Two is Company, Three’s a crowd, and nine is frankly ridiculous
Lots of fun and not too highbrow in the New York with of married people and their single friend.
We find ourselves at Piccadilly Circus on a wet Thursday night. I am going out with the parents and two of three smaller mes and tensions are already high. We are going to see Company, the old Sondheim ‘Musical Comedy’ that you have likely seen staring at you from buses and Tube station walls. The pink and blue advert, featuring a scary looking woman looking out and holding a balloon? You know the one that I mean. I say tensions are high because we have already been through how much I am eating, sleeping and working (all too little) and so I decide to move conversation onto what we are going to see.
“What do we know about the musical then?” I ask, pulling on the conversational control joystick, trying to pull out of the current nosedive. “Well”, my woke Matriarch intones, “It came out in the 70’s and used to feature a male lead. They have gender-flipped the whole thing.” she finishes triumphantly. In hindsight “So?” was not the right response. Maybe I should have considered what a triumph this was, how the West End was reacting to the changing, diverse and progressive world we live in. By repackaging a musical from the 70s. With the atmosphere having gone past frosty a while ago, I decided to withhold any further comment.
The curtain goes up and we are introduced to Bobby, our central and single character. We will not find out anything more about her, other than the fact that she might want to get married but then again maybe not. We find Bobby at her 35th birthday, surrounded by the united forces of matrimony in the form of her friends. The set is beautiful, a series of boxes that glide out of the wings or from the back, that make the enormous stage feel close and claustrophobic. We feel sympathy with our central Bobby, crowded by her friends all demanding to know why she isn’t shacked up yet and taking every opportunity to repeat the title, even from the cheapo seats at the back.
We then move through couples’ living rooms, following Bobby on her life of eternal third wheeling. These scenes are some of the best; cookie cutter characters, such as the dieting and hen-pecking wife and the newly teetotal husband, are wonderfully deep and reveal so much more about marriage than their words. The moaning about how lucky Bobby is, able to escape and live her own life is undercut by weird and tender moments like a couple having a ju-jitsu brawl. They shout their love at each other, bitch to Bobby, fight like animals and all the while manage to seem charming. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but Sondheim seems to pull it off.
The musical bounces along, a series of vignettes, none of which are really linked together by anything more than Bobby. Couple after couple, the woman who complains about having married a “square” as the three smoke a joint on the pavement outside their brownstone New York building, the gay super couple, the metrosexual artsy ones and the jaded thrice divorced fur coat wearer who smokes cigarillos. All of them rich characters that ooze life and mid-life crisis. In comparison Bobby seems dull. She is an empty hole off of which the others bounce. The same is true of her boyfriends - the pretentious artist, the old ex and the stupid air steward. Regarding the last one on the list, let it not be said that I did not appreciate the gender flipping at all. The character was only just bearable as a mildly amusing subversion. I do have a kind word for the choreography. There is an incredible scene, in which Bobby imagines what her life would be like married to the trolly-dolly. Using the set to its fullest, a series of Bobbys, all at different stages of life emerge from doors, shower curtains or fridges and repeat a moment from their life before disappearing by a different exit, only to repeat the action seconds later. A morning routine as a young professional, cleaning up after the husband, a struggle with a pram, a juggling of keys and phone and baby sling all blend into one frantic, tragic, breath taking set piece.
And you know what? It worked. Bobby, I will not reveal what happens to her for those that want to make the show, works something out and sings a final song about working something out and I will be darned if I didn’t tear up a little bit and broody up a lot. I don’t think I was the only one. As they walked out, everyone in the audience gave off the air of being suddenly very keen on Company.
If that wasn’t a good play then I don’t know what is.
-4 stars
