Review by David Marlowe

Bob Wells has directed a smashing production of Stephen Sondheim’s "Company" at Town Hall Arts in Littleton. Casting fourteen of Denver’s finest musical theatre actors and bringing together a thoroughly professional team of techies, the show is a socko boffo hit!

The play, which is a "romantic musical about bachelorhood," contains some of Sondheim’s best loved songs. " Being Alive" and "The Ladies Who Lunch" are just two of the unforgettable show stoppers. Director Wells has given Town Hall the most sophisticated production that venue has ever seen. Michael Duran’ s minimal scenic design for the show gives us an eye - pleasing composition of monochromatic abstract art which places the cast against the backdrop of a modern art gallery. A gorgeous grand piano allows Deborah Schmitt-Lobis to exhibit her outstanding musical virtuosity.

Joel Sutliffe commands the stage as Bobby, the central character in Sondheim’s study of the self absorbed, noncommittal bachelor. As his character moves through a fantasia of the reality-based experiences of his married friends, and a few missteps of Bobby’s own, Sutliffe embodies a number of his character’s emotional states. Although Bobby’s cavalier attitude to the maelstrom of friendly "married friends advice" surrounding him seems to point to his never entering into another primary relationship, the progression of songs in the play makes one ponder. When Bobby blows out the candles on the cake on his thirty-fifth birthday, his heart is full of the lyrics of his final song, "Being Alive."

If one were to speak in terms of biology with regard the superbly directed choral numbers ( Mary Louise Burke) the cast of Bobby’s married friends becomes a sort of amoebic entity trying to absorb Bobby’s non-conformist ‘cell.’ However, Bobby’s love of freedom keeps him bouncing resiliently away.

Megan Van de Hey , superb throughout, is especially enthralling in her rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch."

Janelle Christie adds a spicy sexiness and humor to "You Could Drive A Person Crazy." Her coiffure, topped by a veritable ‘slinky’ of a ‘do,’ is intentionally hilarious.

Amanda Earls turns in a superb version of "Getting Married Today."

Each and all in this cast delivers the highest and best in musical theatre available. Bouquets of roses to all involved with this production. Run to get tickets.

Colorado Backstage Review by Holly Bartges

Company doesn’t have a plot. Company doesn’t need a plot. It doesn’t even want to tell a story, although it does in a most unique way. It wants to plow into relationships with the fervor of a geological dig. It does.

Director, Robert Wells surrounded himself with a star-studded cast to bring Stephen Sondheim’s vibrant Company to life at Littleton’s Town Hall. It would take some serious digging to out-sing, out-dance, out- play, out-characterize, out-anything this production. It is the finest, most exciting production of Company I’ve ever experienced.

On a stripped down set designed by Michael R. Duran, the various scenes in a den, a terrace, a living room, a kitchen, a private club relies on various shaped boxes, creating an illusion for the characters to “squibble”, squabble, fuss, laugh, poke fun, draw lines in the sand, tease, taunt, giggle, and bemoan their human existence. Without defined set pieces, nothing is lost; a great deal gained. You know where they are at all times and where space and time melt exiting walls, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the Who.

The 14 cast members provide delicious, delectable characters from the first note to the last bow.

With an awesome voice that could melt the artic ice caps, Joel Sutliffe wraps himself tightly into Robert’s persona. It‘s Robert’s 35th Birthday, and oh, mercy, what are we going to do? He’s not married. His ten closet friends, five couples, are, and they very much want to get him settled.

With three enormously different girlfriends, Robert suffers from the inability to make a decision, much less a commitment.

When Company opened on Broadway in 1970, it made its own headlines as being the first musical to deal with adult problems through music. Evidently it spoke richly through sharp corners winning five Tony Awards and two Drama Desk Awards. The songs humorously and poignantly reveal the outside persona of the characters as well as their deepest, darkest anxieties. This production does a wondrous job of captivating the intent inside an upbeat tempo that never misses a beat.

