Good evening.
Thank you for staying around.
Wasn't that an incredible performance?
Isn't it great to be in the theatre, experiencing live theatre together?
Yes.
And with that, you know, that's been no easy feat.
So I want to thank everybody at this theater, the security, the stage managers, the understudies, the swings.
The cast.
The creatives, and you, the audience that come and support these shows.
Theatre is back, and because theatre is back, our our great city is going to come back.
So thank you so much for being here tonight and supporting live theatre, and you're experiencing Working in the Theatre Live.
So welcome to a Working in the Theatre Live featuring the women of Company.
So without further ado, I would like to welcome them to the stage.
Welcome Company's brilliant director, Marianne Elliott.
The amazing - And they're having cocktails.
I don't know if the bar is still open, but we're going to have a good time here tonight.
And Katrina Lenk.
And the Broadway newcomer, Patti LuPone.
Patti is also the bartender for this evening and she's available to do your events.
We'll be giving her card and information out later.
Jennifer Simard.
Nikki Renée Daniels.
And last, but not least, Rashidra Scott.
Fantastic.
Well, Marianne, we're going to start with you.
And revivals are a tricky business, especially with a show that has a glorious history, as this show does.
And there are lots of points of view out there about when do you revive, do you revive, and how do you revive?
And you've done it brilliantly.
So can you tell us a little bit about how you came to Company and how you approached this?
And, and I'd love to know if you have any philosophies in general about revivals.
Well, I always loved Company, as a as a as a musical.
I'd actually never seen it and I still have never seen it, other than this production.
But I knew the music really well.
And when I set up a theatre company with Chris Harper, we wanted to do-yay!
We wanted to do productions that were celebrating women somehow.
And Chris knew this, this, this was a love of mine.
This, this particular musical I had tried to do before and hadn't been allowed to several times.
And he said, "Why don't we do it with Bobby as a woman?" So, um I looked at it and looked at the script really carefully, the book and everything.
And thought actually, if we were to modernize it and set it now, it could work really, really well as a woman.
So that was one of our first productions that we decided to do.
Do you think not seeing it helped you?
I think if you're directing something, it's really helpful if you don't see really good productions.
I think it's helpful if you don't see it or if you see not very good productions because, you know, I mean, a director, whoever they are, they have their own ego and they might be completely wrong.
But, you know, when you see something that's not very good, what happens is you kind of go, "Oh, I shouldn't be like that.
It should be like this.
Oh, let's do that." And because I'd only ever heard it, I really didn't know what the book was like, so therefore it just allows you to not be too influenced.
If you see something that is really brilliant, why do it?
Because it's been done brilliantly, and you've got nothing new to say, so.
Of course, that's what you think, but you did have something to say, clearly, and something beautiful to say.
I'd love for the cast to weigh in on that, too.
Was there something that you brought from your past experience with Company that either helped or hindered you, or that you had to get over or, you know, any anything from the past?
Katrina?
Like Marianne, I hadn't seen a production of the show before, so I didn't have any preconceived notions really, of it so, no.
No?
Patti?
I'm trying to think, I mean, I've been in productions.
I don't think I've seen a production.
I didn't see any of the revivals.
Oh, yes, excuse me.
I did.
I've seen- I saw John Doyle's production, but I didn't see the one that Boyd Gaines was in.
So.
But did you say something about bringing your past into the?
And just, you know, if there was something from Company or Sondheim when you came into this that either hung over you in a in- Elaine Stritch.
Well, that's a big one.
But Elaine is an incredibly generous woman, was an incredibly generous woman and appreciated talent all the time.
And um, I remember when I sang this at the New York Phil on Steve's 75th, um I was asked to sing Ladies Who Lunch, having never done the show before.
And I- And Elaine was sitting right there and um, I felt confident to be able to sing it in front of Elaine, because Elaine made me feel that way.
Do you know what I mean?
It was like she didn't say anything to me.
