My love affair with the Broadway musical, Company, dates to the early 1970s. I bought the original cast album with my hard-earned money from working either in the book, toy, or camera department (I was moved around) at the old J. B. Hunter department store. That was long ago. Before Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library took over that store’s location.
I loved this show. It was so modern at the time with great music and lyrics by the late Stephen Sondheim. The original production featured the late Dean Jones as Bobby, a newly-turned 35-year-old man living in New York. His friends, the company he keeps, love him, but they don’t love him being single. They want him to get married and settle down. Even though not all of these friends are great examples of married bliss.
The new production, which opened in Memphis January 2nd at the Orpheum, gender switches, and “Bobby” becomes “Bobbie,” a Black woman. So, instead of making out with a woman flight attendant, Bobbie, played by Britney Coleman, has a hot night with a male flight attendant, played by Jacob Dickey. And a song about a nervous female bride-to-be is performed by a male groom-to-be (Matt Brodin), whose husband-to-be is played by Ali Louis Bourzgui.
Other concessions to the updated version include lots of cell phones.
I’d never seen the musical and I only had a sketchy idea of the plot, but I wasn’t sure a woman would be right. I was so conditioned to the lead being a man. But I loved the show. Coleman is engaging and her voice is so fabulous.
I also loved Judy McLane, who played the brassy Joanne. The late Elaine Stritch was Joanne in the original production. McLane’s dynamic voice was perfect in the powerful “The Ladies Who Lunch,” where she makes fun of the follow-the-crowd women “too busy to know that they’re fools” who flitter around the right art shows and other cultural events where they think they need to be. And wear “caftans” and hold “brunches in their own behalf.” Instead of being like the cynical Joanne, who just sits back with a vodka stinger and shakes her head, so to speak, at these phony baloneys.
This is a show that has the proverbial “songs you sing when you come out of the theater.” It was so great and nostalgic to hear them again. And you can hear every word in these songs, which are crisp and sharp. You want to listen to these lyrics because they are Sondheim at his cleverest.
Company brought back memories, for me, from the time before I went out in the world and began my actual career. I thought this musical was so hip.
Now, I better understand what I was listening to on my turntable back in the ’70s. Before I turned 35.
Company runs through January 7th.
