In March next year the legendary Stephen Sondheim will hit 90. His stage musical (e.g. West Side Story song lyrics) and film soundtrack achievements are legion. Practically everything he has applied his monstrously large and ever-widening talents to has hit bullseyes.

George Furth had but one day in the sun and that was with Sondheim on Company, where he wrote the book; having previously devised a creative format about multiple successive plays with different characters and casts. The joint musical venture in 1970 (which unifies the Furth vision into a robust musical vehicle) impressively netted six Tony awards; with Sondheim writing the songs.

If you are not familiar with the work, put away all thoughts that because the piece is set in New York the ‘company’ allusion is corporate. Rather, it speaks to the notion that in the concrete jungle all humans need human company to survive, be guided and be nurtured. Society, no less. (You know, the thing that Thatcher said her financial Big Bang of the 80s had done away with.)

The work revolves around 35 year-old attractive-but-unmarried Robert. His numerous men and women friends are striving to marry him off. He is their ongoing personal life project. It takes a whole Greenwich Village to raise a 70s man-child don’t you know?

In the process, the 13 other characters will in turn reveal more about themselves than about Robert, let alone get him hitched.  The audience can either accept this as the rich social fabric of America’s most energizing city or as a never-ending kaleidoscope of neurotic posturing.

So, as Company is a product of a seemingly hip society 50 years ago, we must wonder whether it’s now becoming a period piece (One sign of that was when a revival last year boldly rejigged Robert as a woman named Bobby.)

Consider what the original production year had by way of a sedate social backdrop:  Nixon had not yet heard of Watergate, the Woodstock ‘one-off’ had scandalized the American middle classes, the first jumbo jet was revving over at JFK. There were no video games, mobile phones or social media.  Russians were still reds and commies. Ronald Reagan was only then creeping out of Hollywood. Naughty old Playboy sold 7 million knee-trembling copies a month. Nelson Rockefeller couldn’t get the Republican nomination because he was divorced (once). Kiwis were belatedly coming to grips with rolling a joint.

So yes. It is entirely believable that sophisticated New Yorkers still thought that getting someone successfully married off was doing God’s work. They would credibly be holding a jazzy birthday party for Bobby to strut their cack-handed match-making skills.  

From that same party we can duck back and forth in time across the various couples in their own habitats into which Robert is regularly snared to be socially interfered with. We are left unsure, though, whether pairing him off would be an act of kindness – or of revenge. (We went through the marriage mill, so then so should this smarmyfootloose bastard). Certainly, a ritual act of marriage on their part seems to be only the preparatory stages of divorce. (One recently married couple amusingly announces their pending dissolution as if it were their first child).

From this ‘of its time’ base, let the games begin. To catalogue the characters as to their proclivities and obsessions would prove tedious. They simply run the 1970s middle class gamut from Ivy League to Jewish, much-married to naive, dyed in the Bronx or ‘just in’ from Palookaville, dieting and drinking, Wasps and Latinos.  They are the crew that kept Readers Digest solvent long past its sue by date. Certainly, Sondheim gives them top notch songs to express what life is doing to them. Nobody is observably enjoying it. 

SO, The Wellington Footlights have taken on a pretty tough assignment. One that calls for keen insight on essential dramatic issues, US idioms, split-second vocalizing; combined with total mastery of accent, mood and pace. If it flags it goes down. It’s quite a leap from My Fair Lady:  a painful journey towards self-knowledge for synthetically self-absorbed Robert. The inner play (somewhat in the Edward Albee tradition) is way better than worthy. It needs to be kept constantly in the forefront. Somebody always has to be ‘flying the plane’. Without that it would dive into droll vignettes and clever songs leading to an ersatz ending. It therefore helps when everyone can act and sing both expressively and well within themselves.

The linchpin is Robert. Fynn Bodley-Davies delivers an almost flawless one. His controlled body language throughout most of the show is that of a man standing against a wall waiting to be shot. His voice though is measured and pure with a raffish hint of the Hollywood crooner who makes ladies fall all too readily into his bed.

Surrounded by a coercive Greek chorus of seemingly bitter married folk he has a small trio of ‘fooling around’ groupies in tow. April (Renee Iosefa) is a North Western air hostess with a one-track mind and nice sotto voce line in self-abnegation. Kathy (Letitia Garrett) reveals real tenderness and pain at Robert’s studied indifference in a ‘Send in the Clowns’ sort of way. She heads off to pastures new with a freshly minted husband. Marta (Cassandra Tse) adds spice and reveals hidden proclivities in the last reel. None, however, looks remotely like a future Mrs Robert. So the hunt grinds on.

