| disagree on almost all points | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 11:19 am EST 02/18/19 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 11:18 am EST 02/18/19 | |
| In reply to: COMPANY (Mild Spoilers) - Clancy 02:43 am EST 02/17/19 | |
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| I agree about Patti, who was fantastic in this, and I agree that Rosalie can act and sing and has comic timing - however I think a lot of her choices as Bobby as at odds with the show and text, especially awful and irony-laced delivery (or should I say sabotage) of "Marry Me A Little". Every other point you make as a strength I found to be a legit and in some cases profound weakness of the production and I thought Maryanne Elliot, in her direction and the ways she did the revamping, often showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the piece. And I felt it made her relationships to the couples make almost no sense - ex: I'm supposed to believe she is mainly friends with the men in each of these couples? There's so little back story for any of them, all we get is who Bobby talks to/how and how they talk to her, and who she goes to for advice in "Sorry/Grateful"... so why did they not put any women in "Sorry Grateful", but gave "Poor Baby" to the men? Also "Someone Is Waiting" makes no sense now because based on the writing and the casting and the acting in the scenes with the couples, i do not for a SECOND believe Bobbi considered any of these male friends as potential husbands for her and now ones that could have gotten away, or archetypes even of men she would want but didn't get. I don't know what Company you were watching before but Bobby's interactions with the girlfriends were never "power driven", not in any of the many professional and amateur productions of the show I've seen and I've seen many. And I don't think it's written that way either. Unless you mean all interactions between a man "withholding" and a woman wanting more are inherently power driven which, i'm sorry, I don't think is a relevant issue to take or way to see those scenes in this play. If you watch that and think Bobby is withholding for a power game rather than an inability to connect to himself or others, you're missing the point. I also think the boyfriends made no sense... the way the re-did Marta, he's funny but he would not singing "Another Hundred People" (and it doesn't help that the actor who sang it couldn't handle it vocally at all -- and don't get me started on the horrendous and fully distracting ADDED CHOREOGRAPHY to this song where she had subway cars come out with "people of nyc" doing choreo in the subways during the song... what a terrible distrust of the song and audience). I actually didn't buy any of the male versions of the girlfriends, or even more I didn't buy Bobbi's interest in most of them. But as much or more an issue, "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" doesn't make sense musically anymore. It's a hard number for modern audiences because it's a specific old musical reference... but the way it's done now is just confusing. And despite loving Patti in this, I'm not sure what lesbian undertone you saw... if they wanted lesbian undertones then why did they not keep the text as it was and have Joanne build to saying "when are WE gonna make it"? I was waiting for this, and was excited for it. I thought I saw what you were seeing in the undertones until that was changed and she instead offered her husband up to Bobbi. Now I will say, I rather loved this on its own... it was interesting and helped make sense of Joanne and Paul's relationship in this version. BUT i don't think it's a better choice than Joanne proposing sex between her and female Bobbi and I don't know why they ran away from that when push finally came to shove. I also disagree about the sets... ha, and i heard so much praise for it. First it looked like the leftovers from her production of Angels in America. I don't know why Eliot thinks New York City is summed up visually by long neon colored light bulb borders but... she does. I mean, there were many clever things about the set, I'll give it that, and some of them worked really well and added to it. But some took away. And those lengthy "moments" for the scene changes just killed the momentum to me. Why is all that necessary? But other than the generic "apartment" sets, which did look like normal nyc apts, nothing about the set said new york city to me. Also, the score sounded so blah, even lame sometimes. I just wish orchestrations were a bigger part of the budget of these revivals. As for the accents, I'm curious if you're American? As an American I did not feel the accents were all good. Many were good and none were horrendous but I would definitely not say they were all good. Also some of the acting was broad and some of it was grounded... it was, as with many other aspects that I have issues with, as if they didn't trust the material or the audience enough. And maybe for a very American musical in a British production, that was necessary, I dunno. Oh and while I loved Jonathan Bailey, and felt that in his scene and "Not Getting Married Today" were standout and worked very well IF they were stand alone and not part of the musical Company. But as it stands, this was one of the biggest failings of the gender-reversed Company. Having Bobbi ask her gay male best friend (who now we have no history for, whereas Bobby and Amy had a history) to marry her as the lead in to Marry Me A Little is such a huge mistake and misunderstanding of how and why that all worked so well before. At this point in the play Bobbi has to seriously hope that the relationship she describes in MMAL is possible and even preferable... nothing about the joke of asking her GAY best friend to marry her sets that up. Ugh there are so many issues fundamentally with the way they did this. You know who should have been gay, if only one couple, the ones who get divorced then stay together! A comedy bit before that may have been funny because it's so abnormal, especially decades ago, but now the way it's written it is not believable. However if they made it a divorce with an open relationship going forward, something very very common for gay men, it would have been relevant to today and very believable. So I'm not saying gender switching in Company can't work, but I do not think it did in this version. The more I think about it the more frustrated I get because I so much wanted it to be as great as so many have said. And while there were many things I liked about it, and I'm glad I saw it, it was a major let down in so many ways both as a production of Company and as a go at the gender reversal version. *and while the biological clock/baby nightmare version of tick tock is clever, interesting and relevant to a female character... the show is not about feeling your biological clock run out, and the show and Bobbi's journey in it are not at all written to reflect that. Trying to force it to be about that 20 minutes before the show is over and we get to "Being Alive", which we've been building to and is about opening up to be vulnerable and to connect to another person, in strength and weakness, etc, is about a relationship not about being a mother (in this context). It's a good and valid idea that just, to me, in this version, did not fit despite how much on paper it seems like it could. I think this was all worth trying, but I don't think this version should be a definitive "female bobbi" version of Company. |
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