Company

Company is an imaginative musical comedy written by Stephen Sondheim which reveals the good, the bad and the downright dysfunctional in married life.

Perpetually single Bobby is a New Yorker who is “too old to be young and too young to be old.” His married friends claim to envy his freedom, but they really all just want him to get married too. And, while Bobby believes at the outset that he is better off on his own, he comes to learn that no man is an island: relationships are an essential part of life. But are either tediously vacuous flight-attendant April or quirky red-head Marta the right girl for him?

Sondheim’s hit Broadway show is a "concept musical" in which we get to know Bobby and his circle of married friends through a series of vignettes, presented in no particular chronological order. Over the course of these sketches, all beautifully choreographed in this Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group production, some interesting home truths about his friends’ marriages come to light.

Sondheim’s lyrics are cleverly-written and entertaining, and they are performed by EUSOG with abundant talent and professionalism. Impressive too are their unfaltering and convincing American accents. Ali Watt, playing Bobby, is a real pleasure to watch, and the performance of understudy Katie Fitzgerald as the embittered and three-times-married Joanne is another highlight of the show.

The show is slightly let down by a handful of weak moments during one or two of the songs. Yet it is overall a charming and thoroughly enjoyable production which does justice to Sondheim’s amusing award-winning musical.