THEATER REVIEW
“Company”
Grade: C+
Through Sept. 11. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Also 8 p.m. Aug. 9, Aug. 16, Aug. 30 and Sept. 4. $28-$50. Actor's Express, 887 W. Marietta St. N.W., Suite J-107. Atlanta. 404-607-7469, actors-express.com.
Bottom line: Sondheim cocktail lacks bite.
In Stephen Sondheim's "Company," the eternally unattached and ambivalent Bobby blows out his 35th birthday candles while his happily/unhappily married friends swirl around him. He's the center of their universe. Yet when it comes to finding love, he keeps himself at a distance, never quite able to connect.
“Company” is not your typical boy-gets-girl musical comedy, just the opposite.
When it first danced onto Broadway, in 1970, the so-called “concept musical” — in which audience members peep like voyeurs into Bobby’s heady world of cocktail parties, pot smoking and one-night stands — must have felt ahead of its time: a Sondheim revue held together by a story of sorts, brimming with intelligence and style, tingly yet remote.
But in 2001, when Actor’s Express put on a revival of Sondheim’s cabaret-like study of emotional isolation, it seemed suddenly urgent and essential, fresh and alive — somehow very much in tune with the emptiness and despair of America in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Soon after the Atlanta treatment, which I was crazy about, I saw a 2002 Kennedy Center production and a 2006 Broadway revival, directed by John Doyle and starring Raul Esparza as Bobby. All this made me a big believer in Bobby and his witty, worshipful circle.
Now for its 29th season opener, Actor’s Express takes another shot at “Company.”
This time, under director Freddie Ashley, it’s a scattershot, uneven affair that rarely musters the mix of sophisticated comedy and world-weary introspection that made the theater’s previous version so memorable. It’s like Joanne, the Manhattan cynic first played by Elaine Stritch, without her Vodka Stinger.
Though music director Alli Lingenfelter and her band find shades of meaning in the notes, the show lacks energy, the lead is bland, and the costumes can be tacky. Instead of examining Bobby and his circle through a clinical lens, the eye must dart about to keep up as actors scramble around Seamus M. Bourne’s minimal, three-sided set.
In the lead, Lowrey Brown has a lovely singing voice, but he doesn’t exude the charisma or complicated coolness that makes for a successful Bobby. He plays it safe. As Sarah, Rhyn Saver is solid and assured, but that layer of tulle on her cocktail dress is so flimsily tacked on that it distracts from her karate chops. (Costumes are by Deyah Brenner.)
Jill Hames’ Susan speaks in such a caricaturish Southern drawl and keeps her face so scrunched up that she never comes across as real. And Jimmica Collins is so busy hustling up and down stairs in her backless gold dress that the subtleties of the wonderful “Another Hundred People” somehow get lost in the flutter.
Better are Dan Ford (as sweetly patient Paul) and Jessica Miesel (as his extraordinarily anxious bride, Amy). Though Miesel’s delivery of “Getting Married Today” is so brisk that the patter can be unintelligible, she’s hilarious as a woman so nervous she’s literally prostrate with fear — in a wedding gown, no less.
The audience seems to spend much of the show waiting for Atlanta diva Libby Whittemore to belt out Joanne’s signature song, “The Ladies Who Lunch.” When the acidic, heavily lubricated Joanne finally gets to that moment, Whittemore lands it. But like so many of her castmates, she doesn’t seem all that engaged with book writer George Furth’s material. Admittedly rather thin, the narrative requires irony and impeccable, clockwork timing to find its tone.
One actor who captures the essence of her character is Kelly Chapin Martin, as the daft and delightful flight attendant April. After a comical seduction scene, April and Bobby wake up together. “Where you going?” he croons, sleepily. “Barcelona,” she answers, dreamily. And their song becomes a little miracle of indecision and regret: classic Sondheim.
Too bad, then, that the rest of the show never really finds its wings.
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