Did Critics Think Company Hit All the Right Notes in Cincy?

British director John Doyle, known for his widely acclaimed revival of Sweeney Todd on Broadway, has helmed Cincinnati's Playhouse in the Park production of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical Company. Like Sweeney, Company features sparse staging and 14 performers doubling as musicians. The revival, which stars Raúl Esparza, will run through April 14. Did critics savor the staging?

Here's a sampling of what they had to say:

Charles Isherwood of The New York Times: "This unusual concept isn't likely to stun New York theatergoers with its novelty. For Mr. Doyle's shattering production of Mr. Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Sweeney Todd, staged in precisely the same manner, has already taken the theater season by storm…. But the new collaboration between this hot British director and the celebrated American composer and lyricist proves that the success of Sweeney was not a fluke. Mr. Doyle has admitted that his fresh method of renewing old musicals was initially born of economic considerations. This scintillating production of an earlier Sondheim musical, which stars a terrific Raúl Esparza as the famously diffident, chronically single Bobby, affirms that necessity has indeed mothered a reusable tool for theatrical reinvention, not a quickly exhausted gimmick."

Chris Jones of Variety: "Doyle's work-in-progress Company positively drips with complexity and creativity. Here's why the Sweeney issue isn't a creative problem. Company and Sweeney are two works of diametrically opposite style. And while Doyle's core idea--that Sondheim's themes can be fully expressed emotionally when actor and musician are one--remains this production's greatest asset, its echoes here are strikingly different. Nothing is repeated. Whereas Sweeney was full of distinctive visual ideas and sounded like the work of a very post-modern orchestra, this Company feels more like a rather terrifying house party made up of people whose verbal ripostes just happen to be best expressed by thumping on a xylophone. Or venting down a flute. Or bitching on a violin. Or tapping out a little ode to their spouse on a piano, cocktail in one hand, knife in the other. To his great credit, Doyle understands the essentially domestic, internal and, above all, the normative quality of Company. The people remain real."

Jackie Demaline of The Cincinnati Enquirer: "I profoundly hope Company transfers to New York. Everyone who loves musical theater needs to experience this astonishing reinvention born at Playhouse in the Park--needs to feel it, be held spellbound by it…. Raúl Esparza is heart-stopping and show-stopping as a man who cannot commit, who is alone in a crowd even when it is a roomful of his best married friends. Most of all, Company is about intimacy--a very scary topic. What's brilliant about this elegant reconsideration is how director John Doyle manages to celebrate everything that is smart and funny and joyous about the show while excavating deep below the urbane musical comedy layers to what, I suspect, is closer to Sondheim's soul--wry and melancholy, painfully aware, but with a romantic's fierce will to hope."