Company
Production: Company
Venue: The Drama Barn
Rating: ****
Running: 18 June – 20 June
From the house musicians to the play’s director, across the board, the cast of Company are a collection of very talented individuals indeed.
Company, a musical comedy by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, follows the story of Robert, a singleton amongst a multitude of married friends, as they pressure him to find a woman and settle down. Set amongst the bright lights of New York City, Company is an amusing piece of theatricality. Although the structure of this play is fairly fragmented, making it potentially difficult to stage without losing the interest of your audience between musical interludes, I found myself captivated from beginning to end.
I have often found that the songs in many musicals can detract somewhat from the plot of the play, although I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was the music that strung and held each scene together. All the musical numbers are well executed and perfectly on cue with the musicians and performers alike never faltering. The technical elements of the play continue to impress, with quick and obviously well rehearsed set and costume changes.
The production team for this piece are particularly impressive, reading like a roll call of the who’s who of the Drama Society starting with producer Beth Yarwood Smith, Director Veronica Hare and Rent’s Polly Ingham and Musical director James Ball. With their casting equally so, each of the four couples demonstrate brilliant onstage chemistry.
The vocal harmonies performed by these eight characters are impressively tuneful and both a pleasure to listen to and to watch. One pair who stand out in particular are Laura Horton as Joanne and James Oliver as Larry, due to their ability to completely captivate the attention of every audience member with their stage presence and clear vocal ability. Also deserving of special mention is Maddy Crowe, in the role of April, one of Roberts’ girlfriends, whose speech about a butterfly is so tender and attentive that she will have you hanging on her every word.
When it comes to the singing it has to be Freya Jacklin who steals the show. It is clear that Jacklin, who plays the character of Jenny, is incredibly musically gifted. She in particular seems to cope well with having to juggle her acting and some really quite difficult notes. The lead in the play Robert (Oliver Julian) is a challenging character to take on, but Julian manages to make the role his own. However although he seems more than capable of taking on the role of lead vocalist his straight acting is often his downfall and he at times seems to be lacking a certain something.
At times the American accents are debatable, and although overall the majority of the cast coped well, the occasional slips back into the Queen’s English left me feeling jilted from the scene. This being said, Mia De Graaf’s Southern twang is consistently believable which adds a lot to her characterisation of Susan and punches comedy into her lines.
Sadly Company is all sold out, but if you are one of the lucky few with tickets and yet to see it, you will be in for a treat. Company is a well-polished well-rehearsed piece with a hilarious narrative, catchy soundtrack and cast with more talent than you can shake a stick at, making for a genuinely entertaining evening.
Loading ...
I see the ability to proof read has been completely lost on the Nouse team. Keep up the good work folks.
This is possibly the worst review I have ever read on Nouse.co.uk. If the reviewer cannot grasp the construction of a sentence then perhaps the Editor should be able to correct this. I can honestly say that Tom Vickers’ reviews were brilliant in comparison; at least he could say something vaguely interesting about the play. I hope Rosie Peacock is made to refund the free ticket she had to Dramasoc for this.
Due to technical difficulties, the wrong version of the review was accidently published. You’ll be pleased to know this has been corrected. My apologies to the cast for any problems this may have caused.
“an amusing piece of theatricality”
“The production team for this piece are”
“a roll call of the who’s who ”
“both a pleasure to listen to and to watch”
“one of Roberts’ girlfriends”
As we can see, this review is actually a postmodern masterpiece that interrogates our adherence to tense and form, continually destabilising and reconstructing our notional concepts of sentence structure and proper phrasing.
tense
“four couples”?
Good to see the reviewer was paying attention to all FIVE couples onstage
Good lord. Give the reviewer a break. At a basic level she clearly communicates the most important aspects:
a) her overall opinion: she liked it
b) why she liked it: because the cast and production team were talented
c) she thinks people would like to go see it
There used to be a problem of overly harsh reviews, but recently the attacks on reviewers grammer and form seems massively blown out of proportion. Is the tone and content relatively clear? Yes. Then just leave it alone or become a nouse proof reader yourself.
“the attacks on reviewers grammer and form seems massively blown out of proportion”
…version is much better. But the fact still remains… Nouse is becoming absurd.
The new version is much better but some of the sentences still make absolutely no sense.
I agree with Pippa. It’s a review that deals with the main points of the play. I understand if a reviewer slates a play and then the people in it want to lash out at them, but she’s actually said it was good. Did you really miss the entire point of the review just because a few apostrophes were out of place?
Yes, you have perfect grammar. Well done you. Now perhaps you can take that stick out of your bottom and actually read something as it was meant?
On to my main point: I saw ‘Company’, and I very much agree with the overall judgement. I thought most of it was really good, although I felt perhaps somewhat disjointed sometimes.
The cast, however, are clearly incredibly talented.
… can we leave the attacks on the reviewer be? I’m sick of every review on Nouse being met with a barrage of criticism. Fair enough if it’s general disagreement ABOUT THE PLAY, but if it’s just a long whinge about the grammar and punctuation, it gets very boring. Become a Nouse proof-reader if it bothers you, and if you’re bothered by sentence structure week after week, perhaps don’t read the theatre reviews at all.