In Sarah and Harry’s living room (Heather Larson and Keegan Flaugh), with kind and friendly talk, an undercurrent sweeps menacingly between the couple. Harry promised to stop drinking. Sarah promised to go on a diet. Inadvertently, Bobby brings Brownies for dessert. Larson and Flaugh’s characters steam under the pressure ending in a hilarious uproar of secret binging. They want Bobby to get married in the middle of this? Leading to the song The Little Things You Do Together, which leads Bobby to innocently ask Harry if he has any regrets getting married. This leads to the grand song of Sorry-Grateful by Harry, David (Daniel Langhoff), and Larry (Reece Livingstone). Attempt at karate between Harry and Sarah becomes “gigglesville”.

Bobby joins Susan (Margie Lamb) and Peter (Brian Murray) on their terrace. Oh, oh another discombobulated circumstance. Behind the smiles and polite words, Susan and Peter drop a bomb onto Bobby’s head, as they swing through the tree branches unscathed from being stoned. Their giggling overrides the bomb’s explosion, which strangely enough provides depth to their characters.

Between Wells and the expertise of the actors, the characters transform into five dimensional human beings. You know these people. They are friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and business associates. The musical tells the story while the humor rounds off the sharp edges.

One of Bobby’s girlfriends, Marta flirts with the unconventional. Janelle Christie turns her into a marvel. Marta’s song Another Hundred People haunts, jives, seeks laughability, and catches the breath all at the same time.

Stacy Ryfun D’Angelo turns airline stewardess and girlfriend, April, into a classical dumb blond rimmed with wisdom. D’Angelo’s expressions remind just how many muscles the face actually has. She uses every one of them, confessing she’s boring always wanting to live in Radio City

Amy (Amanda Earls) and Paul (Mark J. Middlebrooks) are getting married today. Earls reveals Amy’s tormented soul in the song Getting Married Today, Talk about breath control. Earls owns it, needs it, and simply wows the audience.

Bobby goes for a walk in the park with girlfriend #3, Kathy (Kelsey L, Rich). He wonders why they never got married. Simple answer. She moved to Cape Cod and married someone else. Rich paints Kathy with water colored undertones of regret. They emulate a closeness resembling a discontented distance.

Then there’s the very wealthy Joanne put together with sharp lines and sharp words wonderfully infiltrated by Megan Van De Hay who sees to it Joanne stands out in a crowd along with her husband Larry. Her song The Ladies Who Lunch commands startling attention.

With a smile of grace and celebration, Company embraces the wonders of human nature, the fragility of relationships, the foibles, misgivings, and heart warmings folded neatly together with powerful music and insightful lyrics. Deborah Schmidt-Lobis commands her own attention at the piano with high-powered musical expertise. Seth Alison’s lighting design underscores calculated moments of brightness. Lisa Murray’s costume design fits perfectly for the time, allowing the actors to stand out, and giving the characters an air of distinction.

The Birthday party becomes a focus for the five couples opening Act One and Two. In the end, however, Bobby slyly takes matters into his own hands, giving the Birthday Party a twist of his own confidence and awareness.

Wells and his company attack Sondheim’s Company with delicious intent and precise determination. No one should miss this production. Every scenario can be identified with, while wisdom and perception peek eagerly around the corners to laugh at, to laugh with, to applaud its very own magic.

Click HERE to read the full review.

Rocky Mountain News Review by Lisa Bornstein

Town Hall's 'Company' more forthright, sexual

As the voices blend and swell in the opening bars of Company, it seems this will be a new height in the history of Town Hall Arts Center. In some ways, it is.

Just the staging of the witty, bitter, heartfelt Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical is a continuation of the theater's growing bravery. The show - like A Chorus Line - may be more than 30 years old, but it's more forthright and sexual than what Littleton audiences have received in the past.

Joel Sutliffe, who's made such a strong impact on earlier shows such as 1776, takes the lead as Bobby, the playboy whose married friends are celebrating his 35th birthday. They all need him for something: The men want him single, to live out their fantasies, while the women need him married, to prove they were right.

Sutliffe plays a genial, detached Bobby, coasting through life as his friends try to confront him with what he's missing. He's the unusual passive protagonist, evidenced by the song Someone Is Waiting, which ends with him conflicted and singing "Hurry, wait." The actor wisely underplays the role, underlining the power of the closing song, Being Alive.

