Saturday, April 09, 2011
Patti LuPone, Neil Patrick Harris in ‘Company’ at Avery Fisher
NYTimes.com: "This latest version of “Company,” Mr. Sondheim and George Furth’s meditation on modern couplehood as seen through the eyes of a lonely bachelor, has entered into an unusual contract: It has recruited a star-studded roster, including Mr. Harris (of the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”) as the perennially single Robert; television stars like Mr. Colbert, Mr. Cryer, Ms. Plimpton and Christina Hendricks (of “Mad Men”) as his good-and-crazy married friends and gal pals; and Tony winners like Ms. Finneran, Anika Noni Rose and Ms. LuPone as Joanne, the predatory wife who belts out “The Ladies Who Lunch.” But to accommodate its A-list performers — who, with their multitude of day jobs and existing commitments, will not be all in the same place until Thursday — the production has resorted to a grab bag of strategies, shortcuts and cheats, some old school and others newfangled, to get its far-flung cast up to speed as quickly as possible.
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6 comments:
It was really interesting to read about how directors have to work with different schedules for these kinds of events. With such established performers like LuPone, Finneran, and Rose (I'm so glad she's working; I can't wait to watch her "Another Hundred People" on the big screen in June); I really wish I had the chance to see this live. Lonny Price's staged concerts have been quite wonderful (based on filmed telecasts) so hopefully, this Company will also live up to the expectations.
I think a show process of this style really does present some interesting challenges. The article said that the first time the whole cast would all be in the same room would be opening night. A very atypical process to putting a show together but I guess that is what is required when you have performers who are as famous as these people are.
It is amazing what lengths shows will go to in order to have a A-list celebrity on the playbill. I can't even imagine what kind of challenges came along with not having your lead actor until opening night. One would have to trust them to be the upmost professional and to come in knowing the material and prepared for everything.
First of all let me say how badly I want to see this.
Second: I'll be really interested to see how this affects the performances. I think it's a great opportunity for the college students who get to work alongside such talent and make great connections even if they're never really seen. The con I see in this style is that there are things that come out while a big group of talented people sit in a room together. And this production won't have those things. It'll only have what the director thought up before rehearsals started. And I think that's limiting. I also wonder if it'll take just as long to put all these pieces together in the end as it would have taken to have them together all along.
I'm surprised that so much trouble is being put into a production that has such a brief run; if I remember correctly, they are only doing 4 or so performances. Granted, it is a guaranteed sell-out each night, but they could have done that with a cast that all lived near each other as well. What this does show is that the director has a clear vision for the show involving the specific cast members that he would like to play each role. This is, of course, assuming the director was the one who got to make those decisions, and not a "money-person" who was simply looking for the biggest stars. I imagine that this show will live up to the expectations, but if it doesn't, I don't know if these shows will happen as often in the future.
I love the show Company and the first time I saw it, it was the version on Netflix from 2007. I will always compare the show to the first time I saw it. I watched this version on YouTube recently and thought it was done really well. The staging for the karate fight sticks with me most because they actually had a real fight that had some sexual tension mixed in. In the 2007 version I saw the fight was staged so u saw both the actors faces the entire time and you got to suspend your disbelieve and know they were fighting. the article just made this production have more value in my mind. I thought it was interesting that just because they couldn't get the entire cast in the same room at the same time, they were all able to use the resource available in today's society to adapt to their situation. Now I do feel like the production doesn't fully show the brilliance and amazingness that the show holds with working working with the Philharmonic, if you had no idea, but that is just my opinion.
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