Album Description: Maverick British director John Doyle, a 2006 Tony Award winner, enjoyed a surprise Broadway hit last year with his radical reworking of Sweeney Todd. He dispensed with the pit orchestra and handed all the instruments over to his on-stage performers, who doubled as musicians in between their turns acting and singing. Doyle has taken a similarly unorthodox approach to his revival of another Stephen Sondheim classic, the revered yet notoriously difficult to stage Company. As with Sweeney Todd, the results of this theatre-as-concert have entranced both critics and audiences. Linda Winer of Newsday called it 'the very best revival that Broadway has ever seen of Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1970 musical.'Variety described it as 'striking, revelatory and thoroughly compelling.' For Sondheim fans, the recorded score to Company has long been as much an object of adoration as the six-time Tony-winning play itself. Company on disc functions as a deeply moving song cycle, even apart from George Furth's libretto, about the vicissitudes of marriage and the joys and trials of the single life, seen through the eyes of the coolly dispassionate Manhattan bachelor Bobby on the occasion of his 35th birthday. This is truly the stuff of sex and the city - wry, sophisticated, painfully honest and deeply melancholy, even in a comic seducing-the-stewardess duet like 'Barcelona.' As with Sweeney Todd, which featured a bravura performance from lead actor Michael Cerveris, Doyle has found in rising star Raúl Esparza (Cabaret, Taboo, The Normal Heart) an extraordinary singer and actor who, in the words of the New York Times' Ben Brantley, gives Company 'the most compelling center it has probably ever had.' 'Mr. Doyle and his invaluable music supervisor and orchestrator, Mary-Mitchell Campbell, have shaped Company into a sort of oratorio for the church of the lonely,' says Brantley. He also praises the work of the entire ensemble - playing five married couples, three single women and one deeply ambivalent, unmarried man: 'It's their work as a team that sounds new depths in Company in ways that get under your skin without your knowing it.' Variety's David Rooney concurs: 'Angel Desai's `Another Hundred People' nails that quintessential New York song; Heather Laws lands every laugh in the mile-a-minute `Getting Married Today' with amazing speed and clarity; and Barbara Walsh is bone-dry as brittle, world-weary Joanne. She reveals the emotional hunger beneath the character's hard shell and adds fresh nuances to `The Ladies Who Lunch,' a song indelibly associated with Elaine Stritch.' As Time Out New York put it, 'Sondheim's expert musical etchings, his acid craftsmanship, remain unmatched.' Sondheim fans will note that this new version of Company, to be released by Nonesuch and PS Classics, restores the original act one closer, 'Marry Me A Little,' which was dropped from the show before its 1970 Broadway debut; the song has since taken on a life of its own as an orphaned Sondheim gem. The Company cast album is produced by PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker (Sondheim's The Frogs, Saturday Night, Assassins, and Sweeney Todd, among others). Along with Company, Nonesuch has also released the original cast album to Doyle's 2006 production of Sweeney Todd and the Tony-nominated A Light in the Piazza, which features a score by Nonesuch artist Adam Guettel.
Amazon.com: There may be no original Broadway cast recording more iconic than 1970's Company, with its funky organ sound and Elaine Stritch's not-quite-there high notes, but the December 2006 Broadway revival makes its own mark. For Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's piece about a single man observing the benefits and follies of marriage, director John Doyle borrows the same controversial concept he used for his 2005 Sweeney Todd: the actors playing instruments on stage (now referred to in many circles as 'Doyle-izing,' and not always with affection and delight). But when you're listening to a cast recording, as Bobby would say: What do you get? For one thing, you'll have to adjust to some different sounds created by Doyle and his music supervisor, Mary-Mitchell Campbell. It's a benefit in 'Side by Side by Side,' which begins with a jazzy double-bass line. It's a drawback in 'You Could Drive a Person Crazy,' in which the trio's doo-doots are replaced by their saxophone lines. You also get 'Marry Me a Little,' cut from the original show but by now very familiar and welcome, as well as a lot of the contextual dialogue before, between, and even within numbers. Finally, the strong cast led by Raul Esparza makes this the best-sung Company we've ever gotten (and they play very well too), and Stephen Sondheim's score is still a landmark in musical theater. There will never be a replacement for the original Broadway cast recording, but this revival recording can stand on its own and in some respects may be more flat-out enjoyable to listen to. --David Horiuchi
Digital Life Reviews
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Side by Side with great Company
I had seen this production in early 2008 when it aired on PBS and fell in love with the music. The production was beautiful, so when I bought this album I knew what i was in for. This CD is definitively one of the best recordings of a Sondheim show. It is expansive and yet intimate, it is polished and refined and yet modern and at sometimes bitingly truthful about marriage and being single and for that matter being alive!
Rating: - DVD yes CD - likely no...
Saw the Show in NYC in 2006. Also on PBS (TV). It is a visual experience, but if you hear without seeing, you lose the essence of the show. I like the actors with instruments; moving in and out of the scenes. Remember that this is a series of vignettes and cannot be portrayed and appreciated without seeing the set. And the set is Marvelous.
Rating: - Always Good To Have Sondheim...Terrific New Production!
Although any Sondheim performed is pretty great, this scaled down version is missing something, but gains in other ways. Yeah, okay, the actors playing the musical instruments are fun (though the gimmick was far more effective in the recent Sweeney Todd), what's gone is the large, over the top brassiness of the original, which represented NYC itself, almost as an additional character. What's gained here is an intimacy with the characters, and imparticularly, the main character of Bobby, that hadn't been touched upon in more traditional productions. Raul Esparza is brilliant as Bobby!!
The rest of the cast are superb. A wonderfully sophisticated musical! It's now available on DVD, after being aired on PBS. I watched the televised version and enjoyed it more than the live performance (probably due to the fact that I was in the last row of the mezzanine and missed a lot of the intimate qualities of the production). ... Read More
Rating: - BADBADBAD
This is such an abysmal show. Yes, Stephen, we understand that you can write music, but next time, try to get a lead who can actually sing that music. The first song I listened to on this soundtrack was Being Alive, sung by Raul Esparza, and I had to switch it off. Unfortunately, after taking a breath, I had to turn it back on again, 1. for morbid fascination, and 2. because I had to learn it. Needless to say, I decided to do a different song. If you want a good musical, go get [title of show], a brilliant new musical comedy. If it has to be Stephen Sondheim, try Into the Woodsor Assassins (the revival). And if you just want a musical in which people both sing and accompany themselves, the revival of Sweeny Todd with Patti Lupone is AMAZING. Save yourselves the pain that is this musical.
Digital
Life Shop
items subject to availability. Some restrictions
may apply. Music
Company (2006 Broadway Revival Cast) presented by digi2005.com Digi2005.com is
an Amazon.com
Associate
Digital Life Music News:
October workload can take a toll on arms
ESPN.com - ... there's a clear opportunity for playing time. • James Loney has been so spectacular since his latest call-up (.471 BA, .971 ... Finally, David Letterman reported that it was so hot in New York this week, "'The View' replaced Rosie with Ted Williams." ...
more News
- DVD yes CD - likely no...
- Always Good To Have Sondheim...Terrific New Production!
- BADBADBAD
