I saw the new Broadway production of "Company" in its pre-Broadway stop in Cincinnati. I loved the production but was more overwhelmed by my giddiness at hearing these songs that I knew so well on stage for the first time in my life. I enjoyed the D.A. Pennebaker documentary about the making of the cast recording, in which Sondheim advises his actors on the pronunciation of every minute syllable and everyone grows weary waiting for the prickly Elaine Stritch to stop screwing up "The Ladies Who Lunch." And I will admit to purposefully rigging my iPod so that it plays "Another Hundred People" as I walk through Grand Central Station.
Also adding to my pleasure was my sense of accomplishment at my travel arrangements, timed perfectly, involving a a flight to Cincinnati and, after the show, an overnight Greyhound bus to Cleveland to visit my brother at Oberlin. There was a sense of adventure in leaving New York and finding, here in the Midwestern wilderness, such a sleek production at such a friendly regional theater, where the lobby was swarming with people. At a theater. Here, in Cincinnati! Where they eat chili on a bed of spaghetti! That was my dinner, at Skyline Chili, which is famous for this stuff. But why eat spaghetti with chili when they have cookies, brownies, sandwiches, soups, all available at snack bar in the massive, bright theater lobby? And you could eat it sitting at a table! To someone like me who every night at 7:55 can be found outside a theater wolfing down my tuna salad sandwich from Cafe Europa, this is a revelation.
And on your way into the theater there's a basket of cough drops, for your convenience. No more having to unwrap them beforehand, like the voice always tells you to do. Where are you supposed to store those naked cough drops, I wonder? Stick them in the pages of your Playbill? Line them up on your arm wrest? Lick them all, stick them all together and attach the lump to the seat in front of you? I have no clue. But still, the voice keeps telling us to unwrap them, and people who have never heard the voice always laugh.
But anyway, when I saw this same production of "Company" on Broadway on Nov. 27, I was just as impressed as I was in Cincinnati. Sure, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park had its benefits — a gorgeous thrust stage, and the "stadium seating"-style house in which the rows of seats rose at such an angle that much of the audience was looking down at the actors from above. The setup allowed the staging to be much more dynamic — the actors moved upstage, downstage, and every which way — than it was in the traditional proscenium Ethel Barrymore Theater where the show is Broadway. But while watching the show for the second time, on Broadway, I had some insights about the show that I didn't have in Cincinnati. I had the joy of discovering that the director John Doyle's technique of having the actors play the instruments, which was used to great success in "Sweeney Todd" on Broadway last season, was completely justified.
First, there's the pleasure of seeing instruments played. Too often in musicals, orchestras feel like disembodied noises piped in from god knows where, even when the orchestra's in the pit. At "Company," not only can you see the guy's fingers tinkering away on the trumpet, you can hear the music directionally (especially on Broadway, where I sat much closer, and where the traditional proscenium stage caused the performers to be placed along a more horizontal line, left-to-right). The trumpet is over there so the trumpet noise comes from over there, and the piano is over there so the piano comes from over there, and oh look, there's someone hitting the triangle, and oh look...it's a really simple thing, but it adds to the enjoyment. Even a lot of pure music performances, like rock concerts, can't give you the same experience.
There are other pleasures, like the three women performing "You Can Drive a Person Crazy" on saxophones. But Doyle's technique isn't only enjoyable, it is a justified way of approaching the material. To me, watching the actors playing their own instruments added to the show's general sense of uncertainty These actors weren't accompanied by the comforting sound of the pit orchestra, and the conductor telling them what to do. The situation reinforces the sense that these characters are fending for themselves when it comes to love and urban life. They're out of their element, they're living in a city in which even the people who seem the most well-adjusted can be secretly lonely, carrying secret burdens, and where no one really knows how to deal with love. This interpretation may sound overly thought-out and metaphorical but that's truly what I felt while watching the actors play the instruments in this production of "Company," which will no doubt end up as one of my top shows of the year.
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