Company

Sondheim’s writing is like an iced burnt cake. The bottom may be hard to swallow and bitter, but the icing on top is there for a reason, to make the cake palatable. Sondheim’s writing is so layered, so full of subtext and nuance that he deliberately uses the icing for a sweet mouthful, so that you won’t taste the bitterness lying just underneath until you’ve swallowed it. Company, the first concept musical, is the epitome of the iced layered cake. The sweet idealism on top…..the burnt bitterness of cynicism and failure underneath. Sondheim is both an idealist and a cynic….and failed idealists make the very best cynics. George Furth echoes that in the book. Someone should have explained that to Director Kat Henry, since she has decided to leave the icing off the cake and ask the audience to eat the very obviously burnt cake below. The result is hard to swallow and you don’t get the Yin and Yang flavours of Sondheim or Furth, and the show is diminished by that.

I’ve seen productions of Company in every one of the last five decades, so I guess some disappointments are inevitable. But at least it’s easy to pinpoint the problem here – Director’s vision. Miss Henry talks, in her somewhat pretentious programme notes, about the differences between marital attitudes of the seventies and 2015 and says, “It is crucial that this production speaks to our contemporary consciousness.” I’d agree with that, but not at the expense of the writer’s intent. Manhattan is not Moonee Ponds. There doesn’t need to be a faint whiff of domestic violence in David and Jenny’s relationship, or Harry and Sarah (John O’Hara and Nicole Malloy – both great performers in their own right, and charismatic) played OTT and like circus clowns. Subtlety…..the icing covers it. A pretty ordinary couple in many ways…except she has eating issues, he drinks – because both wish they were somewhere else. They’re scrambling to keep the marriage together and so they play at being perfect. WE GET IT.

The positives are some truly memorable performances from a great pool of talent, along with Michael Ralph’s highly individual choreography. In confined spaces he makes “synchronised hand dancing” an Art Form.

Some may feel that Nick Simpson-Deeks is miscast, but this is a different kind of Bobby, fragile, vulnerable, deep. He’s a fine actor in everything he does, with a rich emotional core of truth, and his voice is terrific. “Being Alive” is an absolute triumph. But Bobby, as conceived, is all of those things in the burnt layers of the cake. The icing presents us, or should, with the mask of a Bobby who is (seemingly) self-assured, who uses sex to avoid love, who never lets on how terrified he is. Surface versus subtext. It’s a terrific performance, but incomplete without the icing. Similarly, drunk Joanne’s bitter cynicism and contempt for every woman around her is a mask to hide her own self loathing. Larry even tells us about her lack of self esteem in the dialogue…we don’t need to have the brittleness taken off the character, or for her to appear more human to us; we know too well what’s going on. Sondheim fans are SMART….they don’t appreciate character reduced to TAFE psychology 101. In delving deeper, tearing off the masks, playing the subtext as the primary through-line rather than in tandem with the text, the characters lose their powers of seduction…and in that, lose the point of this marvellous show, which is ‘We are sold a crock of shit about what marriage and relationships should be. We are seduced by an ideal and forced to live behind masks of expectations, doomed to failure, wanting what doesn’t exist. Don’t buy it – find your truth.”

Nevertheless, Sally Bourne is a wonderful and generous performer….giving up the Tag and applause to “Ladies Who Lunch” for the sake of preserving the mood and continuity of the scene is a great PLUS to the show (and the artist’s own choice). Brava! Carina Waye is truly delightful as April and brings some light to the darkness. “Barcelona” is wonderfully naïve and genuine. The marvellous Gillian Cosgriff is wasted as Susan and Nelson Gardner – as the Ivy League, bi-curious Peter, is pleasant but far more Swinburne Tech than Ivy League.

Nathan Carter spurns Moonee Ponds for Upper Manhattan and in doing so gives us an authentic Sondheim character…all style on top with the substance underneath. Madeleine Mackenzie is a great dancer, but the Tick Tock dance sequence has always been anathema to me (a Michael Bennett indulgence?) and there was a lack of chemistry in the awkward “coulda, shoulda” scene with Bobby. Bianca Baykara is one of my current favourite performers, but she really needs to work on diction for “Another Hundred People”.  It’s a bitch of a song and with only overhead baby shotguns to amplify, a lot of the lyrics are swallowed or drowned by the very accomplished band under the direction of Lucy O’Brien.

The wonderful Johanna Allen brings three dimensions, much warmth, and lots of curves (plus that astonishing voice) to Jenny, and the equally wonderful Mark Dickinson is terrific in the musical numbers (especially “Sorry-Grateful”) but is tainted by the bitterness in some lines suggesting a wife beater.

Amy (Sonya Suares) and Paul (Tim Paige) are miscast and totally unbelievable as a couple. The ditsy craziness of Amy has been discarded for a sophisticated city business woman and “I’m Not Getting Married” becomes distasteful neurotic hysteria. I suspect Sondheim would retch to see HIS Amy getting married in a white pants suit with a black shirt. The REAL Amy would want all the trimmings….and when THIS Amy says “I’ve got my own Jew” it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth rather than an “oops…she’s ditsy” reaction.

It’s the lack of truth in this interpretation of the show which troubles me and it’s carried through to costuming (Zoe Rouse) which is really awful throughout, with no cohesion of period or style. I know there is a very limited budget, but honestly, even Moonee Ponds residents wouldn’t be caught dead in those clothes. The set….Bobby’s apartment (designed by Eugyeene The) is bland in the extreme and does nothing to set character or the essential “Time, Manner, Place”. It detracts from, rather than enhances, story. Rob Sowinski’s Lighting Design is strong throughout but, even so, there are some dead spots on the stage and actors are in darkness as a result of the blocking.

There’s still a lot to entertain in this production, but it doesn’t measure up to the company’s previous Sondheim outings with Assassins and the wonderful Pacific Overtures. It needs Style, it needs Sophistication; less Moonee Ponds – More Manhattan. Put back the icing – without it, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Coral Drouyn

Disclosure – I am friends with some members of the cast. Far from being biased, this may have led to me being harsher than normal in reviewing because I know their staggering capabilities.

Photographer: Jodie Hutchinson