BORNSTEIN: Littleton theater steps boldly

Town Hall's 'Company' more forthright, sexual

By Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Special to the Rocky

Megan Van De Hey plays the caustic Joanne, married to a stoic Reece Livingstone, right, in Company. Joel Sutliffe, left, takes the lead.

As the voices blend and swell in the opening bars of Company, it seems this will be a new height in the history of Town Hall Arts Center. In some ways, it is.

Just the staging of the witty, bitter, heartfelt Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical is a continuation of the theater's growing bravery. The show - like A Chorus Line - may be more than 30 years old, but it's more forthright and sexual than what Littleton audiences have received in the past.

Joel Sutliffe, who's made such a strong impact on earlier shows such as 1776, takes the lead as Bobby, the playboy whose married friends are celebrating his 35th birthday. They all need him for something: The men want him single, to live out their fantasies, while the women need him married, to prove they were right.

Sutliffe plays a genial, detached Bobby, coasting through life as his friends try to confront him with what he's missing. He's the unusual passive protagonist, evidenced by the song Someone Is Waiting, which ends with him conflicted and singing "Hurry, wait." The actor wisely underplays the role, underlining the power of the closing song, Being Alive.

The friend who understands Bobby best is the most guarded of the group, the oft-married Joanne. Megan Van De Hey offers a caustic surface covering warmth and wounds. She can castrate with a word, and when Van De Hey expels the last roar of a dying lioness on The Ladies Who Lunch, you can hear the audience exhale its tension at the end. (Offstage, but happily invisible onstage, Sutliffe and Van De Hey are married.)

Company is composed of vignettes, and characters are glimpsed briefly but vividly. Amanda Earls, who usually plays strong, boisterous characters, is adorable and hysterical as the wedding-shy Amy, and a quiet Mark J. Middlebrooks makes a perfect counterbalance, as does Reece Livingstone's stoicism as Joanne's husband, Larry. Stacey Ryfun D'Angelo plays the wildly daft stewardess April, although April's oddness borders on the creepy.

Despite these performances, Company is not only not perfect, it's quite uneven. Despite the show's underlying themes of loneliness and compromise, director Bob Wells has either directed or allowed half his cast to play with a false frivolity and broadness that are an insult to artistically challenging musical theater.

The first vignette, that of the passive-aggressive turned aggressive-aggressive couple Sarah (Heather Larson) and Harry (Keegan Flaugh), is made soggy by Larson's too-big performance. When speaking, Janelle Christie's bohemian Marta is practically winking at the audience through her lines, a quality emphasized by a truly odd bow-like hairdo. In song, Christie has a lighter touch, but her Another Hundred People sounds like an optimistic tribute to New York rather than a description of a disconnected city of transients.

Deborah Schmit-Lobis does yeoman's work on the piano, but it's unfair to Sondheim and audiences to have a single instrument on such complex, lush work. The accompaniment frequently sounds at odds with the melody, and singers seem to have been left to their own devices by musical director Mary Louise Burke (who excels in bringing the company together vocally). Earls and Christie have trouble with breath control on the tricky lyrics, and the result is that lyrics get lost in torrential phrasing.

On the other hand, there are many moments that approach the sublime, as when the entire cast folds in for a splendidly choreographed vaudeville turn on Side By Side, in which Wells has Bobby become their obliging wind-up toy, always just outside the chorus line.

At that moment, Company comes together as a company.

Lisa Bornstein is the theater critic. bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5101

Company

* Grade: B

* When and where: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through June 29, Town Hall Arts Center, 2450 W. Main St., Littleton

* Cost: $18 to $34

* Information: 303-794-2787