Company at the Gielgud theatre review ****

Company

Gielgud Theatre, 29th November 2018

Regular readers will know that the Tourist doesn’t like musicals. However, with Company now ranking alongside Follies, Caroline, Or Change, Groundhog Day, Gypsy, Girl From the North Country, Junkyard and White Teeth, the list of exceptions to the rule is growing alarmingly long. Looks like I may need to revise my opinion. Maybe I just don’t like crap musicals. Or, in a witlessly circular way, just musicals I don’t like.

Company, as you can read at great length elsewhere, is very far from being crap. It’s Sondheim for a start. With a twist as the, artistically and commercially, gifted Marianne Elliott (Angels in America, Curious Incident, War Horse) has inverted the story casting Bobbie (Rosalie Craig, there she is) as a single, female thirty-something mulling the “attractions’ of a life of domestic, married bliss. All done with the blessing and assistance of Lord Sir Stephen S, (well he would be if he were British), who is notoriously, and rightly, possessive about his work. And a trademark, stunning multi-neon, multi-light box design a la Curious Incident from Bunny Christie that could even accommodate a bigger stage.

Now there were still one or two moments when the Tourist’s anti-musical radar started twitching. A fair few of the c(C)ompany dance routines were a little too slick, with choreographed “leaning in” and the suspicion of jazz hands. The camp quotient meter lurched close to the red on occasions. Some of the dialogue seemed a little workaday in places. I am probably alone in failing to understand why Patti LuPone, playing Joanne, is a legend, or maybe the cliche of hard-bitten Broadway broad is just not my bag.

But the music, here played by a bad-ass band under musical supervisor and conductor Joel Fram, with its motifs, repetitions, parodies, consistent surprises, and the lyrics, intelligent, arch, acerbic, funny, thoughtful, wistful, put it into a different league from the fluffy, zero to hero, musical norm. It’s not Chekhov, but unlike what I think of as most musicals, it does ring true to life. It doesn’t have a plot or chronology to speak of, rehearsing Bobbie’s central dilemma over and over again, with different partners and different couples, it doesn’t resolve and it certainly isn’t any sort of “genre”. In fact I can see why, in its garish expressionism, why some punters think this production is all actually going on inside Bobbie’s head.

SS, together with book-writer George Furth, set their musical in the New York of 1970, and built it around nine linked scenes that Furth had previously created for a play. “The increasing difficulty of making emotional connections in an increasingly dehumanised society”. That was how SS described the theme at that time. Marianne Elliot has stuck with the setting, but by inverting the gender of the protagonist, (and many of the gender roles in the couples who come together to give her a surprise 35th birthday party), she brings it bang up to date. Mind you, given extended single-dom, Tinder and the quest for on-line perfection, maybe the world has moved closer to the theme. Don’t ask me, this sort of caper is miles outside of my comfort zone, but Company still struck chords, and not just musically, ta-dah. Anyway throwing the so-called “biological clock” into the mix is a master-stroke. The personal is still political.

There are some absolutely stunning set pieces, in part due to illusionist Chris Fisher, lighting design of Neil Austin and choreography and dance routines of Liam Steel and Sam Davies. Bobbie’s Tardis of an apartment, the street and subway scenes, Another Hundred People, the party games, Company and What Would I Do Without You, the daily routine of living together and the imagined future, (this is where the babies come in), in instrumental Tick Tock with the procession of Bobby body doubles, Jamie’s (Jonathan Bailey, brilliant, again) altar-jilting of Paul (Alex Gaumond), Getting Married Today, the barbershop trio of You Could Drive A Person Crazy (the three boyfriends now being PJ, Andy and Theo),

That’s All I Can Remember. Oh hang that’s not a song that’s just a remark. Whatever. Not knowing the songs or the story, such as it is, means I am not a particularly reliable correspondent but I can assure you that you can believe the positive reviews.

Now Rosalie Craig can sing. And she can dance. But best of all she can act, as the Tourist knows from her turns as Rosalind in the Polly Findlay NT As You Like It alongside Patsy Ferran, and as Polly in the NT Threepenny Opera. Here she plays Bobbie as a wry, detached, almost observer, of her own life, (is it a dream?), occasionally breaking out into a more impassioned soliloquy, firstly in Marry Me A Little and then, most vehemently, in the finale Being Alive. She humours her friends, accepting their foibles, justifications and disappointments and accepting with good humour their attempts to couple her up. but you always sense her reticence in embracing an unknown future when compared to her spirited past and predictable present. Her red dress, and forgive me for the crass and cliched observation, her flame-red hair, make her the focus of attention even when the action is flowing around her. Bobbie’s ambivalence towards coupledom is always present.

Whilst I may not have been entirely convinced by Joanne as performed I see exactly why the character is necessary. With Bobby now as Bobbie, the forceful and intelligent, if somewhat embittered, older woman serves as both guardian and warning. Gavin Spokes, (I wondered where I has seen him last – as the unfortunate Major Ingram in James Graham’s Quiz), as Harry gives Mel Giedroyc, as wife Sarah, a run for her money in the hamming it up stakes. Both are very funny. I was also struck by Jennifer Saayeng’s uneasy Jenny, Ashley Campbell’s conflicted Peter and Daisy Maywood’s haughty Susan but this really is a fine ensemble.

From what I read Company always wows audiences and critics when it is performed, from its first run through many major revivals. It’s easy to see why. If it wasn’t for that Hamilton caper this Elliott/Harper production would sweep up all the musical awards for 2018. I wonder, when it gets its next major UK or US outing (for it is off, of course, to Broadway next year), whether anyone would dare return to Bobby.

Plenty of seats left for the remainder of the now extended run to end March. The prices they are charging for the best seats are in the category of “you’re sh*tting me” but for once it might be worth it and, if you want to, or have to, go cheaper, the Gielgud is not the worst of the West End theatres for sight-lines and legroom. Whatever you do through, don’t miss it. Even if, like me, you hate musicals!!!