Director Marianne Elliott puts the fun and the sex back into Stephen Sondheim’s “Company.” This is the production, first staged in London, where the lead character Bobby is now Bobbie. The switch from male to female works, but more important is the light, sexy touch of Elliott’s direction and how it frees the musical from the year of its world premiere, 1970. This very rousing and arousing “Company” revival opened Thursday at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.
“Company” was my first Stephen Sondheim musical on Broadway. I saw it in June 1970 shortly after Larry Kert replaced an indisposed Dean Jones to play Bobby, the bachelor with three girlfriends and “all those crazy married friends” who want him to get a wife and settle down.