female protagonist. But to me that conceit doesn't rescue the era-straddling problems with Joanne.

Joanne was a brilliant armchair sociologist in 1971, able to zing her generation of women with laser-like accuracy. We welcomed her cynicism because as a trenchant witness, her observations were so spot on. Putting those reactions in her mouth today -- well, she still seems to be singing about her mother's generation, and thus her impromptu wisdom isn't as powerful. Clearly, it bothers few people. But I don't think Sondheim wrote "timeless" perceptions He wrote about an Upper East Side sophisticate who had endured WW II, the rigidity of the Eisenhower years, and post turbulent sixties was stranded, watching zombie-like women who had no careers, time on their hands, and floundered. It's almost misogynistic to characterize women of my generation thus, and again, the song is a critique of an entire sub-strata, not one coterie. In a show about a young woman with agency, it just feels bizarre to me. Others may disagree, but washing the show in timelessness doesn't easily accommodate very specific lyrics about a very specific demographic and their generational plight. 

Updated On: 11/21/21 at 11:40 AM

A picture of Britney Coleman and Anisha Nagarajan as Bobbie and Joanne at yesterday’s understudy rehearsal. I am surprised there’s not an age appropriate standby for Joanne, but with Patti’s reliability and the size of the role, I guess there’s not a need for a standby. 

I lol'd at this. Not at Bernadette,but at the question! Just try living in a red state,and working with a group of people who are Cardi B fans and know nothing about theater. Thank goodness for my BFF (outside of work) who is a fellow theater buff! And for this board,and a Facebook group that I'm in. We all need an outlet. :)