Over the past decade, director Marianne Elliott has scored a string of critical and commercial triumphs bringing both highly original works—the Tony Award-winning plays War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time—and a Tony-winning revival of Angels in America. Her latest project is another classic, the Stephen Sondheim–George Furth musical Company, which Elliott has, with Sondheim’s blessing, envisioned anew for a staging The New York Times declared “gloriously transformative.”
Set to begin previews March 2 and open March 22 — Sondheim’s 90th birthday — at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, this Company focuses on a bachelorette, Bobbie, as she turns 35, rather than a single man in that position, and the married couples surrounding her, about whom several key details have also changed. Broadway legend Patti LuPone, who won an Olivier Award playing the acerbic Joanne, will be joined by a new ensemble of theater stars, led by Tony winner Katrina Lenk as Bobbie.
Says Elliott, “I can’t wait to start working with this extraordinary ensemble. They are a remarkable collection of Broadway-beloved, not to mention wonderful singers, movers, comedians, and brilliant actors.”
The players include longtime friends Christopher Sieber, fresh from his celebrated performance in The Prom, and Jennifer Simard, recently acclaimed in Mean Girls and 2017’s revival of Hello, Dolly!. They’re cast here as Harry and Sarah, who gets to play Lucy to her husband’s Charlie Brown during the song “The Little Things You Do Together.”
Of the new staging, Simard says, “I don’t think art is something you put on a shelf, and I’m so inspired by Mr. Sondheim, that he’s been so excited to dive in and reimagine his work years later.”
Simard was similarly impressed by Elliott when they met. “War Horse was one of the best things I’ve ever seen, and I was truly excited by the environment she created in that audition room—how she responded to playing and creativity,” she says. Sieber, who once played Bobby in a Los Angeles production of Company, agrees: “She has this way of reducing the stress and anxiety of auditioning. She makes it the most comfortable room you can be in, so that you’re so relaxed.”
Matt Doyle, who plays Jamie in the production, worked with Elliott on War Horse and cites her “intellect, her demand to be honest, and her playfulness.” In this Company, though Jamie’s gender and sexual orientation have been reversed, his neurotic leanings and anxiety about marriage have remained intact.
“In this strange time of tribalism, it’s wonderful to have the opportunity to play the character as a gay man, so that people can realize we have more in common than our differences from each other,” Doyle says. “As an anxiety-ridden gay teenager, I would have thought you were crazy if you told me I’d be able to use all that nervous energy in a musical on Broadway.”
Etai Benson, who appeared with Lenk in The Band’s Visit, is playing Paul. “The text has hardly been altered. Sondheim and Furth captured such universal truths about fear and love and anxiety in their original script. But making Paul and Jamie a gay couple opens up rich new layers to uncover — it allows for a perspective on marriage the show has never had before,” he says. “What I find most moving is that when Company was written, Paul and Jamie could not have been portrayed on stage. The concept of gay marriage was outside the realm of reality. But today, 50 years later, it is real and legal and part of the fabric of our society. I’m so honored to celebrate that by telling Paul and Jamie’s story eight times a week.”
Kyle Dean Massey, who plays Theo, adds Company to his Broadway credits, which include The Boys in the Band and Next to Normal. “Company has been a show that I’ve known well for as long as I’ve loved musicals,” he says. “And like all movies, plays, and musicals that you know well, I’ve had this idea of how each moment is supposed to land. How each character is essentially supposed to be. I’ve been forced to completely reconsider every scene and song within this revival. The construct of this show forces each actor and audience member to rediscover the show in a new and modern way. What I can say is that my role of Theo speaks more honestly to me than just about any role I’ve ever played.”
Greg Hildreth, who performed Company in college, is “thrilled to be doing a female-centric adaption of this show. Among the many changes, my character, Peter, and his wife, Susan, have swapped their line assignments. I’m looking forward to discovering what the many conceit changes reveal.”
