In ‘Company’ for the Digital Age, Life is Frenetic, Overwhelming, and Surreal

“Company” begins with a room. It is sparsely furnished and remarkable in its mundanity: a folding chair, a table, and a few coat hangers tacked to a gray wall. When birthday girl Bobbie (Britney Coleman) — holding helium-filled number balloons that scream “35” — bursts through the door, only to collapse into the chair and pour herself a glass of wine as she listens to her voicemails, the audience viscerally feels her exhaustion.

“Company” arrives at Boston’s Citizens Bank Opera House as part of its second North American tour. This particular iteration of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 production comes to Boston from Broadway, though it was first staged in London’s West End — in other words, “Company” is a show that has been repeated, altered, and reproduced, time and time again. In her revival, director Marianne Elliott has changed the perennial bachelor Bobby to perennial bachelorette Bobbie; the setting, though still New York City, has been moved from Sondheim’s era to modern times.

With its numerous reproductions and historical baggage, perhaps “Company” never had any choice but to confront the monotony of daily life, even as time relentlessly marches forward; It does so exceedingly well, grappling with modern day problems with humor and ingenuity. The musical explores every inch of what it means to exist in the digital age, along with the endless obligations that one has to friends and acquaintances. The musical makes abundantly clear how one can be surrounded by loved ones and still feel incredibly lonely.

“Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company,” goes the famous line from the show, and indeed it’s true: Elliott fantastically stresses how privacy is anachronistic to modern life. Set designer Bunny Christie divides the stage via small moving cubicles that function as rooms, and choreographer Liam Steel uses the cramped space wonderfully to emphasize how suffocated Bobbie feels. As the ensemble of Bobbie’s friends surprise her with a birthday party in the song “Company,” they squeeze into Bobbie’s room, pressing up and jostling against each other as they pose in multiple positions. Personal space is non-existent, and as Bobbie’s well-meaning friends — who are all coupled up — smother her with love and affection, a sense of claustrophobia engulfs the scene.

“Company” implicates its audience as it examines the digital age — and in this sense, perhaps the performance begins before the lights dim, with the disembodied voice that invites theater-goers to put their phones away before the musical starts. Though a ubiquitous theater announcement, it’s an ironic reminder in this context: The audience remains plugged in for the next two hours as the cast of “Company” fully incorporates social media into its performance. The characters take selfies, accompanied by the blinding flash of lights; the rooms, too, are outlined with LED lights reminiscent of Instagram’s square posts, as if the vignettes unfolding within were contained to a screen. The show interrogates how the digital age has eroded any semblance of peace that an individual can achieve, adding another dimension to the musical’s theme of appearance versus reality. As actors hold out their phones to take photos at seemingly random junctures, the audience understands their desperation to pause time, or to grasp at some ephemeral moment.

Elliott, in an interview with The New York Times, explains how theater “should have something to say to the now” — and though never truly explicit, this adaptation of “Company” has wholly embraced its zeitgeist. As Jamie (Matt Rodin) stresses about getting married to his boyfriend, one cannot help but think of how queer couples rush towards marriage for fear of changing laws; and as Bobbie frets about how single she is, the ticking clock that accompanies each stage transition reminds the audience of female biological clock and pressures on women to get married early.

The characters of “Company” are running out of time in a world that moves at a rapid clip, a theme that is strongest when the show fully embraces the absurdities of the contemporary. Sondheim and Furth’s original production saw “Company” as a concept musical, in which time is malleable and played with through a series of vignettes that could, ostensibly, be occurring simultaneously. Elliott takes this impulse and runs with it, and as a result the show displays a temporal surreality that manifests as physical absurdity. At one point in the second act, the “35” number balloons which Bobbie holds in the opening scene reappear, but as human-sized inflatables which drift around the stage — such interventions prove mischievous and quirky, and work to a wonderful effect.

Given all this, it is no surprise that the technical team of “Company” has an illusionist, Chris Fisher, whose work shines particularly in the physical comedy of “Getting Married Today.” As Jamie gets cold feet before his wedding, the scene is enhanced as the vicar pops up like a poltergeist throughout his industrial kitchen — disappearing behind a door, springing up from a cake, emerging from a fridge. Jamie’s over-the-top reactions to the shock of seeing the vicar adds to his incredibly hilarious rendition.

But the digital age isn’t just overwhelming: It’s isolating, too. Christie’s set allows for the rooms to feel cramped and claustrophobic, but also underscores the paradox of being connected and, somehow, alone. At times, the set’s various sized rooms fit together snugly even as characters remain alone in rooms, reinforcing Bobbie’s loneliness despite being surrounded by friends. As Coleman cries, “I’m ready now! Someone, I’m ready!” in “Marry Me a Little,” the desperation of Bobbie is heartbreakingly palpable.

The tension between being constantly tuned in and isolated is abandoned at certain junctures of the show, and it is these scenes that make the show feel somewhat stagnant. Bobbie finds herself alone within the second act as she begins to wrestle more and more with the prospect of settling down, but these moments sometimes feel contrived in their simplicity, given the overall frenetic energy of the show. In a scene where Joanne (Judy McLane) and Bobbie watch Joanne’s partner Larry (Derrick Davis) dance in a nightclub, the staging feels stale: Joanne and Bobbie remain seated in high-top chairs throughout the lengthy conversation, making the scene feel inert. And as Coleman takes center stage in “Being Alive,” with little action happening around her, one cannot help but wish that more was done with the staging. Despite this, “Company” remains magnificent as it balances between the individual and the collective, and the perennial question — how does one know when it’s time to settle down? — is consistently interwoven throughout the show.

The original “Company” first premiered in Boston’s Shubert Theatre on March 24, 1970, with Bobby blowing out his candles, alone, at the end of the show. Less than ten minutes away from its original premiere location, Bobbie steps back into the room where she first began the show and sits down alone at her table, facing a cake too big for her to finish on her own, and dotted with 35 birthday candles. As she blows out the candles in the show’s finale, just as Bobby did 54 years before her, one thing is clear. “Company” has reproduced, yet again, another fantastic musical — one that honors the original while being a sublime adaptation of our contemporary times.

“Company” runs at the Citizens Bank Opera House through April 14.

—Staff writer Angelina X. Ng can be reached at angelina.ng@thecrimson.com.