Company

WOW. This is a PERFECT production – interpretation, experiment, re-evaluation – of an unsolvable masterpiece. Maybe from 1971 onwards, with Bobby’s story so specific, trying to keep Company relevant is a fool’s errand. Marianne Elliott is no fool. Using this flawed masterpiece as her jumping-off point, Elliott’s given us – surprise surprise – an astonishingly intelligent, emotionally wrenching reinvention of it. Because of her, I ended up, somehow, MORE enamoured of a show I’ve found too narrow-minded over time, because rather than smooth its rougher edges, she’s bought out the roughest best in them.

Marianne Elliott’s Company (no-one defers to Sondheim more than me, but this show is HER (and Craig’s) masterpiece) takes the questions the original poses, and doesn’t so much answer them as reframe them. Sondheim’s Company is a funny beast – whilst incisive and nakedly emotional, it’s also rather quaint and quite of its time (“I could understand a person if it’s not a person’s bag”…). Bobby lives such a solipsistic life, his friends in such a rich New York bubble, so narrow in ideas of family, that much of their arguments are irrelevant to anyone outside. But oh that score… The show is like a family member – something I will always always always love (perhaps more than any other, better Sondheim), but boy can I hate it on a bad day. With Bobby’s small window onto the big world of love and marriage, I sometimes think that Furth and Sondheim ask some of life’s biggest questions of monogamy to a small man, only to come to some pat answers.

Why look for answers where none occur? This is why I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Elliott’s production. It’s not about the easy answers of “Whaddaya wanna get married for?”. It takes many of the oddities and inconsistencies of the original masterpiece and magnifies them – making it more aggressive and more inquisitive and more uncertain than ever, more relatable and more haunting as a viewer. She changes the pressure to societal in a way a bachelor would never face. She changes ‘Tick Tock’ from some bloke worried about a receding hairline to far more profound pressures. She makes PJ a cock, thus a ‘bad decision’, in a way none of Bobby’s three girlfriends ever were (and yet it’s the same bloody lines – how did that asshole line ever work?!?!), changing Bobby from a suave ladies’ man to you or me wondering why we made, and make, our bad decisions. Perhaps I wish the show gave more focus to the eternal pleasures of the single life, disposable boyfriends, than lip service (yes that was a cunnilingus pun), but even the staging of that scene was comic in its juxtaposition: asking whether having Richard Fleeshman going down on you is really worth missing out on marriage (um…). For reasons others have said better than I, the gender switch reaps huge rewards. My boorish blokey interpretation is that, actually, it’s easier to relate to her – a male Bobby can be just mopey, his pressures all individual and internal, but given that Bobbie’s pressures are largely put on her by society via people who ‘love’ her, ALL the relationships change and the drama zings better. Far from just questioning Bobby’s bachelordom, we’re now even questioning – due to modern life, societal norms and specifically female attitudes – why we’re looking for answers where none occur...

Rather than the over-conclusive arc of the original (Q: “Whaddaya wanna get married for?” A: “Someone to hold me too close…”), this asks us why we even ask that first question in the first place. Rather than try and update everything to work, she lets some things remain iffy and problematic, and thus asks us to look critically at the whole situation. Rather than (as productions that I LOVE do) end with some conclusive statement about whether Bobby is lonely or hopeful, “Being Alive” is more a question mark than a full stop. There are f***ing multitudes in this show.

And… “Another Hundred People” (alongside “The Miller’s Son” one of my favourite Sondheim songs). Whilst George Blagden doesn’t have quite the belt or brass that the song has previously asked for, the miniature everyday ballets happening in the background are an expressionist, subtle rebuke to the specificity of Bobbie. Shadows going about their day, to suddenly burst into tableaus of love and lust, a positively Gene Kelly-esque display of extraordinary emotions in invisible faces… So bold in its visual storytelling, everything that miniature ballet says about the little moments where love can be found turns Bobbie’s story into the story of every hopeful lover. It was so beautiful I began to cry.

