Company review – sex-switch Sondheim proves a heavenly fling

Gielgud theatre, London
Rosalie Craig and Patti LuPone star in Marianne Elliott’s reimagining of the musical about marriage and the single life

A gender change can work wonders. It is no secret that Robert, the 35-year-old bachelor hero of this 1970 show with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth, has now become the similarly unattached Bobbie. The transition, as embodied by Rosalie Craig, makes total sense in today’s world: my only reservation about an exhilarating evening is that the musical, in Marianne Elliott’s production, has lost some of its specific Manhattan identity.

The starting point is a surprise birthday party for Bobbie that both pinpoints her single status and enables her to view her married friends with an outsider’s mix of amusement and envy. Inevitably. the gender swap has a ripple effect on key numbers. You Could Drive a Person Crazy was originally an Andrews Sisters-style pastiche but now becomes the cry of three guys unable to comprehend the heroine’s refusal to conform. Even more radically, Getting Married Today articulates the prenuptial panic of a gay man, rather than a reluctant bride on the threshold of matrimony: Jonathan Bailey is both hilarious and sad as the sweatily nervous Jamie who, seeking to avoid final commitment, claims: “People will think I’m pregnant.”

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2AfY2oo

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