The friend who understands Bobby best is the most guarded of the group, the oft-married Joanne. Megan Van De Hey offers a caustic surface covering warmth and wounds. She can castrate with a word, and when Van De Hey expels the last roar of a dying lioness on The Ladies Who Lunch, you can hear the audience exhale its tension at the end. (Offstage, but happily invisible onstage, Sutliffe and Van De Hey are married.)

Company is composed of vignettes, and characters are glimpsed briefly but vividly. Amanda Earls, who usually plays strong, boisterous characters, is adorable and hysterical as the wedding-shy Amy, and a quiet Mark J. Middlebrooks makes a perfect counterbalance, as does Reece Livingstone's stoicism as Joanne's husband, Larry. Stacey Ryfun D'Angelo plays the wildly daft stewardess April, although April's oddness borders on the creepy.

Despite these performances, Company is not only not perfect, it's quite uneven. Despite the show's underlying themes of loneliness and compromise, director Bob Wells has either directed or allowed half his cast to play with a false frivolity and broadness that are an insult to artistically challenging musical theater.

The first vignette, that of the passive-aggressive turned aggressive-aggressive couple Sarah (Heather Larson) and Harry (Keegan Flaugh), is made soggy by Larson's too-big performance. When speaking, Janelle Christie's bohemian Marta is practically winking at the audience through her lines, a quality emphasized by a truly odd bow-like hairdo. In song, Christie has a lighter touch, but her Another Hundred People sounds like an optimistic tribute to New York rather than a description of a disconnected city of transients.

Deborah Schmit-Lobis does yeoman's work on the piano, but it's unfair to Sondheim and audiences to have a single instrument on such complex, lush work. The accompaniment frequently sounds at odds with the melody, and singers seem to have been left to their own devices by musical director Mary Louise Burke (who excels in bringing the company together vocally). Earls and Christie have trouble with breath control on the tricky lyrics, and the result is that lyrics get lost in torrential phrasing.

On the other hand, there are many moments that approach the sublime, as when the entire cast folds in for a splendidly choreographed vaudeville turn on Side By Side, in which Wells has Bobby become their obliging wind-up toy, always just outside the chorus line.

At that moment, Company comes together as a company.

Click HERE to read the full review.

The Denver Post Review by John Moore

"Company" Rating: ***

If you were a 35-year-old unmarried man in 1970, it likely meant you were either damaged or gay. Bobby's only problem is that he keeps far, far too many married friends.

"Company" is Stephen Sondheim's delightful and disquieting look at bachelorhood just before the sexual revolution imploded the American family. It's about five obliviously unhappy married couples who, despite the compromises that dictate their own vacuous lives, are preoccupied to distraction with having single pal Bobby join them in their own little corner of matrimonial purgatory.

Bobby's not afraid of getting married — he's afraid not to. But he has yet to learn the difference between availability and emotional availability.

For its time, this musical was revolutionary: No plot, no chorus girls, minimal choreography — unless you count all that verbal tap-dancing. It spawned the term "revusical" — a string of nonlinear scenes built around one theme.

"Company" soars on Sondheim classics like "Side by Side" and Bobby's spine-tingling final anthem, "Being Alive." It also ushered in Broadway's 1970s era of icky introspection that would infect all major writers of the day, including Stephen Schwartz ("Pippin") and Neil Simon ("They're Playing Our Song"). This is personal-pronoun theater . . . on steroids.

"Company" had become an afterthought — its difficulty and 14-person cast make it prohibitive for most companies — until a thrilling 2006 Broadway revival (recently broadcast on PBS) in which the multitalented ensemble played their own instruments.

But "Company" is now older than Bobby himself. And if that doesn't give you pause, chew on this: Dean Jones, who originated the role of Bobby on Broadway, is now 77. Successor Boyd Gaines is 55. Bobby-come-lately Raul Esparza is 38. . . . And no, Bobby's still not getting married today.

Yet "Company," miraculously, doesn't feel all that dated in Town Hall Arts Center's capable and sophisticated new staging. This musical asks tough, timeless questions like, "What do you get out of marriage?" (and the answer had better be more than "company"); and, "Why is it so hard to just let someone in?"