(Also, ignoring the obvious, I hadn’t realised how funny the smaller moments in this were – and the rewards this reaps! The shift into that line “you’re always sorry” was an unexpected giggle with pitch-perfect timing, then the rest becomes more sentimental with this contrast greater. Plenty of subtler moments throughout. Marianne Elliott is such a good line-reader, isn’t she?)

And where she wants to preserve everything magisterial about Company, Elliott just lets that cast do their magic. Jonathan Bailey is extraordinary at neurotic, loveable, surprisingly tender and teary, and bloody hilarious – what else can you say, we all fell in love. We fell in love with Richard Fleeshman too but for different reasons. Really fond of Mel and Gavin Spokes’ touching ordinariness. And for extraordinariness, Patti… It’s Patti! Can’t put into words how great SHE was. I loved Elliott’s setting of THAT scene – seated and trapped, an intimate, less showboating, more pointed conversation – but my god, it’s Patti!

At its heart, though, phone rings door chimes in comes Rosalie. Bobby has always been an incredibly reactive role – one which requires the performer to watch other couples singing their hearts out, without truly expressing their own; many of Company’s biggest numbers, FANTASTICALLY done here – “Ladies Who Lunch”, “Getting Married Today” – are only tangentially Bobbie’s story; never watching Rosalie Craig does it feel anything but. She can go from comic to shocked in the same laugh, sure of herself to confused in just a step, and by (almost like a fourth-wall-breaking sitcom) taking us into her confidence, her smallest worry hit the back of the auditorium. She has such an ability to turn on a dime and reflect the fights and frictions – more than a mere bystander, you can often see the cogs turn as she turns others’ emotional outbursts towards herself, or unsuccessfully tries to deflect her emotional response to the madness around her. We just catch her looking, and looking… and we look right back. And this is just her NOT singing and acting! When that voice gets “Marry Me A Little” or “Being Alive”, bloody hell… However much Bobbie is meant to have closed that door emotionally, Rosalie Craig is such an emotionally accessible presence; having her play someone as emotionally inaccessible and confused as Sondheim and Furth’s apathetic and indecisive hero complicates Bobbie – now her emotional stuntedness is self-doubt and society and real depth, a muddle of giant emotions hidden behind smaller apathetic indecisive ones. And all this from how she mouths the word “wow”! Quite simply – I know I’m going out on a limb here, given some of your reactions, but sod it – I would put Rosalie Craig’s performance up there with Hattie Morahan’s Nora, Rooster Byron, and Imelda’s Mama Rose, as one of THOSE performances. She’s that good – but there’s something special about the way she brings this to life.

(Also, some actual family members saw this, knowing nothing about the musical’s past, and loved it as a ‘new musical’ – it just works)

One last thing – seeing it closeish to the end of its run, I still felt the air of an ‘event’ around it. Perhaps that’s just breathing the same air as Patti, I don’t know, but the audience seemed buzzing. I can’t remember an atmosphere like it for a while.

I hope it’s clear I was really overwhelmed by this. It’s extraordinary. Rough edges intact, Elliott changes the focus from questions about Bobby’s bachelordom to questions that are gendered and satirical and specific, and questions that are general that hit me in my personal life – and, rather than tie them up in a bow, forces us to leave the theatre, like Bobbie, emotionally rawer and wanting answers and personally vulnerable. I haven’t stopped thinking about this since I saw it – haven’t stopped trying to consolidate Bobbie’s uncertainties and society’s pressures, haven’t stopped thinking about THAT extraordinary performance of THIS Bobbie.

P.S. When I was younger, my simple dream in life was to see Elaine Stritch, Bernadette Peters, and Patti Lupone (and yet, somehow, my parents didn’t twig anything). The first of course never happened. The second moved me to absolute tears, from the back row – the very cheapest, very last seat – of the Southbank Centre. For Patti, I thought I was missing this and it was breaking my wee heart, but luck bought me to London, the day seat queue and – to see someone I’ve idolised for years – second bloody row. She looked at me. There were moments towards the beginning when I was just completely and utterly in awe. Even now I still am.