Nikki Renée Daniels, another young Broadway veteran, works with another twist as Jenny, who in Elliott’s iteration is the primary earner in her marriage to David, a stay-at-home dad played by three-time Tony Award nominee Christopher Fitzgerald. “My husband is also an actor, so sometimes he’s the breadwinner and sometimes I am,” notes Daniels, who is also understudying the part of Bobbie. (Fitzgerald, who is “super excited to jump into the deep end with Marianne Elliott,” says, “To revisit a classic through a different lens is always intriguing.”)
For the actress, who sang backup in a summer stock staging of the musical while in college, the new Company’s central role reversal also makes the show freshly relevant. “In our day and age, a single 35-year-old man is nothing to write home about,” Daniels says. “But for women, it’s that age of, ‘Well, are you going to have kids?’ I’m around the age of the characters in the show, and I have a lot of friends who are still out there looking — and some who aren’t. I’m very happily married, thankfully, but I have daughters who are 2 and 6, and I wonder if, when they grow up, marriage will still be such a big thing.”
A Bronx Tale alumnus Bobby Conte Thornton plays P.J., who, like Lenk’s Bobbie and Claybourne Elder’s Andy, has also undergone a gender twist. “The unexpected is what excited me. … [Company] is what made me want to be an actor,” he says. “It was the first musical on Broadway to be nonlinear. It’s inherently unexpected in its storytelling. … So making big, bold choices with these brilliant creative minds, and having the space to fail and fail and fail as a means of stumbling onto the right idea, excites me to no end.”
“This show is exciting to me not just because Bobbie as a woman brings such rich new meaning to the story, but also because I get to play a role that they would never write for a man: funny, heartfelt, maybe a little dim and in love with a woman who doesn’t love him back,” adds Elder.
Terence Archie, seen earlier this year in the much-praised revival of Kiss Me, Kate and cast here as Larry, notes, “The world has changed quite a bit in 50 years,” offering more vehicles for connection. “Books, blogs, TV. Film, music, politics, social networks have provided great outlets for us to mentor one another towards what we all want: To love and be loved in a deeply considerate way without losing ourselves.”
As the sole import from Elliott’s London production in this now all-American staging, LuPone, who will reprise her Joanne opposite Terence Archie as husband Larry, is also eager to bring Company home. “The production is so inventive and funny,” says the two-time Tony Award–winning performer. “I’m actually excited to be on stage and watch an American audience respond to this quintessentially New York musical with Marianne’s spin on it.”
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How We Use Your Personal Information
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Information Collected By/Shared With Third Parties
Other than as provided in this Privacy Policy, we do not share your personal information with third parties.
Advertising. We partner with advertising companies who may use information from cookies and the tracking tags they place on our website to provide you with targeted advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you based on your use of our website and to track the effectiveness of ads served to you. These advertising company partners may anonymously track your Internet usage across other websites in their networks beyond our website. Any information that these advertising companies collect via cookies and tracking tags is generally not personally identifiable (unless, for example, you provide personal information to them through an ad or email message). You are welcome to browse the site in private/incognito mode, which means cookies will not be activated and previous cookies will not be tracked. If you need help with this, contact us at [email protected]. If you would like more information about the use of cookies and tracking tags and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, see the Network Advertising Initiatives consumer Web site at http://www.networkadvertising.org/consumer/.
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Third Parties Doing Work for Us. Third parties have no rights to use any data We have collected on your behalf. However, We may employ other companies or individuals to perform functions on Our behalf, such as sending postal mail, email, and text messages, conducting sweepstakes/contests, prize fulfillment and promotional activities, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments and providing customer service. These outside suppliers, agents and vendors have access to your personal information only as needed to perform their functions.
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When necessary. We may also release personal information when we believe, in good faith, that such release is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Ourselves, Our clients, Our users, or others. We may disclose personal information about you to law enforcement, other government officials, or other third parties, as We, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, or other activity that is illegal or may expose Us to legal liability.
