Superopinionated

Summer ended with Company coming to town, the touring version of the Broadway version of the West End revival in 2018. The One With The Girl, as it were. The performances were fine at a certain level – nobody was off-key, for example, and only one person sang the wrong lyrics, and only once – but whatever show was on stage, it wasn’t Company.

Company is a show preoccupied with how adults care for one another, and why we do it. Its main character, Robert, is a man in his middle thirties (or maybe late thirties, or maybe early forties – he’s never quite honest about his age) who is stuck as the third wheel in all his friendships. His friends have paired up and gone on to develop a kind of bond that Robert is puzzled by and, deep down, is afraid of. He dates widely but misses out on developing more intimacy with any of them. He tries to convince his friend Amy to enter into a sham marriage together, “and everyone will leave us alone”; she laughs at him. Even arguably his closest friend, Joanne, is putting on a facade when she’s around him, play-acting the kind of person she used to be to stay in touch with the kind of person Robert still is. The play closes with Robert showing genuine emotion for the first time and admitting that he wants to build a life with someone else.

We rob ourselves of meaning by not acknowledging that this is a musical with lyrics and music written by a gay man. And it makes sense to change out the genders of various characters and introduce queerness into Company in a revival – after all, life is full of queer people.

But the new adaptation has become preoccupied with baby fever, which was never there before as a theme and felt so heavy-handed as to be insulting. Having the number “35” (Bobbie's age) all over the set in various places (balloons, the living room set artwork) was, at best, distracting. Similarly, transition music is overlaid with an aggressive ticking clock sound ( to represent her “biological clock” one assumes). These felt like first-draft brainstorms that should have been cut. I do not want to diminish the very real desire of some people to become pregnant and give birth. It’s just that 1) that’s not what the play is about and 2) I don’t think that’s what the play should become mostly about just because the main character has a uterus.

I also do not understand why having a woman play Bobby requires changing the genders of the people Bobby is in romantic relationships with. It smacks of the same cowardice displayed when male pop stars cover love songs but swap the genders so they aren’t singing to a man (and are thus perceived as gay for three minutes of a song). For one, “You Could Drive A Person Crazy”, as sung by three men to a woman, does not work as a humorous musical number. Having a group of men berate a woman for not being sexually or emotionally available: the vibes, as they say, are off. And God help me, it makes me think slightly less of Sondheim for choosing the word “chick” for the new rhyme scheme. It betrays a lack of attunement to language and cultural relevancy that he, the characters, and the audience don't deserve.

Secondly, does nobody else recall the total chokehold the character of Shane had on the queer cultural consciousness when The L Word was on the air? The archetype of the lesbian fuckboi deserves a broader audience. This was a missed opportunity to introduce a new generation of lonely, socially distanced femmes and thems to the unique emotional devestation and catharsis offered by a butch with a lanyard necklace and a rattail finally becoming willing to ditch their second phone. I grieve what could have been.

I also disagree with the choice of Jamie-for-Amy as the play’s new gay character. The only thing that’s changed there is “Not Getting Married Today” sung at half speed. Narratively, they’re the straightest gay couple possible and it doesn’t do anything new or interesting. I don’t need people paying $200 a seat to feel good about letting me have the same legal rights.

No, the other character to gender-swap for queerness in this play is Joanne: Trophy husband hunter Joanne, older-than-her-social-set Joanne, Joanne, a Lady Who Lunches (ladies who lunch: the bread and butter of theater ticket sales). Joanne who when this play first debuted in 1970 would have been a character born in the 1920s, but now would be a Gen Xer jaded by how following the rules of the system hasn’t panned out emotionally. Paired with a lesbian Bobbi, this would be the prestige role for your Neil Patrick Harrises, Billy Porters, and so on. Gay, bitter, aging twink Joey.

I didn’t dislike the whole thing (if I did, I wouldn’t bother writing anything). The conceit of the small-set-for-a-small-life was, again, heavy-handed but it mostly worked. Of the stage elements I found myself wishing they’d done more, because if you’re going to design and wire up a giant light-up box, and go to the trouble of programming it to flash different colors occasionally, then I start to wonder what else you’re going to do with it. (Turns out: nothing.) The staging introduced the use of cell phones to such an extent I’m almost convinced someone had a Dickensian per-phone-use payment in the contract. I understand that cellular technology would need to be added, given the updating of the script from 1970 (or 2006, the last major Broadway production), but given the age group of the characters, it felt out of touch to have everyone snapping selfies near-constantly during the opener (or, to be precise, it felt like watching adults try to imitate teenagers).

As I said, it was mostly a fine show. I thought the reworking of “Tik Tok” into a montage about how to raise a baby with a hook-up was very well done. Even the elements that were overly busy and didn’t quite execute (the choreography for “Not Getting Married Today”, notably) were earnest and had a charming Muppet Show sort of quality to the mayhem.

It was a fine show. It just wasn’t Company.