Company (2006 Broadway Revival Cast)
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Brand: PBSComposer: Stephen Sondheim
Performer: Raul Esparza
Performer: Barbara Walsh
Performer: Keith Buterbaugh
Performer: Matt Castle
Performer: Robert Cunningham
Performer: Angel Desai
Performer: Kelly Jeanne Grant
Performer: Kristin Huffman
Performer: Amy Justman
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-02-20
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
- Opening
- Company
- The Little Things You Do Together
- Sorry-Grateful
- You Could Drive a Person Crazy
- Have I Got a Girl for You
- Someone Is Waiting
- Another Hundred People
- Getting Married Today
- "What did I just do?"
- Marry Me a Little
- Side by Side by Side
- What Would We Do Without You?
- Poor Baby
- Barcelona
- The Ladies Who Lunch
- "You have a good third husband, Joanne"
- Being Alive
Free Music Notes for Company (2006 Broadway Revival Cast)
Free Music Review: Sondheim at His Most Accessible with Esparza a Standout in a Sparkling Update
Hit: 5 Stars
I'm probably fortunate not to have the vivid memory of the classic 1970 cast recording swimming through my head as I can listen to this sparkling update with comparatively fresh ears. Several songs here have been inescapable at karaoke bars for years from the lips of overly zealous musical theater aficionados, yet staged like a minimalist cabaret act, John Doyle's joyous 2006 Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical has brought new life to the oft-resuscitated show. I saw the show this past weekend at the Barrymore Theater and was unexpectedly enthralled, and luckily, this crisp recording gratefully captures most of it for posterity. For a canon as legendary and often erratic as his, Sondheim's sophisticated music and lyrics never seemed as accessible and hummable as they do here.
The story is blessedly simple as it revolves around Bobby, a perennial 35-year old bachelor with commitment issues, as he observes his circle of upscale Manhattanite friends, primarily five married couples at different stages in various vignettes that make him reconsider what he wants out of life. There is an element of contrivance to the structure, but what I thought would be Furth's severely dated libretto continues to resonate with wit and insight. Moreover, the most daring move of the stage production, having the actors play their own musical instruments, is not even relevant on the recording since the accompaniment sounds seamless. So much of the show rides on the crucial casting of Bobby, and Raúl Esparza superbly manages the precarious balance between yearning romantic and cynical hedonist. With a beautifully expressive singing voice coupled with a common-guy demeanor, he captures the character's arc with an escalating emotional intensity from the measured romanticism of "Someone Is Waiting" to the tender tentativeness of "Marry Me a Little" (with the beautiful, Sondheim-trademarked rolling piano) to the bursting climactic catharsis of "Being Alive".
The rest of the cast accomplish some wonderful moments that already come with high expectations - Heather Laws dexterously motors her way through "Getting Married Today" with her character's nerve-wracking intensity intact; Elizabeth Stanley brings a likeable warmth to the dim-bulb flight attendant April as she duets sweetly with Esparza on the comically post-coital "Barcelona"; the poignant "Sorry - Grateful" performed by the comparatively less spotlighted male ensemble; and of course, there are the lacerating observations in "The Ladies Who Lunch", handled with fierce worldliness by Barbara Walsh as Joanne (her repeated primal screams at the end pierce with wounding acuity). My one minor complaint about the recording is the fluctuating volume control especially evident during the showstoppers. However, I can heartily recommend this CD to hear Sondheim's brilliance in full bloom, much of Furth's sharp book and a star-making vocal turn by Esparza.
Company (2006 Broadway Revival Cast) Poster
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.Broadway & Vocalists Music CDs
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