Public Forums
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Co-Branded Pages
We may enter into relationships with “powered by” partners, business partners, sponsors, and co-branded sites (referred to here as “co-branded pages”). These might include, for example, pages that share our name and that of another entity. There may be a specific privacy policy on any such co-branded page. Any personal information that you provide when signing up at any co-branded page may be collected by, or shared with, our third party partner. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, our third party partners’ use of your personal information. If you want to learn more about other entities’ privacy practices, please review the websites of those third parties.
Transactions With Third Party E-commerce Partners, Vendors and Advertisers
When you provide personal information to one of Our Site’s third party e-commerce partners, vendors or advertisers (i.e. Ticketmaster.com, Telecharge.com), this transaction will occur in connection with the site of the e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser, not on the Site, and, as such, the personal information you provide is collected pursuant to and controlled by the privacy policy of such e-commerce partner, vendor or advertiser. Broadway Direct is not responsible for such parties’ privacy policies and We encourage you to familiarize yourself with the applicable privacy policy of the e-commerce site with which you transact business or to contact the operator of such site for more information.
Delivery of Advertising and Other Content
In addition to ads and content that We may serve you directly, We use third-party advertising companies and marketing services companies to serve ads and other content when you visit Broadway Direct and elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both We and these companies may use information about your visits to Broadway Direct and elsewhere to serve ads and other content to you. In the course of doing so, a unique third-party cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser by such companies. In addition, We and these companies may use Web beacons to help manage Our online advertising and content. These Web beacons enable Us and the third-party companies to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits this Site and to learn which banner ads bring users to our website and to serve you ads that you may find of interest elsewhere on the internet and in other media. Both Broadway Direct and these companies may use information obtained from your visits to Broadway Direct or other websites, and information received from you offline in order to provide advertisements about goods and services and other content of interest to you across the internet and in other media. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used in this manner by Our third party advertising companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp and/or www.aboutads.info/choices. European users may opt out of receiving targeted advertising by visiting http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/. In addition, we may provide PII and Anonymous Information to marketing services companies. This may include information we received from you offline or online. These companies may combine information we provide (including PII and Anonymous Information) with personal and anonymous information they may have about you, using cookies they place or that We place on their behalf, as described in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. We require these companies to delete the PII we provide them. These companies may use the resulting non-personal information and such cookies for their own marketing purposes, and they may provide the same to their customers for their customer’s marketing purposes. Some of Our emails may contain tags that allow Us and Our advertisers and other partners to determine the types of content that may be of interest to you. Those tags may contain PII and may be shared with others to the same extent indicated in the section regarding “Cookies and Tracking Tags”. Those tags may not be deleted but you can opt out of receiving the emails.
Use of This Site by Children
The Site is not directed to individuals under the age of thirteen (13), and We request that such individuals do not provide personal information through the Site. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided Us with PII without the parent or guardian’s consent by, for example, misrepresenting his or her age, that parent or guardian should contact us at [email protected]. If Broadway Direct determines that it has collected personal information of children under the age of 13, Broadway Direct will immediately delete such information and any accounts believed to be held by children under 13. In addition, we may not collect or process information from a citizen of an EU member state under the age of sixteen (16) without such person’s parental consent. If you are a citizen of an EU member state under the age of 16, please tell your parents that you are using the Site and have your parents email Us at [email protected] so that We may delete any information We may have collected about you.
California Visitors
California Civil Code § 1798.83 permits California residents to request information about whether we have disclosed personal information to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. California residents have the right to request in writing: (a) a list of the categories of Personal Information, such as name, email address and mailing address and the type of services provided to the customer that a business has disclosed to third parties (including affiliates that are separate legal entities) during the immediately preceding calendar year for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes and (b) the names and addresses of all such third parties. To make a request, please contact Us at the following email address: [email protected].
