Company on Broadway

Phone rings, door chimes, in comes Company! Tony Award and Grammy Award winner Katrina Lenk and two-time Tony Award and two-time Grammy Award winner Patti LuPone join forces in Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s groundbreaking musical comedy.

It’s Bobbie’s 35th birthday party, and all her friends keep asking, why isn’t she married? As Bobbie searches for answers, she discovers why being single and being married in 21st-century New York could drive a person crazy.

Two-time Tony Award-winning director Marianne Elliott (War Horse, Curious Incident, Angels in America) helms this revelatory new production. COMPANY features Stephen Sondheim’s award-winning songs You Could Drive a Person Crazy, The Ladies Who Lunch, Side by Side by Side and the iconic Being Alive. So come back to Broadway and celebrate those good and crazy people in our lives.

We’ll be so glad to see you.

We’ll be so glad to see you! Marianne Elliott’s gender-bending revival of Stephen Sondheim’s musical arrives on Broadway, featuring a woman in the central role of Bobbie, a 35-year-old singleton whose coupled friends want to pair her off on the occasion of her 35th birthday. Company tickets are available on TodayTix. Book tickets for Company on Broadway today.

Although Company is a quintessential New York musical, this production originated in London’s West End, featuring Patti LuPone in an Olivier Award-winning performance. Patti LuPone will return to her role as Joanne, who sings the epic eleven o’clock numbers “Ladies Who Lunch,” in the Broadway production.

In the musical Company, Bobbie explores a series of relationships with three suitors, while her friends continually encourage her to settle down. While the plot remains entirely the same with the lead’s gender switch, many critics and reporters have commented that by placing a woman in the center of the story and setting it in modern times, the urgency increases as biological clocks and societal pressure don’t hold the same weight for men.

Company originally premiered on Broadway in 1970, and it features several Sondheim standards including “Being Alive,” “Someone Is Waiting,” “Marry Me a Little,” and “Another Hundred People.” Actors including Adrian Lester, Raúl Esparza, Neil Patrick Harris, and more have played Bobby. Company Broadway tickets are available now.

What to watch for

• When Stephen Sondheim saw this production of Company in London, he told Rosalie Craig, who played Bobbie in the West End, “I wish I’d written it for a woman from the start.”
• This production of Company in New York marks the third Broadway revival of the show. The show was revived in 2006 and in 1995. The 2006 production won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.
• In 2011, The New York Philharmonic staged Company in a production starring Neil Patrick Harris, Stephen Colbert, Christina Hendricks, Martha Plimpton, and Patti LuPone as Joanne. The three-night run of performances was filmed and given a theatrical release and now is available to rent and stream.
• The Documentary Now! Episode, “Co-op,” is a parody of the documentary about the making of the Company original cast recording. John Mulaney plays a Sondheim-esque character, while Paula Pell’s song “I’ve Got to Go” is an homage to Elaine Stritch and “The Ladies Who Lunch.” The episode is available to stream on Netflix, and the real documentary is available to stream on the Criterion Channel.
• Director Marianne Elliott and designer Bunny Christie were inspired by Alice in Wonderland for the production, and there are many visual cues to the iconic tale of a young woman finding herself in this Company.