At Bobby’s Apartment (2531 Ontario Street) until October 26, 2019
Tickets from $29 at raincitytheatre.com. A few tickets remaining.
Posted October 15, 2019
How often do you get to sit up close to Jonathan Winsby singing Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics? Not often enough. Following Raincity Theatre’s highly successful Sweeney Todd last season, director Chris Adams once again brings together a stellar cast of performers for Sondheim’s Company: Jonathan Winsby (as Robert), Caitlin Clugston, Graham Coffeng, Anthony Santiago, Steve Maddock, Janet Gigliotti, Alex Gullason, Nick Fontaine, Katey Wright, Warren Kimmel, Madeleine Suddaby, Jennie Neumann, Jennifer Suratos and Lindsay Ann Warnock. I list them all because every one of them contributes in a huge way to this terrific ensemble piece.
I had my doubts: a full-scale musical in someone’s apartment? Would we be blown away? But with a little four-piece band, under the direction of Arielle Ballance, wedged into the corner of the room (an intimate little space on the ground floor of an old apartment building at 10th and Ontario) and no need for head mics, it’s just thrillingly immersive. Sondheim’s lyrics leap out at you in a way they might never have before. Even at the breakneck speed that the song “Getting Married Today” requires, Alex Gullason makes every word count in such proximity.
It is remarkable how contemporary Company feels fifty years after its Broadway opening. All the worries about the single life as opposed to married life are there: single but lonely or married with someone to share your life with. Or, at worst, risk marital blister. The age-old old dilemma. To wed or not to wed.
The setting is Robert’s (Bobby’s) Manhattan apartment on the eve of his 35th birthday. Five married couples – his best friends – surprise him in his own apartment with gifts and a birthday cake. Each couple invites him back to their place sometime soon but what he discovers when he spends an evening with them – “just the three of us” – is that all five couples are living in various states of marital discord: Amy (Alex Gullason) and Paul (Nick Fontaine); Sarah (Caitlin Clugston) and Harry (Graham Coffeng); Susan (Janet Gigliotti) and Peter (Anthony Santiago); Joanne (Katey Wright) and Larry (Warren Kimmel); Jenny (Jennifer Suratos) and David (Steve Maddock). Despite the misery they are all in, they want to see Bobby hitched. Misery loves company?
Meanwhile, Bobby is dating three women: not-terribly-clever airline stewardess April (Lindsay Warnock), outspoken Marta (Madeleine Suddaby) and Kathy (Jennie Neumann) who wants to leave Manhattan and go back to the land. But what Bobby wants is a mix ‘n’ match of the five wives he knows best: “an Amy sort of Sarah, a Jennyish Joanne”.
Jonathan Winsby is a handsome, winsome Robert/Bobby; his fleeting, tentative smile and slightly furrowed brow draws you into his situation. Get married for the sake of being married (and to satisfy your friends) or hold out for Ms. Right? Winsby touches every heart with “Being Alive” that begins with a rejection of the married state but ends with a longing for a loving, supportive relationship: “Somebody, crowd me with love/Somebody, force me to care/Somebody, make me come through/I’ll always be there/As frightened as you/To help us survive/Being alive/Being alive/Being alive!”
Katey Wright peels the paint off the walls (in a good way) with the bitter, “Ladies who Lunch”, the scorching diatribe against idle wives who spend their time planning parties, going to the gym and lunching with other bored wives.
‘Bobby’s Apartment’ at 2531 Ontario is a hole in the wall space and definitely not a hip, Manhattan apartment. And the seating varies from a comfy couch and plastic chairs to cushions on the floor or sitting on the stairs. It’s not recommended for people with back problems unless you can be certain of getting seating with a backrest.
But being this close to this amount of talent is exhilarating. Sondheim, so ahead of his time in 1970, is still so relevant today. A 2012 quote from The Guardian regarding Stephen Sondheim reads: “No one today has better mastered the art-form of marrying words and drama to music, and keeping that essentially operatic ideal alive in a broader public consciousness.” Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh, the British theatre producer and theatre owner, says Sondheim is “possibly the greatest lyricist ever.” I think we can dispense with the modifier “possibly.”
The evening I attended Raincity Theatre’s Company, I knew I was in great company: Sondheim and side by side with more than a dozen of Vancouver’s finest.