No passage of the piece is either underdone or overplayed. The lighting and the orchestration are pleasingly complementary in every way. There is an evenness to the whole shebang.

I must, though, single out several passages and songs as being only of the very highest quality, the rarest of treats.   

‘The Little Things You Do Together’ in relation to Sarah (Margaret Hill) and Harry (Patrick Jennings) who, as an alcoholic and an anorexic duo, literally lock their necks onstage to produce a truly bizarre moment in musical theatre. Other couples sing cheerfully along in defence of their own marital perversions. (I am left seriously wondering about what they get up to in Stokes Valley and Wainui during the hours of darkness.)

‘Sorry grateful’ (warbled first by Harry then, in sympathy, by David (Will Collin) and Larry (Mike Bryant) tellingly regales us of how a married man is merely a further iteration of what he was before. Ceremonies change nothing. They are an urban myth.

‘Not getting married’, sung by Amy (Stacey O’Brien) in full white battle kit on her supposed wedding day, out-Gilberts W S Gilbert’s best patter songs for speed and machine gun-like effect; a stirringly magnificent, though ultimately ineffectual, tour de force.  One where the slightest stumble will lead to dusty death. Well done Amy!

‘What would we do without you?’ is a full ensemble number that allows the cast to employ wonderfully-lit vocal bounce to electrify the audience in a manic hot hoofer routine – wherein the ghost of Buster Keaton seems to be in headlong pursuit of Benny Hill (as it were).

‘Barcelona’is a haunting little riff delivered by stewardess April in Robert’s well-used bed. It is the perfect example of what happens when hotwired non-commitment meets an OCD-like obsession with physical space. April is flying to Barcelona today but for her it’s only a point on the map. Romance of travel plays no part. She can take you to the world’s cultural capitals but only point out the airplane exits. April can show you every inch of road to nowhere. Her turn in the sack with Robert ends only to an eloquent fragment of silence and frozen light. Chalk up another devastating romantic failure and a stellar segment of the show where it feels cruel to laugh; but you can’t stop yourself. 

‘Another hundred people’is a busy little number masterfully and insistently put across by Marta (Cassandra Tse). It rejoices that New York has the profound potential of being an exciting place teeming with all manner of human life. It records the pressing fact that while the song itself is being sung yet another hundred people have poured off the train into the city. So she sings it again – and again to drive home the point. The numbers pile up before our eyes. Robert is not starved of female options. For god sakes!!! He’s just spoilt for choice.   

‘The Ladies Who Lunch’ is belted out by much-married matron Joanne (Helena Savage) under the influence of one too many vodka stingers. It’s a coruscating trip through the sewers in a glass-bottomed boat that diagnoses life from the female end of the telescope; one that magically hastens Robert’s own Damascus moment. Delivered, large cocktail glass in hand, in the no-holds-barred Merman style, it is a tale told by a lush full of sound and fury clarifying everything. Screw the tired fashion statements and routine lunches: we are all waiting to die. Till then we sorely need each other.      

‘Being Alive’ is Robert in full flood. There are always a million reasons for NOT getting hitched. There is, however, a very fine one for doing so. Music, personality and drama join to create an inspired moment.

I leave this note-perfect opening night feeling as if I had seen a more than respectable off-Broadway rendering of Company.  Jessie Cooper’s direction is unerring and impressively perceptive. It shows an acute understanding of what audiences need to experience to go away from a small theatre satisfied they have, emotionally, been in New York.  She creates a palpable buzz.

Chris Hayward’s sound is impeccably targeted and crystal clear. The script offers many opportunities for sound work and all are taken. The range of costumes and props devised by Brendan Goudswaard and Nick Rees invites the apartment-bound characters to have fun glorifying in who they are, both above and under their skin.

The music production by Shawn Condon is a pleasing magic carpet on which the cast can be ever ready to fly while the audience can savour every tuneful note. Katty Lau’s choreography is a delight. That tantalizing line between character acting and dance movement is nigh on imperceptible. Marta, for example, manages to dance while standing still.

All aspects of the show reveal solid thought and an ability to bring together the various elements so that the authors’ voices ring out. How Footlights have put this challenging show together so close to their last triumph in Te Auaha compels admiration.  

It seemed to be a show with 14 principals in which each married person has their dramatic time to shine while remorselessly orbiting around the highly pampered Robert/Bobby (whose omnipresent name musically echoes insistently through the show.)  

This makes for a fresh and free flowing format (going back to Mr. Furth’s seminal insights) where everyone is well up to their personal mission but within a team drilled to deliver a worthwhile plot. Reviews have their limitations. The show is the thing. Please go and see it – pronto. Disappointment is virtually impossible. 

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