Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Company’ swaps genders at Kennedy Center from bachelor to bachelorette
The 1970 original earned a record 14 Tony nominations, winning six, including Best Musical. The 2021 reboot won an additional five Tony Awards, including Best Broadway Revival.
Now, Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” comes to D.C.’s Kennedy Center, running through March 31.
“We’re going to be at the Kennedy Center for the rest of the month,” said Britney Coleman, star of the revival. “I look forward to seeing you for my 35th birthday — both [my character and me] — I did turn 35 in January!”
While the original story followed a New York City bachelor named Bobby at his 35th birthday party, this new version does a fascinating gender swap to follow a woman named Bobbie on her 35th birthday.
“Bobbie is single, unmarried with no kids, and a lot of their married friends have strong opinions about that,” Coleman said. “It was originally written for a man in 1969 or 1970, and we have swapped the gender of Bobbie, as well as the genders of some of the married friends. … There’s something about a woman turning 35, unmarried, without kids in 2024 that resonates a bit differently than a man without kids in 1970.”
Regardless of gender, the character is a dynamite role to play with themes of reluctant adulting.
“This character is on stage the entire time and it’s interesting to just see these couples come in and out of the scenes, in and out of her life essentially,” Coleman said. “It’s an iconic role and it’s definitely an honor to play it. I was with the Broadway company as well, so I’ve really seen so many iterations of this show, and seeing how revered it is by a lot of people who love Stephen Sondheim, it’s just interesting.”
Of course, musical theater fans will recognize a bunch of the numbers.
“Some of these songs are some of Stephen Sondheim’s best: ‘Being Alive,’ ‘Marry Me A Little,’ we’ve got ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’ in there. It’s really, really wonderful and special to be able to sing these songs,” Coleman said. “There’s ‘Another Hundred People,’ there’s ‘Not Getting Married Today,’ which is a popular what we call ‘patter song’ where it’s not necessarily sung but a lot of really quick words strung together.”
While Sondheim passed away in 2021, his legacy lives on through his prolific body of work.
“Sondheim is truly his own category of work,” Coleman said. “He has now become an adjective to describe a certain type of writing, which encapsulates the entire human experience. I think all Stephen Sondheim shows deserve to be seen more than once because, as an actor, I know we take something different out of it every night. … He doesn’t spoon-feed you how to feel or think, it leaves the opinions in the audience’s hands.”