Three's Company

The Huntington revisits a landmark

by Carolyn Clay

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by George Furth. Directed by Larry Carpenter. Choreography by Daniel Pelzig. Music direction by F. Wade Russo. Scenery designed by Loren Sherman. Costumes by Toni-Leslie James. Lighting by Phil Monat. Sound by Duncan Edwards. With Davis Gaines, Andy Umberger, Susan Cella, John Schiappa, Teri Bibb, William Parry, Maureen Silliman, Dann Fink, Tia Speros, Walter Charles, Karen Mason, Kim Lindsay, Angela Lockett, and Marie Danvers. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Boston University Theatre through June 22.

When Stephen Sondheim & George Furth's marriage-minded musical Company debuted, in 1970, Liz Taylor was still married to Richard Burton -- the first time. So it's been a while. A lot of things have happened in the ensuing years to alter the dynamics of relationships and commitment, among them the advent of AIDS. But Company -- which is enjoying its first professional production in these parts since its pre-Broadway tryout -- proves itself worthy of its landmark status. And not just because, devoid of chorus or plot, it is considered the first "concept" musical.

True, the piece -- which was revised for 25th-anniversary revivals in London and at New York's Roundabout Theatre -- seems now to have one foot in 1970, the other in the '90s, as Furth's libretto does a sometimes awkward frug to Sondheim's agitated off-rhythms and intricately nested lyrics. But one is struck anew by the stinging sophistication of Sondheim's contribution. And perhaps because the leading role in this zippy yet biting production is played by former Phantom of the Opera Davis Gaines, one gets more than a little misty for the days when it was Sondheim, rather than Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was putting his infinitely superior head together with Hal Prince's.

Company whirls around the 35th birthday of a New York bachelor named Robert (Gaines), who is teetering on the cusp of commitment, though it's not clear to whom. Along with the five married couples who seem to have adopted him as their personal mascot and sounding board ("One's impossible, two is dreary/Three is company, safe and cheery"), we get a trio of girlfriends, none of them seemingly on board for their brains -- though younger woman Marta has a brashness that passes.

As the party evaporates and reconfigures, Bobby, contemplating marriage against a background of urban alienation, relives past encounters with lovers and friends. The question: what do you get for it? What do you get? The answer, according to the pained, if ultimately yielding, "Being Alive": "Someone to hold you too close/Someone to hurt you too deep." And that number was, famously, substituted for the more lacerating "Happily Ever After," a Sartre-like ditty comparing marriage to Hell.

The original set by Boris Aronson -- an abstract Manhattan highrise of plexiglass and steel, with two working elevators -- is almost as renowned as the show itself. Here director Larry Carpenter and set designer Loren Sherman place the sometimes surreal goings-on in what appears to be Robert's SoHo-type warehouse loft. They also seem to have given the character a job as an artist/photographer, which sets up the motifs of the large color paintings of Robert's couple friends that preside over their scenes with him and the looming, projected photos of his birthday parties (some of which are the same birthday party), always with the same anti-realistic cake.

Once again, Carpenter, who has been responsible for such Huntington hits as H.M.S. Pinafore and Iolanthe, delivers a polished and intelligent production that captures the emotion, as well as the ballyhoo'd cynicism, of the much-admired musical. With the exception of the Elaine Stritch-created role of Joanne, who stops the waning second act with a coruscating musical toast to "The Ladies Who Lunch," Company's dramatis personae are not razzle-dazzlers. They carry the themes -- of free-floating loneliness and marital compromise -- much as Sondheim's dissonant melodies carry his adroitly rhymed, piercing lyrics. Appropriately, the cast members' biggest moments are as a company -- notably in that ironic homage to a production number, complete with hats, canes, and kickline, "Side by Side by Side."

Nonetheless, the Huntington cast, all competent Sondheim singers, stake claims of personality. This is particularly true of the women, with Susan Cella tough and funny as a wife versed at dieting and karate, Teri Bibb seductively Southern as a chic magnolia married to a man of ambivalent sexuality, Maureen Silliman deliciously fuzzy as an increasingly stoned young matron, and Tia Speros marvelously precise as a panicked bride firing recitative like anti-marriage bullets in "Getting Married Today."

Among the girlfriends, Kim Lindsay is an empathetic Kathy, Angela Lockett a cocksure Marta, and Marie Danvers a sweetly daffy April, but the three don't miss the anger in the Andrews-y "You Could Drive a Person Crazy." No wonder Robert responds by protecting his privates. Of course, when Karen Mason, a superbly acerb Joanne, lets loose with "The Ladies Who Lunch" ("dinosaurs surviving the crunch"), the audience would do well to dive under its seats. The actress/singer knows when she's been handed the stage, and she bestrides it like the proverbial colossus, infusing Sondheim's cocktail of triumph and loathing with fire and acid.

As for Gaines's Robert, he combines a not entirely appropriate Phantom-like musical flourish -- and one hell of a first-class voice, capable of conveying strangled emotion -- with an altogether apt outsider's bemusement. And at the Huntington, he's in good Company.