Why the Company Rosalie’s keeping is simply gorgeous

THERE was something about the way Rosalie Craig said ‘gorgeous’ when discussing one of her soon- tobe leading men in the gender-altered Stephen Sondheim musical Company.

The swap means Rosalie gets to play a woman with no emotional commitments who, on her 35th birthday, reassesses her relationships with her married acquaintances, and her girlfriends.

Except when Sondheim wrote that brief description of his seminal musical, the woman concerned was a man.

Bobby has become Bobbi in an eagerly awaited contemporary version of Sondheim’s 1970 show (written with George Furth) which has been changed by director Marianne Elliott — with Sondheim’s blessing. Elliott told me Sondheim sent her so many lyric changes that this Company should really be termed a ‘new’ musical.

It’s the first major London production since Adrian Lester played Bobby for Sam Mendes at the Donmar Warehouse in 1995.

Rosalie performed Bobbi in a workshop that was filmed and delivered to Sondheim. The only number I’ve heard her do is Being Alive, which was magnificent.

The new slant on the show means Bobby’s beauties have now become Bobbi’s conquests — and Rosalie’s distinctly pleased about that.

For instance, the dashing actor Richard Fleeshman (right) will be playing Andy, a flight attendant Bobbi picked up. (In the original, Andy was Amy.)

Andy’s the first to admit his brains are not the most impressive thing about him.

‘ But he’s gorgeous,’ Rosalie said, savouring that word as she jokingly fanned herself, and her grey-green eyes lit up.

‘I don’t think Richard Fleeshman would be offended by being cast because he’s gorgeous,’ Rosalie added (that word again) with a smile, as she devoured a heritage tomato salad at the light and airy Spring restaurant at Somerset House in London.

‘It’s about a woman having a really good time. It’s celebrating — Sex And The City style — a woman going out for lunch, and having a good time. Going out for drinks, and having a good time. Going to bed with gorgeous men and having a good time,’ Rosalie said of Company, which will run at the Gielgud from September 26.

There’s a #MeToo vibe about the changed piece, but it’s not a sermon, she stressed. At the end of the day, ‘Sondheim and George Furth wrote a hilarious musical comedy’.

Rosalie was in the earliest iteration, at the Curve in Leicester, of troubled musical Finding Neverland, before Gary Barlow and James Graham were involved.

The producer of that show happened to be Harvey Weinstein.

‘I count myself extremely lucky to be able to say that we never had a conversation about anything other than work,’ said the actress, who lives with husband Hadley Fraser and their 18-month-old daughter in South-East London. ‘There’d be phone calls at all hours of the day, and night. He’s a man who doesn’t sleep.’ Patti LuPone, the Broadway star whom Elliott and producing partner Chris Harper have enticed over to play the acerbic Joanne (her signature song is Ladies Who Lunch) is also big on #MeToo. ‘Patti’s like: “We will reign again! We will be goddesses again!”,’ Rosalie said. ‘ I’d like her sitting here so she could explain what she means.’ I think one of the points LuPone was making had to do with opportunities for women on stage and screen. She’d grown weary of always working for male directors, and leapt at the chance to be in Elliott’s production of Company — as did Rosalie. She and Elliott had worked together on The Light Princess at the National Theatre. Her performance garnered her a best actress trophy at the Evening Standard Awards.

ROSALIE was pregnant and appearing in The Threepenny Opera at the NT when she bumped into Elliott. The director wanted to know if Rosalie thought it would be a good idea to turn Bobby into Bobbi. The actress did.

A few weeks went by and Rosalie said to Elliott: ‘ Who are you going to get to play Bobbi?’ And she replied: ‘You.’

Elliott wanted Rosalie because she needed a powerhouse Bobbi who could act as well as she could sing.

Rosalie doesn’t confine herself to musicals. She was in Jez Butterworth’s acclaimed The Ferryman and recently completed a role in director Julian Jarrold’s film Sulphur And White, based on the autobiography of child abuse survivor David Tait.

For now, though, she’s getting ready to work with the Company company when rehearsals kick off next month.