'Company' review: Sondheim musical gets a gender flip for the 21st century

Meet Bobbie, the birthday girl at the center of Stephen Sondheim’s "Company." She’s a lovely, lively New Yorker on the cusp of 35. So why, her married friends wonder, hasn’t she found the right man?

It’s a familiar story about a modern female, though that’s not how "Company" started out. First staged on Broadway in 1970, "Company" originally centered on Bobby — a man. By switching its hero’s chromosomes, tweaking the material slightly and dropping in a few smartphones, "Company" passes rather easily as a 21st century story about one woman’s resistance to the hegemony of marriage.

That is, if you don’t look too closely. While Sondheim’s songs still stand the test of time, much of George Furth’s original book still bears its Me Generation date stamp, and the issues that tend to press hard on women — career, pregnancy, the double standards of aging, the Great Hair-Color Debate — are never addressed. Still, with an appealing Katrina Lenk as Bobbie and a fine supporting cast spearheaded by the legendary Patti LuPone, "Company" should make for an enjoyable night on a newly reopened Broadway.

A series of vignettes rather than a proper story, "Company" follows Bobbie on a soul-searching journey through various apartments and her own private thoughts. Her friends represent the decidedly mixed blessings of marriage. Sarah and Harry (Jennifer Simard and Christopher Sieber), for instance, attack each other both verbally and physically, but surely they’re kidding, aren’t they? Meanwhile, Susan and Peter (Rashidra Scott and Greg Hildreth) are going through a perplexingly happy divorce. "Sorry-Grateful," a song that might be called tender-cynical, beautifully sums up everyone’s conflicted feelings about partnership.

Bobbie’s three dates represent possibilities. There’s handsome but dopey Andy (Claybourne Elder, drawing some of the show’s biggest laughs), the solid but unexciting Theo (Manu Narayan) and hunky rocker PJ (Bobby Conte). It’s P.J. who sings "Another Hundred People," an ode to another highly fraught romance: The one between New York City and its residents. Bobbie sometimes recedes in these scenes, but that’s the fault of the somewhat passive character, not the energetic actress who plays her.\

LuPone, bouncing back from a non-COVID illness that caused her to miss last weekend’s previews, earns her second-billed status in the otherwise small role of Joanne, a tough-talking doyenne of Manhattan. Her shining moment comes with "The Ladies Who Lunch," a wry paean to high society delivered over vodka stingers. Though the Northport native never rises from her barstool, she sticks the landing vocally and seems guaranteed to draw future ovations.

Some of the updates to "Company," approved by Sondheim before his death in November, work only up to a point. Amy, originally a jittery bride, is now Jamie (Matt Doyle), half of a same-sex couple. Doyle’s tongue-twisting, hyperventilating rendition of "Getting Married Today," a notoriously difficult Sondheim composition, is an absolute showstopper. Later, though, Bobbie’s sudden, desperate marriage proposal to this character now lands weirdly, for obvious reasons.

Director Marianne Elliott, importing "Company" from her 2018 production on London's West End, holds our interest with some inventive staging (the action takes place within brightly lit boxes that shift and collide) and dream-like motifs borrowed from "Alice in Wonderland" (a key that opens doors into unexpected rooms). Mostly, though, it’s Sondheim’s enduringly lovely songs that help "Company" hit the right chords.