Tonight’s Performance of Company Became a Tribute to Stephen Sondheim

Company director Marianne Elliott addresses the crowd before Saturday night’s performance at the Jacobs. Photo: Christopher Bonanos “We got the news alert on the train at 96th Street,” Daniel Hrdlicka was telling me tonight as we stood in the aisle of the Jacobs Theatre with his husband, Tyson Jurgens, “and had booked the tickets by 116th.

Usually when the lights go down in a Broadway house, a few minutes after 8 p.m., there’s a sort of excited quiet murmur, an exhalation as everyone sits up and prepares to take in the show. Tonight at Company there was instead flat silence. Then Marianne Elliott, the production’s director, stepped onstage. “Truly the greatest artist in our lifetime that we possibly will ever know in this art form,” she said in her short tribute. “I really hope tonight will be a celebration of his joy.

The cast of Company convened on stage before the night’s performance began. Photo: Christopher Bonanos This being a Saturday, the cast had been wrapping up a matinee performance when the announcement came in. Elliott explained to me, after her introductory remarks, that she’d gathered the actors after they came offstage to tell them the sad news. The mood was somber, with “lots of tears,” she said.

And it’s true: this already moving musical seemed tonight to get to the audience a little more than usual. The laugh lines got extra-big laughs, and the emotional high points of the show — the chattering freight train of a song that is “Getting Married Today,” and of course LuPone’s “The Ladies Who Lunch” — both pulled in thunderous responses. The latter one actually did stop the show for a standing ovation.

heybonanos This was lovely, and I wish I could have been there, but the performance was on Friday, not Saturday.

Classy.

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