While Sondheim songs are not generally meant to be sung by mere mortals, director Bob Wells' stacked cast largely aces the vocal test (accompanied by a single piano player). But when they aren't singing, they're not as successful in conveying the complicated, bittersweet angst that pervades writer George Furth's marital menagerie.

Joel Sutliffe, who certainly earned himself a lead after stealing Town Hall's "1776," is unquestionably committed as the man most women want, but never seem to get. And he has a killer voice. But he's not quite the open, walking wound you'd expect from a protagonist with such utterly confused ideals.

Bobby is meant to be both hero and coward, enigmatic and confused, smarmy and sincere in his uncertainty. The conflicting slight shades of character aren't completely drawn.

Standouts include Amanda Earls as the adorably neurotic Amy, who sings the hyperkinetic "Not Getting Married Today." Earls' combination of emotional vulnerability and innate comic instincts make her portrayal, to me, better than Broadway. She's a marvel.

Also indelible is Stacey Ryfun D'Angelo as sad airhead flight-attendant April, one of three suitors (including Janelle Christie and Kelsey R. Rich) who put the Andrews Sisters to shame on "You Could Drive a Person Crazy." Christie also anchors "Another Hundred People Just Got off of the Train," a seminal, melancholy lament about missed opportunities (that's completely incongruous to the free-spirited character singing it). Also unforgettable is Maija-Liisa Nielsen as a square wife who submits to getting stoned. It's a funny and endearing scene — until you learn she really hated it.

Joanne (Megan Van De Hey) delivers a rant as Robert (Joel Sutliffe) and Larry (Reece Livingstone) look on. ( Town Hall Arts Center )Drive a Person Crazy." Christie also anchors "Another Hundred People Just Got off of the Train," a seminal, melancholy lament about missed opportunities (that's completely incongruous to the free-spirited character singing it). Also unforgettable is Maija-Liisa Nielsen as a square wife who submits to getting stoned. It's a funny and endearing scene — until you learn she really hated it. The most difficult task, hands down, goes to Megan Van De Hay (Sutliffe's real-life wife) as Joanne, the bitter older friend whose rant about middle-aged women wasting their lives should stop the show cold. While she nails the damning "Here's to the Ladies Who Lunch," Wells doesn't help Van De Hay get to that crucial, agonizing moment of revelation — that she's one of them.

Audiences who exit revisiting all those memorable melodies in their heads best not think too hard about the final scene. So what do these people get from marriage? Each other — nothing more, nothing less. Company. The happiest couple is divorced.

Bobby's ultimate decision is a scathing indictment of marriage. Yes, he's missing out — but what exactly is he missing out on?

Click HERE to read the full review.

Reviews of Past Shows at Town Hall Arts Center

Swingtime Canteen REVIEWS:

The Denver Post Review by John Moore - Click HERE to read the full the review.

Fiddler on the Roof REVIEWS:

Littleton Independent Review by Sonya Ellingboe - Click HERE to read the full the review.

Always...Patsy Cline REVIEWS:

Q&A with Denver Post Theaer Critic John Moore - Click HERE to read the interview.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat REVIEWS:

Colorado Community Newspapers Review by Paige Ingram - Click HERE to read the full review.

The Denver Post Review by Ricardo Baca - Click HERE to read the full the review.

My Fair Lady REVIEWS:

Denver Post Review by Ricardo Baca - Click HERE to read the full the review

Colorado Backstage review by Holly Bartges - Click HERE to read the full review

1776 REVIEWS:

Denver Post Review by John Moore - Click HERE to read the full review

Rocky Mountain News by Lisa Bornstein - Click HERE to read the full review

Colorado Backstage with Holly Bartges - Click HERE to read the full review

FOOTLOOSE REVIEWS:

Denver Post Review by John Moore - Click HERE to read the full review

Colorado Backstage with Holly Bartges - Click HERE to read the full review

I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE REVIEWS:

Denver Post Review by John Moore - Click HERE to read the full review.

Colorado Backstage with Holly Bartges - Click HERE to read the full review

Colorado Backstage with guest Nora Gift - Click HERE to read the full review

Denver Post Review by John Moore - Click HERE to read the full review

Colorado Backstage with Holly Bartges - click HERE to read the full review.

Westword Review by Juliet Wittman - click HERE to read the full review.