Theater Review—

Sherman’s Players Prove It’s Always Better To Be In A Group Than Alone

By Julie Stern

SHERMAN — Robert is turning 35, and the five married couples who make up “ten of his closest  friends” throw him a surprise party — with a cake full of candles.

“Blow them all out, Bobby! If you don’t get them all out you don’t get your wish… Did you make a wish?”

“No I didn’t.”

“Of course you made a wish! You want to be married too, don’t you?”

Stephen Sondheim’s musical, Company, currently in production by Sherman Players, takes a wry look at the institution of marriage in New York City and at the assumption on the part of people who are married that everyone else wants to be in that same state.

Robert is a little ambivalent. As the charmed and charming bachelor friend, he visits each connubial pair, allowing them to demonstrate the advantages of their situation while assuring him that he too will find the right girl who will make him as happy as they are.

Only when seen in close-up these relationships seem less than completely perfect. Sarah and Harry use Robert as a means of getting in nasty digs at one another, culminating in a karate demonstration that turns violent. Susan and Peter, all smiles and cooing on their terrace, confide in Robert that the reason they are so happy is that they have decided to get a divorce.

Jenny and David join Robert in smoking a joint, but the uptight Jenny is only doing it to prove to David she is willing to be a good sport, until the resultant guilt puts a damper on the hash. Amy and Paul have decided to get legally married after living together for over ten years, but on the day of the wedding, with Robert poised to be best man, Amy gets cold feet and begs off.

And the blowsy Joanne sits and boozes it up with Robert in a nightclub while her third husband, Larry, dances the night away with other women, explaining that these head games — and her money —keep their marriage alive and mysterious.

All the husbands promise Robert “Have I got a girl for you!” while each of the wives laments the sad fact that “the only warmth he knows is with us,” notwithstanding the fact that Robert is actually a player who is balancing relationships with April, the sweet but dumb flight attendant, Kathy, the ex-preppy from Cape Cod, and Marta, the sophisticated swinger who loves the big city and wants to “experience it all.”

Lanny Mitchell is both the director and the star of the show, a gentle hunk with comic presence and a strong singing voice. His effectiveness as a musical director comes through in the way he has inspired his cast. The large group is up there having fun and bursting with energy in the group scenes.

Christine Daley is particularly good as Marta, as was Kristi Petersen in the role of the reluctant Amy, but everyone else — Rachel Barton and Brian Feinberg as Sarah and Harry, Anne-Stuart Hamilton and Bruce Tredwell as Susan and Peter,  Susan Gelb and Pete Sullivan as Jenny and David, Lori Metcalf and Alex Vournazos as Joanne and Larry, Ron Malyszka as Paul, Phoebe Hodge as Kathy, and Lesley Gyorsok as April — all handle their parts very well.

This said, I must point out that Stephen Sondheim is an acquired taste. When he wrote the lyrics and Leonard Bernstein wrote the music, we got West Side Story, and so 300 years from now people will still be humming “Maria,” or “There’s a Place For Us,” or “Gee Officer Krupke!” or “I like to be in America…”

This is not necessarily true of Sondheim’s composing, which at times sounds a bit like a six-year-old playing the piano with a fork. At the same time, Sondheim’s lyrics, in this show as well as in West Side Story, are pure poetry, mixing wit and meaning and imagery in a seamless blend, as in “The Little Things You Do Together,” where marriage is described in terms of “the concerts you enjoy together, the neighbors you annoy, the children you destroy…”

In “Another Hundred People,” Marta describes the constant turnover of newcomers to the big city (“Another hundred people get off of the train, come up through the ground, while another hundred people get off of the bus, and look around, and another hundred people get off of the plane, and look at us”), while in the peaceful oasis of a vest pocket park she sees “the rusty debris, and the dusty trees with their battered bark…”

Marriage is seen the answer to the human need for companionship, or “company,” because to all of the characters, as well as to Sondheim apparently, it is better than being alone, and in the big city, loneliness is the human condition, every night of the week.

(Performances continue at Sherman Playhouse through May 5, on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:30 and Sunday afternoons at 3. Contact the playhouse at 860-355-3622 for ticket details and reservations.)