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In its drift-and-stop rhythms, the 1970 musicalCompanymoves a bit like a dark ride at a carnival.
The show sort of jellsaround you, holding you close but keeping you at a distance.
At least, thats the way its supposed to be.
Even the central character inCompany, Bobby,is actually peripheral: a friend groups one remaining singleton.
We see several couples in different states of confusion, hostility, and fracture.
The men are blithe or harried or roguish, and the women seem so bored!
And if youre single, the romantic options are sour and needy.
Theres barely a narrative inCompany, just a long dark night of the solo adult.
Itsa brittle, sardonic sales pitch … that works.
Of all the productions the shutdown closed, the March 2020 suspension ofCompanywas the most loudly lamented.
And then, the night before it opened, Broadways lights dimmed in tribute to Stephen Sondheim.
Here, already dressed for the wake, was the musical often seen as his self-portrait.
Here and there, this vibrating hysteria helps the show.
/ Its a prehistoric ritual), surfed those waves brilliantly.
But the show as a whole doesnt stand up under that tsunami of adoration.
Certainly Lenks own performance shrinks in the face of it.
Something unkind has happened, too, in the musical transpositions.
Lenk has trouble with it, hitting her highest emotional peak while singing her least comfortable musical note.
Its weirdly sour, in the one moment that Sondheim wanted the sound to be sweet.
(This turns the climax of the show away from being predatorily erotic, which is a mistake.)
But what does the sex-swap mean?
Gender does not fold down the middle like a Rorschach blot.
There are asynchronies and asymmetries, and the team tries to recut the show to fit.
Occasionally, the combination of updating people have cell phones and gender-switching turns dialogue into nonsense.
These are kiss my ass level swears.
Fitzgerald is the funniest thing on legs, but even he cant sell usthat.
(It feels a missed opportunity to not simply have Bobbie be gay.
A male Bobby does not really have a biological clock; his pressure is more psychological than obstetrical.
And when the character reaches the storys key realization, Elliott gets it backwards.
But who will I take care of?
he asks, after a lifetime of dodging responsibility.
Elliott swaps this, so Bobbie asks But who will take care of me?
Now,nowwere meant to think shes finally ready to … be more dependent?
Still, Sondheim and Furths show has its own tensile strength.
It shouldnt hang together, considering how loosely theyve bound it, but somehow it does.
Pennebakerdocumentaryabout the making of the cast album, and youll see how tough it is.
In the end, thisCompanyis resilient too.
If the production isnt thinking carefully, at least the songs still are.
Shes also an ideal expositor of the maestros work.
And so it is here.
Song by song by song, its enough.
The little things they sing together still make Sondheim a joy.
Companyis at the Jacobs Theatre.