EU Visitors
If you are located within the European Union, you should be aware that your personal information will be transferred to the United States, the laws of which may be deemed by the European Union to have inadequate data protection. If you are located in a country outside the United States and voluntarily submit personal information to Us, you thereby consent to the general use of such information as provided in this privacy policy and to the transfer of that information to, and/or storage of that information in, the United States. We transfer Personal Information from the European Economic Area and Switzerland to the USA and other countries, some of which have not been determined by the European Commission to have an adequate level of data protection. Personal Information of EU residents will be transferred in compliance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).
Rights of EU Data Subjects
If you are a resident of the European Union, under the GDPR, European Union residents, as data subjects, have the following rights:
Right to access – This right allows individuals to obtain confirmation as to whether or not personal information concerning him or her is being processed and provide access to such personal information. It also allows individuals to request details of the processing of his or her personal information, including, without limitation, categories of recipients to whom the personal information have been or will be disclosed and purposes of processing.
Right to rectify – This right allows individuals to rectify any inaccurate personal information about him or her.
Right to restrict processing – This right allows individuals to block or suppress processing of personal data under certain circumstances.
Right to be forgotten – This right is also known as the “right to erasure”. It is an individual’s right to have personal data erased or to prevent processing in specific circumstances.
Right of data portability – This right allows individuals to move, copy or transfer personal data from one place to another in a secure manner without interrupting the integrity and usability of the information.
Right to object to processing – This right allows individuals to object to certain types of processing, including direct marketing, profiling and providing for purposes of scientific or historical research and statistics.
An EU resident has the right to access his or her personal data that We hold and to ask that their personal data be corrected or erased and to port their data. An EU resident may also have the right to object to, or request that We restrict certain processing or to withdraw consent previously provided. If you would like to exercise your rights under the GDPR, please contact us at [email protected]. If you are an EU resident and have a concern about our processing of your personal data that we are not able to resolve, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority where you reside. For contact details of your relevant local Data Protection Authority, please see http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=612080
Security of Your Personal Information
Broadway Direct employs reasonable security measures consistent with standard industry practice, for personal information collected through this Site, including physical, electronic and operational measures to maintain security and prevent unauthorized access. While Broadway Direct takes all appropriate steps to safeguard personal information under Our control, unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or method of storing data can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As such, We cannot guarantee that personal information supplied by users will not be accessed on Our servers, or intercepted while being transmitted to Us over the Internet. We assume no liability for any damages you may suffer as a result of interception, alteration or misuse of information during such transfers.
Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account or inquiry is active and for a reasonable time thereafter in accordance with Our standard procedures or as necessary to comply with Our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce Our agreements. Even if We delete some or all of your Personal Information, We may continue to retain and use aggregate or anonymous data previously collected and/or anonymize or aggregate your Personal Information. Please note that We will not be liable for disclosures of your data due to errors or unauthorized acts of third parties.
Choice/Opt Out
This Site provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from Us, at any time, by email at [email protected], or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email communication. The Site gives users the following options for removing their information from our database, to not receive future communications or to no longer receive our service, at any time.
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Users can opt-out of receiving future newsletter emails from Us by selecting the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our email. However, We are not responsible for removing your information from the lists of any third party who has previously been provided with your information or is collecting your information through their cookies. You have the right to withdraw your consent for Our processing for your personal information by contacting us at [email protected].
Correct/Update
This website gives users the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided, at any time.
Users can send mail to the following postal address: Broadway Direct 1501 Broadway 14th floor New York, NY 10036
Users can call the following telephone number: (800) 223-6715
Successors
In the event that We are, or any component of our operations is, merged with, or is acquired by, another entity, then any such successor or acquiring entity may become the successor to Our obligations with respect to the personal information that you have provided to Us, which would be necessary for the entity to effectively continue our business. By using this website, you consent to any transfer and use of such personal information by an entity assuming control of Our operations as a result of a merger, purchase of assets, or liquidation in bankruptcy or insolvency.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this website, or your dealings with this website, you can send an email to [email protected]. Our data protection officer can also be contacted at [email protected].