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- Thanks for being here for Broadway profiles.
I'm Tamsen Fadal. Well, the countdown continues.
Now less than two months away from the return
of our biggest Broadway musicals.
The first performances resuming in early September.
But the new staging of Company returns in November,
starring Katrina Lenk, Patti LuPone
and a ton of other great stars.
Paul Wontorek is here with the story.
- Matt Doyle was already in performances in Company
when the pandemic shut down Broadway.
Now the veteran of hits like 'The Book of Mormon'
and 'War Horse' is anxious to get back onstage,
to play a groom having second thoughts
about getting married today.
So Broadway is coming back.
- Yes.
- How do you feel?
- Overwhelmed, grateful, emotional every single hour
about it.
Yeah. I think that it's so surreal to be standing here
and looking at that after all of the trauma
that we've all collectively been through.
My dressing room is right there.
My water bottle's still there.
Everything that I did, like all the pictures that I hung
and it's all right there.
My costume is hung, ready to go.
And I have completely like, forgotten the show. (laughs)
So it's so strange that like, everything's ready to go.
And now I'm like, well, I have to relearn the entire,
entire production.
- Company is such a New York City musical.
And I think right now everyone wants to focus
on New York City and getting tourism back.
And this is about a bunch
of neurotic New Yorkers, basically. Right?
- Yes.
- So does it feel like you're in like the ultimate
New York show?
- We always said,
Company is the perfect musical to bring Broadway back.
It's about New York City and it's about being alive,
not alone.
But alone is alone, not alive.
And we've really hung on to that.
And I think our producers found value in that
and realized that they needed to bring this show back
and that it was really, really important that it was
here on the other side of this awful, awful pandemic.
- You are playing Jamie--
- I am.
- Who is formerly known as Amy.
- Yes.
- There's a little bit of a gender swap here.
What other things does this production have in store
for audiences?
- Oh well, first and foremost, our lead character, Bobbie
is no longer a bachelor but a bachelorette
played by the glorious Katrina Lenk who is stunning
in this show.
It really is amazing how just swapping the gender
of the character, completely modernizes everything
and brings it into a contemporary setting.
And all of a sudden it just works
and no text had to be changed.
And it's just flipping the script in the simplest of ways
and having just this profound effect
on the actual piece itself.
- Which is amazing because it's 51-years-old this show,
and it was so contemporary and modern when it came out.
But I guess these human emotions are just sort of evergreen.
- Well, my favorite thing that Marianne said about (giggles)
about Company and the piece itself is,
"I don't know if I buy that a 35-year-old man
in New York City would be criticized for not being married
at this point."
In the seventies, of course, but today,
I don't know if it really comes across anymore,
that he would face such a scrutiny from his friends.
And now you put a woman into that role at 35 years old
and it suddenly works again.
And it is, it makes you realize that the rest of the text,
this unbelievable text but George Furth wrote is timeless,
completely timeless, yeah.
- So Jamie is marrying his boyfriend, Paul
and he's having his wedding day jitters and you get
to sing this iconic Sondheim song, Getting Married Today,
which I believe is one of the most complicated Sondheim
tongue twisters ever.
Is it as hard of a song to perform as it seems to me?
- Yes. It just takes a muscle memory and training
that I've never really done on a piece before.
Because there's actually, because it's so fast,
there is a little room to just discover it organically.
It really is far more calculated
than any piece I've worked on before, because it's just,
it's just the fastest song I've ever, ever,
ever sang in my life.
- Any favorite lyrics in there?
- Oh yeah. I would say, I telephoned my shrink and he said,
maybe I should come and see him Monday,
but by Monday I'll be floating in the Hudson
with the other garbage.
- Literally,
that was the lyric I was thinking of this morning.
- Yeah. That's my favorite lyric in the show,
because I think I've felt that so many times in my life.
- I can't believe I haven't asked you
about the biggest thing, which is you're co-starring
with Patti LuPone. How's that?
- Amazing. I'm like the biggest LuPone stan as the kids say.
I love her so much.
My favorite thing about Patti
is that she is an ensemble member first.
And that's something that I guess,
maybe I didn't really anticipate is that she really
is about the work first and she's about the company first.
I have really, really valued my time with her.
Learning from her and just getting to know her.
She's hilarious.
I mean, she's blunt, she's fierce, she's brilliant
and just this like force that I love being around.
And she's been so, so supportive and so kind to me.
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