It was just sort of something that happens between performers, maybe where there's this there's a thread of generosity, a passing of the torch or whatever you want to call it.
And I remember saying to Lonny Price, "Where's Elaine sitting?" And she was to my left and I gave it when I said, "Does anyone still wear a hat?" I gave it to Elaine because Elaine was wearing a hat.
That's beautiful.
And I think, you know, it's so true in our community that there is that creative generosity that goes from performer to performer.
Sometimes.
Your turn.
Like my wonderful colleagues on the end, I had never seen a production.
The original production was the 1970, that happened to be the year I was born, and it was a little ahead of my time.
And so, and life goes on.
So I never saw it.
And I do think that helped me in a way, just to maybe come into the audition doing, like Marianne, I really looked at the text and I thought, this, "I'm going to try this," and thank God you liked it.
And then I will say Barbara Barrie has been lovely and has opened up her heart to me and we've emailed one another.
She was the original Sarah and I'd been a fan of hers since I was 11 years old.
I saw a production on HBO of Barefoot in the Park and I thought she was brilliant.
You can still find it on YouTube at the top of Act Two.
It's incredible.
And it's one of the first times I learned what comedic timing was.
And all my girlfriends wanted to be the lovely Bess Armstrong who was the ingenue.
I said, "Not me.
I want to be the character actress." And so I'm really happy to have met her and um to play Sarah because I love her very much.
And, and thank you for casting me.
Wonderful.
Nikki.
I too have never seen the show, but when I was in college I was actually- in the original production, they had four ladies who sang in the pit with the orchestra.
And so in college and summer stock, I was one of the four ladies who sang in the pit, so I got to watch.
It was a production with Malcolm Gets played Bobby and I think Michelle Pawk was Joanne and you know, I was in college, I thought, "Oh, that's a great show for older people." And what are you and what is it now?
Yeah, I was really intrigued by the idea of a female Bobbie.
I mean, like Marianne said, it just brings it into the now, no one really cares about a single 35 year old man these days.
It's so common.
Well, we'll get into that.
Also in our scene, Jenny and David, the genders are swapped in our scene as well.
Right.
So Christopher does what the original Jenny, Teri Ralston, did in the scene, and I sort of play David.
So that was really neat, sort of finding the different gender dynamic, not just with Bobbie, but with her friends.
Can I just say that Marianne empowered women in this production in every scene?
Absolutely.
Yes, you can.
And we're taking our power and we're empowering each other.
Right.
Rashidra.
I thought I was off the hook.
You're off the hook?
Never!
Same.
I also had never seen it.
Marianne has heard me tell this story ad nauseum that I almost didn't come in for this.
Um, I, the group of girlfriends, there's four of us, and three of us had the same audition for Susan.
And I just knew one of the other girls was getting this.
And I was at another show across the street.
I was tired.
I think one day between shows on Saturday, my audition was Monday, the Saturday, I finally decided to try to find something, and I found on YouTube the New York Philharmonic production that I believe has since been taken down.
And I watched it to try to give myself an idea of the story of the show.
Little did I know there isn't really one, so that didn't help much.
And the only reason I came in was because my girls said, "we do not turn down principal auditions.
Even if you don't book this, you still go." And I was like, "Fine, you're right".
And so I begrudgingly went, still knowing I wasn't going to book it, and like three weeks passed that I hadn't heard anything.
And I'm checking all of the things to see who booked it.
And then all of a sudden, my agent called and said, "You got it." And I said, "huh?" So yeah.
And similar to Nikki, my scenes with Greg Hildreth are, we're swapped, so I, Susan, am playing the typical male part of Peter and Greg gets to be all afraid of heights and fainty, swoony Peter.
Amazing, amazing that most people didn't have much connection with it.
That's really interesting.
Marianne, when you revive something, oftentimes the creator isn't alive, but Stephen Sondheim was alive and you did get to have some conversations with him.
How did he feel when you first approached him with the idea?
"No," he said.
He really wasn't keen and he really actually wasn't keen.
