Company

OH. I see we've found a scientific explanation for why I like Sondheim so much.

Brilliant! If I come back to London at the beginning of next year to see CFA, I can see this again too!

Likewise! I'm thinking Follies matinee, Company evening may be the best order.

I wonder if Company will land in the Get Into London Theatre 2019 promo in January...

It is slightly strange they've extended rather quietly but I guess it's no coincidence that sales have extended around opening night.
I'm guess they'll do a push once opening nights through, 'Now booking until March 2019'..

That's exactly what I think will happen. they've opened booking now for the people who will be looking for it, because return visitors will make this show truly thrive. But I suspect, there will be a whole "extended due to rave reviews" press release by Friday.

What are the seats at the back like? My sister just said she wanted to see this show but neither of us can afford particularly expensive tickets right now!

I sat in the back row of the Upper for Ferryman. It's a generally fine view, you don't miss anything and the theatre is small. Sit as central as possible but everything in the show is generally played front and centre so I wouldn't imagine you'd miss much. Everyone needs to see this so book!

That’s all so helpful, thank you all! I’ll book towards the back of the stalls then i think.

This is a 5 star show all the way. It is an utterly brilliant reinvention of a show, that allows a deeper and more varied exploration of masculinity and femininity than the original incarnation, it contains one showstopping number after another, with Jonathan Bailey particularly phenomenal as the nervy restless Jamie, it has the legendary Patti LuPone being legendary, falling off a cliff edge of despair only to get back up again, and in Rosalie Craig's Bobbie, it has an anchor that completely embodies the complicated confusion of "Being Alive."

Spoilers follow. . .

Seeing this a second time, I wanted to look beyond the performances of Jonathan Bailey and Patti LuPone that dazzled me at the first preview.

So now, I took time to appreciate how fabulous Gavin Spokes and Mel Giedroyc are. The way they allow repressed aggression to gradually bubble through their singing, until Giedroyc is snarling like a tiger, and Spokes has her in a headlock. It's hilarious and true, and Giedroyc's comic timing is perfect, but what is so beautiful about Spokes is his ability to instantly flash from the amusement of petty malice to a heartbreaking tenderness of expression almost instantaneously. I was touched by the immense sensitivity he revealed beneath his character's apparent insensitivity.

Richard Fleeshman is a comic wonder in this, as are Jonathan Bailey and Patti LuPone, but it's Rosalie Craig that carries the meaning of the show for me, and in her characterisation and performance, I felt the show became desperately deep.

(SPOILERS) The dream she has of how awful motherhood could be, in place of the "Ticking" dance from previous productions, is critical to this new iteration of the show. Without this moment, the question of why a 35 year old woman isn't fretting about her baby clock would be on every audience member's mind. This moment, in which she fantasises in horror as multiple versions of herself suffer the burdens and humiliations of motherhood, define her character as rejecting that biological impulse.

This frees her character to look beyond motherhood to discern a reason for "Being Alive," and this personable likeable charming friendly humorous woman just CANNOT find it. It is the utter bewilderment of Rosalie Craig's "Being Alive" that made it so powerful for me.

I recalled an acquaintance who suffered from depersonalisation disorder, in which she felt disengaged from everyone and everything. While Rosalie Craig's Bobbie is far too engaging and lively to be suffering from that condition, her bright red dress and Alice in Wonderland alienated strangeness (where she imagines the world around her as either too big or too small, and as a series of passageways that lead essentially nowhere), defines her as marooned from meaning.

Without a desire for marriage or babies, she drifts aimlessly through the incidents of her friend's lives, and when she tries to define her meaning in her "Being Alive" finale, she just can't find one. The final image of her is much like Munch's scream, a complete failure to discover a meaning to life, a reflection of the despair LuPone's Joanne sang about earlier when she referred to how the Ladies who Lunch know that everyone will die.

This is SO much deeper and more powerful than a belting of "Being Alive" as if to suggest that a great purpose is discovered by the character, suddenly, at the very end. Rosalie Craig may not be able to belt with the best, but she can sing well (certainly much better than Judi Dench in "A Little Night Music") and like Dench, her acting is paramount. When she is with her friends, Craig's Bobbie is the perfect affable companion, the friend noone can get enough of, but when she is alone, and the narcotic amusements of having company dissipate, Craig suggests an absolute lostness that crowns this as one of the most profound productions of the year.

5 stars, without a doubt.

The view is amazing from the Dress slips for this show! Although daniel has looked and told me apparently the slips aren't on sale or if so, are sold out.