Company Revival Smart but Cold

Took a day trip to Manhattan on Wednesday and caught the Company revival and the new musical Spring Awakening. Let's start with Company.

I was concerned that John Doyle's actor/musician conceit would wear out its welcome. It worked brilliantly with Sweeney Todd, but I wasn't sure whether it would prove to be a fun one-time gimmick or a sustainable method of production. I'll leave that question for another day. The question at present is whether it works in the current production.

With Sweeney, the actor/musician ploy was in many ways the star of the show, although Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone certainly more than held their own. With Company, it fades into the background and becomes just another production element, which is probably as it should be.

As for the production and the performances, I found them both a bit bloodless. I was prepared to have Raul Esparza and Barbara Walsh blow me away, but they just didn't. My main gripe with the show is that there was very little passion in evidence. You might say, well these aren't passionate people. Perhaps, but they are neurotic, and I just wasn't getting the tension, the edginess that this show requires. Doyle's direction includes some really interesting touches, but the scenes ultimately felt sanitized and the songs perfunctory.

(Oh, and Heather Laws as Amy kept taking breaths in the middle of the frenzied patter of "Getting Married Today." Sorry, that's unacceptable. It undermines the very power of the song.)

Perhaps the blue-hair Wednesday matinee crowd wasn't inspiring the cast to give their all. I mean, we're talking a really older demographic at this performance. Let's just say that getting many of the patrons to their seats required crampons, carabiners, and supplemental oxygen. But that really shouldn't make a difference, should it?

There's no question that this production is a significant improvement over the 1995 Roundabout revival. There were some compelling performances in that version, but Rob Marshall's embarrassingly over-choreographed  production numbers really ruined things, for me anyway.

But whereas Doyle's Sweeney Todd amounted to nothing less than a comprehensive re-imagining of the piece,  his Company comprises a thoroughly professional but ultimately unsatisfying presentation that leaves the definitive nature of the original production pretty much intact.

Comments

[Steve On Broadway (SOB)]

Welcome back, Chris! I've missed your vital voice. Also glad to get your perspective on Company, which I'm not slated to see until February.