But luckily I had met him before because luckily he had seen a production that I'd done of Saint Joan, and he loved it, and he asked me to come for dinner, and I can't believe I actually did because I was terrified.
But I did for dinner and that sort of gave me an in.
And so I sort of said to him, "can I come around again and can I just talk to you about my idea?
I know you don't think it's a good idea, but just let me just talk to you about the idea." And, Joel Fram, who's our musical director, basically had to talk me down off a ledge before we went round to Steve's house, and then also after we left Steve's house.
But I did persuade him to, to give us a chance and to do a workshop.
So we did a workshop in London.
And we, um- is she handing out cheeses?
ok.
She literally makes the strongest gin and tonic that is like.
So we did this workshop in London where we tried it out and we would just, we just stood, stood up and just, you know, read through all the scenes and sang through all the songs in the way that I imagined it could be done with the some of the gender switches and exactly the same book.
And he watched it.
I did say to him, "please, will you watch it with some other people in the room, and please, will you watch it with some women?
And please, will we watch it with some young women?" And he did.
And I think I was directing Angels in America out here when I got the call.
I got the call when I was in rehearsals.
And he said, "you know, I think I think I think we could do I think we could we could work on this." I thought, "oh you're going to work on it with me oh my god." But it was absolutely brilliant because he was so generous.
I mean, so generous, so open, we would talk about literally every line, every lyric.
It would take him weeks to change a word.
I'm not joking.
And he, eventually, we got to the point where he sent me an email quite late on this is and he said, "you know, Marianne, I'm in my nineties.
I'm a guy in my nineties.
You're going to have to tell me what it's like to be a woman who is 35." And he was really, really very open.
I mean, there was a time in London where we had quite a heated discussion, I would say, about TikTok.
Because he didn't think it should be in, and he said things like, "well, you know, I don't think you should have a dance piece in the musical." And I said, "But you wrote it as a dance piece originally." And then we go on to something quite jokey, I think, as far as he was concerned.
He decided to invite all his friends to London to see the show and vote as to whether they thought TikTok should be in or not.
And I just kept arguing back because I felt so passionately about it.
And again, in the end, he just said, "you know what?
You feel more passionately than I do.
You should keep it in.
It's your production.
I mean, wow!" Amazing.
Yeah.
But what do you think the turning point was, when he actually saw the work and heard it?
Yeah, well, he came to the first preview, so you can imagine how much weight I lost that night in London.
And he cried a lot.
He did a lot of crying in a good way.
And from then on, he was a major advocate.
You know, he was a great fan.
And again, you know, he sat over there on our first preview when we reopened after the pandemic.
And there was this follow spot that followed him on.
He tried to skulk it.
It was like this white light.
And it, even now, it feels like, quite angelic.
And I was sitting up there and I could hear his laughter from up there throughout the whole show.
And after the show, we all had drinks at the back of the stools there, for literally hours.
I mean, how old was he going to be?
He was 92, I think.
And we were standing there for hours having more and more drinks.
He was the last person to leave and just saying things like, "I wish George Furth could have seen it." Amazing, amazing.
Oh, may I add to that?
That's the last thing he said when I said goodbye to him.
He said- and he cried, but he said, "I'm going to go home and tell George all about it." Oh, amazing.
Oh have I got a guy for you, wait til you meet him!
Have I got a guy for you, doll.
Oh, doll!
Smart, But with a weakness for Sazarec slings!
You give him even the fruit and he swings.
The kind of stud you can't send through the mail.
Call me tomorrow.
I want the details.
Have I got a man for you, wait till you meet him.
Have I got the man for you, kid, who kid.
Smooth!
He's into all those exotic mystiques.
The Kama Sutra and Chinese techniques.
They say he knows more than seventy-five!
Call me tomorrow if you're still alive.
Have I got a guy for you!
Girl!
To be in your shoes what I wouldn't give!
I mean the freedom to go out live!
And as for settling down and all that.
Marriage may be where it's been, but it's not where it's at.