Company
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Product Description
Maverick British director John Doyle, a 2006 Tony Award winner, enjoyed a surprise Broadway hit last year with his radical reworking of Sweeney Todd. He dispensed with the pit orchestra and handed all the instruments over to his on-stage performers, who doubled as musicians in between their turns acting and singing. Doyle has taken a similarly unorthodox approach to his revival of another Stephen Sondheim classic, the revered yet notoriously difficult to stage Company. As with Sweeney Todd, the results of this theatre-as-concert have entranced both critics and audiences. Linda Winer of Newsday called it "the very best revival that Broadway has ever seen of Stephen Sondheim's landmark 1970 musical."Variety described it as "striking, revelatory and thoroughly compelling." For Sondheim fans, the recorded score to Company has long been as much an object of adoration as the six-time Tony-winning play itself. Company on disc functions as a deeply moving song cycle, even apart from George Furth's libretto, about the vicissitudes of marriage and the joys and trials of the single life, seen through the eyes of the coolly dispassionate Manhattan bachelor Bobby on the occasion of his 35th birthday. This is truly the stuff of sex and the city - wry, sophisticated, painfully honest and deeply melancholy, even in a comic seducing-the-stewardess duet like "Barcelona." As with Sweeney Todd, which featured a bravura performance from lead actor Michael Cerveris, Doyle has found in rising star Raúl Esparza (Cabaret, Taboo, The Normal Heart) an extraordinary singer and actor who, in the words of the New York Times' Ben Brantley, gives Company "the most compelling center it has probably ever had." "Mr. Doyle and his invaluable music supervisor and orchestrator, Mary-Mitchell Campbell, have shaped Company into a sort of oratorio for the church of the lonely," says Brantley. He also praises the work of the entire ensemble - playing five married couples, three single women and one deeply ambivalent, unmarried man: "It's their work as a team that sounds new depths in Company in ways that get under your skin without your knowing it." Variety's David Rooney concurs: "Angel Desai's `Another Hundred People' nails that quintessential New York song; Heather Laws lands every laugh in the mile-a-minute `Getting Married Today' with amazing speed and clarity; and Barbara Walsh is bone-dry as brittle, world-weary Joanne. She reveals the emotional hunger beneath the character's hard shell and adds fresh nuances to `The Ladies Who Lunch,' a song indelibly associated with Elaine Stritch." As Time Out New York put it, "Sondheim's expert musical etchings, his acid craftsmanship, remain unmatched." Sondheim fans will note that this new version of Company, to be released by Nonesuch and PS Classics, restores the original act one closer, "Marry Me A Little," which was dropped from the show before its 1970 Broadway debut; the song has since taken on a life of its own as an orphaned Sondheim gem. The Company cast album is produced by PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker (Sondheim's The Frogs, Saturday Night, Assassins, and Sweeney Todd, among others). Along with Company, Nonesuch has also released the original cast album to Doyle's 2006 production of Sweeney Todd and the Tony-nominated A Light in the Piazza, which features a score by Nonesuch artist Adam Guettel.
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- メーカーにより製造中止になりました : いいえ
- 製品サイズ : 12.7 x 14.61 x 1.14 cm; 136.08 g
- メーカー : Nonesuch
- EAN : 0075597999136
- レーベル : Nonesuch
- ASIN : B000LV6R4G
- ディスク枚数 : 1
- Amazon 売れ筋ランキング: - 841,498位ミュージック (ミュージックの売れ筋ランキングを見る)
- - 37,806位グローバルミュージック (ミュージック)
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In the literalist revival of 1995, the show felt embalmed. There was a good singing cast, but Firth's contribution had no life left in it. In addition, Boyd Gaines as Bobby was the weak link in the cast, as Dean Jones was in the 1970 original (he left early in the run for personal reasons, to be replaced by a triumphant Larry Kert, but by then the cast album had already been made. Kert got to record the role in the London cast album, but that never made it to CD stateside, other than one number, Being Alive, which Sony added as a bonus track to its original cast album).
With this as preamble, director John Doyle faced two primary challenges in 2005: to make Company speak to us today and to find a Bobby who could carry the show. Not everyone will agree that he succeeded, but Doyle must be given credit for adding psychological dimensions, ranging from real tenderness to wistful regret, that feel more nuanced than ever before. Raul Esparza infused Bobby with psychological dimensions not present in the book. He stood around expressionless or wearing a faint ironic smile, kept his emotional cool at all times, flirted with Asperger's syndrome, and saved personal emotion for very occasional songs, like Someone Is Waiting, that give us a peek into his vulnerable interior. It's an X Generation portrayal about lack of commitment, still a decade behind the culture, but that's how Broadway works.
A good deal of Esparza's performance is left out of the cast album, since we don't have the visuals; the same can be said for the effect of seeing characters playing instruments on stage -- that had a kind of Brechtian distancing that doesn't come across without seeing them. Following Esparza's lead, the supporting cast is also cooler and more distanced than in earlier albums. I think this works well. Alienation is the unspoken theme of Company, a theme that time has hackneyed. This cast does what it can to restore the intended mood, and although the relentlessly ironic tone wears thin, it lasts long enough to provide a dose of newness.
The 2006 cast sound terrific, not only as vocalists but in effectively serving as the production's orchestra. So palpable is their connection to the material and each other (mainly to Esparza) that none of the warmth and humour of these songs is lost in the transition to audio only format. Some have criticised Esparza and Barbara Walsh (as the kind of tough-as-nails Joanne that wouldn't seem out of place in Carrie Bradshaw's entourage) for their shout-heavy performances in the production's final numbers. I disagree. To me, the escalation seems well-earned, lifting this recording beyond the confines of genteel middle class drama. The result is something quite unique, a worthy companion to the original cast recording, and a must-have for any Sondheim collector.
However this should not to be missed if you enjoy comparisons to be made with previous versions - two previous Broadway and two London cast recording.
Esparza the main character, sings emotionally and well, and he is matched by the other 13 performers. The use of musicians that can sing play musical instruments as well as act adds another dimension to the performance. .
If you are a Sondheim Fan then of course you will have this in your collection.