Two is Company

Yesterday was a day not of wine and roses, but close enough.

In the morning I high-tailed my way to Sydney on the train (thank goodness they are running again) to meet up with fellow blogger, Jelly. This particular young lady takes the prize as the first ever “interwebs person” I have ever met in person. Actually, right after James (damn, really should have planned this paragraph). I thought I’d be safe because she’s a musical theatre chick, and they are all sane, right? Also, one of her emails contained the line “I promise not to rob or molest you”. That’s sounds like a promise I can risk testing.

In reality, Jelly was such an engaging, passionate and downright spunky lady that I probably wouldn’t have minded if she had robbed me. We chatted for hours about musicals and the like, ate food, wandered the city, occasionally finding maps before loudly declaring, “Oh, we are HERE” as if to appease the surrounding people that we actually did know what we were doing. I even met her entirely charming family before taking my leave, hoping we’d find the chance to catch up again after she returns to her home state.

Once I hit the street, I worked my way, using a combination of the alignment of the stars and an expert sense of smell to the corner of blah blah and whatsit streets where I was picked up by Brett, Min and Adam as they entered the city. Shortly after we met up with Tim and Chae for some dinner in Circular Quay before going off the respective shows we had tickets for. Myself, Brett, Min and Adam all had tickets for Company (which the other boys, and Jelly, in separate parties, had seen the night before).

Company, being a Sondheim show is one I’m particularly fond of. It was surprising then that I was left a little cold by the first act, and more particularly the first half. A lot of the performances in the karate/brownie scene seemed to be played in this broad caricature style that to me undermined the importance of those early scenes as showing Bobby (and the audience) the different nature of marriage. This certainly appeared to be a direction thing, not one or two actors hamming it up. The scenes seemed drawn out whereas in previous productions they hadn’t. The show certainly picked up with Getting Married Today which was hilariously staged, and the second act was thoroughly more enjoyable than the first. Amongst all the bits of “clever” in the show’s direction, I felt the choreography fell a bit flat because by the time we get to the vaudeville pastiche number (Side by Side/What Would We Do Without You), the audience had already seen a lot of that style of movement performed by the company, particularly in the early scenes. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed the interpretations of the characters, the playfulness the show had and the songs were all fantastically performed. My other two gripes relate to the sound being firstly, the cast were too quiet (in relation to the amplification of the band). At times vocal lines were completely lost in the mix. Secondly, the smallish but highly effective and tight orchestra suffered keyboard strings (which stank so badly), an awful piano patch (general midi piano, anyone), woeful drum mic’ing (as Jelly said “it sounded like someone flicked the switch on the keyboard over to Bossa Nova”). The supplemented brass sounded great, to my ears at least, and I’d be very curious how it worked, as I didn’t pay enough attention to see if it was just a keyboard patch. These really are minor niggles on a really enjoyable show, however, even if an amateur production I saw a few years ago had a larger and better mixed orchestra.

I almost wasn’t going to mention this because who am I to criticise this, but the costumes were just plain weird at times. To quote Jelly (she is so darn pithical!), the costumes looked like “what an old woman thinks strippers would wear.” Because we all know that young people = strippers, right?

After the show, we spent a few hours getting out of the carpark and then made our way back home, stopping in at the McCafe where a rather butch looking security guard suddenly turned pale and started to soil his pants as soon as a real issue started up with some guys yelling at each other.

All in all, such a splendid day of great ‘Company’ and brilliant company.