Company

Well. Someone call the police and arrest Rosalie Craig. She commits the most heinous crime of making 'Being Alive' seem like a filler and worse still, underwhelming. I don't know if she's bored singing it but I was bored hearing it. I've seen more feeling from a deep fried calamari. She's very attractive and has a nice voice and even has a few nice moments but she's just so bland that Bobbie fades into the background for me and I just didn't care about her at all.

But aside from that, it's a great show on the whole and the "turn off your mobile phones" message is genius. Fans of the staging of 'Angels in America' will be in heaven because it's pretty much the same staging just with a few songs thrown in. There are boxes flying all over the place (the person with the winch must be on double time) and there's an angelic bit that is shamelessly stolen from 'Pity' at the Royal Court too. There are some bits I'd cut though. David and Jenny for a start and Peter and Susan for seconds (although Richard Henders as David is one of the strongest singers on the stage), both couples are completely dull and slow things down. I'd also cut the scene directly after 'Barcelona' with lots of Rosalie's which goes on for what seems like the length of time it would take to actually get to Barcelona.

On the plus side though, Jonny B is gorgeous (and his buns look teeth-chompingly delicious when he's doing the cha-cha), very manically funny and really rather touching during his big scene. And what a scene. 'Getting Married Today' almost steals the show and if Jonny B doesn't get the Best Supporting Actor Olivier next year, I will riot. Richard Fleeshman is totes adorbs too. Not only does he strip down to his underpants to show us all just how much time he spends at the gym (those guns really should come with a licence) but it's really quite the sweetest, loveliest performance and he does it all so effortlessly. His trio with George Blagden and Matthew Seadon-Young (also great) performing 'You Could Drive A Person Crazy' is also one of the show highlights. Finally, Mel Giedroyc and Gavin Spokes (best of the male singers without a doubt) as Sarah and Harry are hysterical, it's a brilliant scene and I will never be able to think of jiu-jitsu again without laughing. Probably not the reaction martial arts experts would really like.

Stephen and Patti (if that isn't being too familiar) are guests on Graham Norton's Radio 2 show at this very moment.

If listening later, on catch-up, their 'bit' started at about 12.05pm, so 2 hours 5 minutes in.

I would agree with this. I have not seen this production yet but the things I have seen her in have left me cold - The Light Princess and something else I have wiped from my memory. To be absolutely fair though the writing is somewhat to blame for Bobby/Bobbie being bland. I have always been very indifferent to the character of Bobby - never really caring or making him out. Perhaps that is deliberate on Sondheim's part. He is always overshadowed by the surrounding characters in his life. I had hoped/hope that the new gender switch might have addressed these issues.



Yes, of course. I would happily pay more than £25 for a good seat. I would happily pay £50-£75 for a front stalls or circle seat. What I object to is paying these prices to sit at the back - I simply wont do it. Neither will I pay £100 - £125 for a good seat. It is the premium pricing which I object to which is no longer a couple of rows in the central stalls but ALL of the front sections of both the stalls and the circle. So I have to hunt out the bargains.

The issue I have though is that the casual theatre goer (not us on this board) will simply have a look at the prices and not make a purchase. Although I do appreciate the producers pushing the prices as far as the market will stand and then discounting later if they need to - it does maximise the revenue on a fixed number of seats for a fixed run.

I had an option this morning. Row N for the evening or front row for the matinee. I decided I prefer being up close so went for the matinee.

... and the 2019 Olivier for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical goes to Jonathan Bailey!

Holy crap he is sensational! I am loving this so much! 😍😍

He was amazing in Not Getting Married, and absolutely dripping with sweat, possibly the best performance of the show for me as I wasn't expecting it.

Patti was sublime. Amazing to be within touching distance had I dared.

A Fleeshman in his pants was almost too much to handle so early in the day.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and it was worth the 5am coach to London to get that front row ticket.

Noticed Rosalie and Patti have no understudies listed in the programme. Is this right? If one of them can't perform is the show cancelled?

To be fair, to a greater or lesser extent that has been a problem with every single iteration of this particular show since the beginning (the single exception from the various productions I've seen: Daniel Evans in a revival at the Crucible a few years ago, but that was a much darker interpretation of the show and the role than this one is. Evans's Bobby was more or less on the verge of a breakdown, and the thought of being alone with his own thoughts almost gave him a panic attack). Certainly it was a recurring complaint in the reviews for the original Broadway production. Bobby - or Bobbie - is less colourfully drawn than the characters in the various vignettes; he/she has two or three great songs ('Marry Me a Little', originally written for the 'Being Alive' slot, was shoehorned into the end of the first act in a script revision in the mid-1990s and doesn't sit very well there, although I thought Rosalie Craig made more sense of it than Adrian Lester did; Evans is the only person I've seen make it work completely), but the funniest, most memorable material goes to the various supporting characters, and nearly all of it is a knockout in this production. Craig was perfectly good, I thought, and it worked for her, and she sang very well indeed - but the role was conceived as the show's normative core, and the supporting characters are almost all comic caricatures because the show began as a series of sketches about married couples and George Furth invented Bobby as a device to link the sketches together.

These days 'Happily Ever After', the song 'Being Alive' replaced - and which replaced 'Marry Me a Little' when the show was being written - might be less off-putting than it was in 1970. It's certainly a stronger, angrier statement than 'Being Alive'; there's more room for interpretation in it, though, and you with different acting choices it could be taken as either pro-marriage or very, very anti, and they wanted a more affirmative ending. In 1970, 'Being Alive' was probably the correct choice - or at least, the correct choice for a commercial production on Broadway (it was never a sold-out Big Hit but it ran twenty months or so and turned a small profit); now, maybe, you could get away with a song with more of an edge to it, although maybe 'Happily Ever After' is still a step too far:

Whilst Sondheim has said he didn't interfere with this adaption too much he is so exacting I don't think he'd let Bobbi/Bobby slide into the background unless they were meant to, to an extent.
I think its no mistake or superficial design choice that all of Bobbi's world was monochromatic, intended as a statement on the character, whilst Bobbi's costume (red for lust) made her pop against the background and standout in an environment that highlights the conflicting emotion (single or married) whilst being overshadowed by such powerful 'company' that she keeps.

The programme lists Francesca Ellis as u/s Joanne and Sarah.

Oooh tres fascinating. sf, you're like a Sondheim historian. I shall come to you for all my SS facts from now on.

That's Stephen Sondheim for avoidance of doubt not Hitler's paramilitary organisation. Unless you're an expert there too?

All good points, sf.

Marry Me A Little is a great song and I love it. But not in Company. Sondheim started writing it for the show but stopped mid-song as he realised that there would be no show if Bobby was capable of such a mature understanding of marriage. That he changed his mind in the mid-'90s says more about Sam Mendes than it does about Bobby.

Happily Ever After was sacked by the Producers and/or Hal Prince, I think. It is really dark, but fits really well with (my preferred dark interpretation of) Sorry/Grateful, Getting Married Today, Ladies Who Lunch. They’re all one big scream of existential angst.

I won't lie, sat on the train, thinking about my thoughts on the show. Still can't do it. I loved this so, so much! I need to sleep on it. 😂