Sunday, April 2, 2006

Phone rings, door chimes…

I scooted over to Cincinnati last Thursday to see Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's production of Stephen Sondheim's Company, my second-favorite Sondheim show. (My first, for entirely sentimental reasons, is Merrily We Roll Along. No one else I know counts it in their top five.)

One of the things that distinguishes live theatre from the movies is that our relationship to shows can change in two dimensions: either as a factor of a different production that changes some aspect of the play or of the fact that we're the ones who have changed since first seeing it or, for that matter, both. Movies are static and unchanging; our estimation of them changes only if we acknowledge a change in ourselves (age, experience, whatever).

My relationship with Company changes every time I see it, and this was no exception. I last saw the show four years ago at the Kennedy Center, with John Barrowman as Bobby and Lynn Redgrave as Joanne. I said at the time it was the best production I was likely to see for a while; the Cincinnati production now holds that distinction. I'm also a few years older. Joanne's line late in act two about their set being "too young for the old people and too old for the young people" seems a little more apt to me now. That's certainly how I've been feeling lately.

As for the production itself, I can't improve on the praise the many regional and national reviews have piled on it. It just works, and certainly better that director John Doyle's current New York production of Sweeney Todd that employs the same conceit (the actors accompanying themselves as the orchestra), which I enjoyed but didn't love. Company just works better this way, and the necessary compression of the score and reduction of the stage business reinvents the show as more of a chamber piece, boiling it down to the essence.

Short takes: Raul Esparza, who I like more every time I see him, is hands-down the best Bobby I've ever seen. He sings the hell out of—and means every word of—"Being Alive". I'd never seen a production that interpolated "Marry Me a Little"; here it ends the first act and, rather than diminish the finale as I'd feared, it actually enhances it. When Bobby gets to "Being Alive", you realize "Marry Me a Little" was a perfectly logical, perfectly appropriate stop on his emotional journey. "Barcelona" doesn't work as well when April and Bobby aren't naked and in bed, but I sure don't miss the "Tick-Tock" ballet. Barbara Walsh is fierce as Joanne, the least self-deluded and most honest character in the piece. David Gallo's minimalist set looks great in the Marx space, aided by Tom Hase's lighting, and $30,000 worth of designer clothes look fantastic on the cast in stark black and white. The rest of the company was superb, particularly Matt Castle (hubba hubba) as Peter and Heather Laws as Amy. There were a few places where I thought the sound could have been better, but that may have been a consequence of where I was sitting in the fourth row. Some friends seated in the last row on the floor said the vocal/music mix was fine.

The production continues through April 14 and, although it is substantially sold out, I encourage you to see it if you can. Despite the optimism of my friends at the Playhouse, who have seen a parade of New York producers and potential backers in the audience over the past few weeks, I will be very surprised if this particular production has a life outside Ohio.