Raincity does justice to vintage Sondheim
An ad hoc company boasting many of Vancouver’s best musical performers, Raincity Theatre staged one of the top shows of 2018 in a tiny Gastown storefront that stood in for Mrs. Lovett’s Pie Shop. The superb production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd won four Jessie Awards.
Aiming to replicate that success, Raincity invites audiences to help celebrate Bobby’s 35th birthday in his Manhattan apartment — a Mount Pleasant storefront a few steps off Broadway — with 14 performers and four musicians in Sondheim’s Company.
Though not as enthralling as his immersive Sweeney Todd, Chris Adams’ production of Company offers an entertaining and provocative idea-fest in the intimacy of a small space. Some of the fine singers who explore marriage and relationships through Sondheim’s brilliant lyricism might be seated next to you. George Furth’s book has not aged particularly well. Originally produced in 1970, the show feels set in 1960. For Bobby — played by Jonathan Winsby in wonderful voice — marriage is both a biological and cultural imperative. Everything and almost everyone tell him he should marry. Unable to get any satisfaction from his swinging single’s life, he feels ready. Yet the squabbling of his five straight married couple friends seems to offer a stark choice: stay unhappily alone or get unhappily wed.
At one point Bobby’s male friends try to discourage him: “Marriage may be where it’s been/But it’s not where it’s at” (a rare suggestion that the ’60s have already happened). And in The Ladies Who Lunch, Joanne (Katey Wright) sings with powerful bitterness about the corrosive effect of marriage on women.
But for the most part, Sondheim’s music and lyrics wittily propose ambivalence as the primary marital condition, and in Bobby’s triumphant final
song, Being Alive, as the human condition.
Husbands Harry (Graham Coffeng), David (Steve Maddock) and Larry (Warren Kimmel) establish this early on, describing a married man as “sorry-grateful” and “regretful-happy.” Side by Side by Side reiterates the dilemma as Bobby and his couple friends sing, “one is lonely and two is boring,” “one is impossible, two is dreary.”
Spectacularly driving the idea home is the ironically titled Getting Married Today. On her wedding day, desperate Amy (excellent Alex Gullason) sings with mind-bending, tongue-twisting speed all the reasons why she’s not getting married. She even mimes hanging herself with her bridal veil.
But after reneging, she reverses herself again. “I’m afraid to get married,” she tells Bobby as she heads for the aisle, “and you’re afraid not to.” Afterwards, Bobby sings Marry Me a Little.
Winsby heads a strong cast with especially nice work from Bobby’s girlfriends, played by Madeleine Suddaby, Jennie Neumann, and Lindsay Ann Warnock as a sweet but stereotyped flight attendant. Musical director Arielle Ballance’s band (piano, guitar, flute and cello) creates a full sound for Sondheim’s tricky score.
A recent London revival of Company, headed for Broadway, gender-switches the main character and makes some of Bobbie’s couple friends same-sex. Apparently, Raincity was not given permission for such changes. I look forward to a refreshed version of the show, but in the meantime, enjoy this fine rendering just off-Broadway here.