Review: Gender-swapped ‘Company’ revival dazzles, capturing the spirit of Sondheim

Robert or Bobby — as he’s known to his friends — the protagonist of “Company,” Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 musical, has always been an enigma. Why won’t this confirmed New York bachelor, who is celebrating his 35th birthday and not getting any younger, finally settle down with a wife? What is he so afraid of?

This question is the springboard for a groundbreaking concept musical. The show burrows into the character’s psyche while surveying the mixed blessing of marriage in a kaleidoscopic revue that boasts one of Sondheim’s most irresistible scores.

Scenes are linked thematically rather than in the linear narrative fashion of traditional book musicals. But for many fans of the show, the mystery of Bobby’s nature was never satisfyingly solved.

Marianne Elliott, the Tony-winning director of “War Horse,” “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and the Broadway revival of “Angels in America,” wondered what would happen if you turned Bobby into Bobbie and cast the role with a woman. Her Tony-winning revival, which starred Katrina Lenk as Bobbie and the inimitable Patti LuPone as Joanna, whose rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch” had Broadway raising a glass in her honor, discovered that the mystery might not be solved but a fresh new take could yield provocative insights.

LuPone isn’t in the North American tour production of “Company” playing at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre through Aug. 18. But Britney Coleman is radiant in the role of Bobbie.

She’s more grounded than Lenk, who leaned into Bobbie’s sphinx-like nature, endowing the character with a Mona Lisa smile. What’s more, Coleman’s voice is powerful enough to make the most of the original Bobby’s big numbers without sacrificing contours of personality. (Her rendition of “Being Alive,” the character’s climactic epiphany, had the Hollywood Pantages audience roaring in appreciation.)

Better still, Coleman finds the perfect tone to carry the musical, balancing cockiness and insecurity, loneliness and independence, and irony and sincerity. Indeed, the spirit of Sondheim lives on in her performance.

This gender-flipped production is far from perfect. Elliott plays fast and loose with the period, updating the era so that Bobbie is rarely without her phone, taking selfies and looking at what seem like dating apps. There’s a joke about Prozac, but also one about Sara Lee, the go-to frozen cheesecake brand of my 1970s childhood. The costumes by Bunny Christie, who also designed the geometric sets, follow suit in a parade of fashions that suggest a post-’70s retrospective.

Elliott deals with those elements of the social world that concern her and ignores those that don’t. In one sense, race is a factor, given that Bobbie is now played by a Black woman and several of the couples are cast as interracial. But the musical would need to be substantially revised to deal explicitly with this change and that is not the case here.

The same could be said about the gender swap. Strategic modifications have been made to accommodate the shift, but the production is largely faithful to the spirit of the original. Unencumbered by her own directorial scheme, Elliott leans into the freedom of musical storytelling, a mode in which realism is dabbed on rather than studiously applied.

The inconsistencies and interpretive static never disappear, but Sondheim and Furth’s “Company” comes through where it matters most — theatrically. As I felt when I saw this revival on Broadway, Furth’s book might have benefited from some judicious pruning. But the musical numbers provide more than enough blissful compensation.

Marriage is the main topic, both the joys and despairs, in numbers that make ambivalence energizing, fun, poignant and, most important, resonantly true. “The Little Things You Do Together,” “Sorry-Grateful” and “Marry Me a Little” tackle the subject from different angles, but they prove that lyrical complexity and tunefulness can go hand in hand.

One of the highlights of this revival is the handling of “Getting Married Today.” The source of incapacitating wedding day jitters is now a gay wedding. Jamie (Matt Rodin) vents his acute anxiety in a song that demands the highest level of neurotic showmanship. Rodin is a marvel, delivering with rapid-fire virtuosity lines by Sondheim that are made all the more involving by the sensitive portrayal of husband-to-be Paul (Jhardon DiShon Milton, in a touching performance).

Britney Coleman as Bobbie, Matthew Christian as David and Emma Stratton as Jenny in “Company.”

(Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)

Of the other supporting cast members, Matt Bittner makes the most of his appearances on stage. In one scene, playing a straitlaced husband who gets high with his wife and Bobbie, he confronts difficult marital feelings his character would normally censor in a comically alert performance that mines Furth’s book for dramatic gold.

Sometimes the novelty of the revival gets the better of the ensemble’s character work. The fault lies less with the performers than with the revival’s hesitant approach to textual changes. Switching Bobby’s trio of girlfriends to Bobbie’s trio of boyfriends, for example, requires more than light textual revision and bold casting choices. (“Barcelona,” however, is nonetheless memorably pulled off by Jacob Dickey’s flight attendant Andy and Coleman’s pleasure-seeking Bobbie.)

Britney Coleman finds the perfect tone to carry the musical, balancing cockiness and insecurity, loneliness and independence, and irony and sincerity.

(Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade)

How does Joanne fare in all of this? Judy McLane is a powerhouse singer, as adept at harmonizing with the ensemble as she is at majestically separating herself from the pack. When the spotlight is squarely on her, as it is in “The Ladies Who Lunch,” she brings the audience to a feverish pitch of Sondheimian ecstasy. But how the song fits into the dramatic arc of Bobbie’s commitment phobia isn’t easy to discern.

There’s a fuzziness to Joanna’s subsequent interaction with Bobbie, when in effect she offers to pimp out her husband to her. I could more or less track the dramatic through line from my knowledge of the original show, but the psychology gets lost in the bravura of the moment.

Despite these qualms and quibbles, I can’t remember ever feeling as invested in Bobby or Bobbie as I did at the Pantages. “Company” is always worth the time, and Coleman anchors the central role with a luminous humanity.