This show, unlike other Broadway fare, is Sondheim's American opera and the orchestra, under director Stephen Sanborn's control, delivers the music like a Debussy score, or a Bizet or Schubert composition.
It’s also ravishingly beautiful with a thoroughly original visual style, and perfectly cast and acted with lyrics articulated with more clarity than I’ve heard before. Director Joe Calarco’s talent lies in heightening the fantasy while preserving the magic.
If you don’t get a lump in your throat in the final scene when the youthful Frank, Charley and Mary sing “Our Time” looking skyward with wonder and wide-eyed innocence at Sputnik in 1957 nighttime sky from a Brooklyn rooftop, you have no heart.
Many theater companies aspire to recreate faithfully AND freshly great American musicals but few achieve the drama and vitality that’s currently on the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage.
The temptation after the show to dance your way to the parking lot is inescapable. There is so much embedded into the performances that only a director with a vision could have brought to the work.
Most gratifying was the spontaneous roar from the crowd when the names of Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Stephen Sondheim appeared in the end credits.
I often think I've seen this show one time too many, but this one was a joy to watch and a perfect show to recommend in this centennial anniversary year of Leonard Bernstein's birth.
The 90-minute show was packed with about a dozen and half songs, thematically grouped in five sets with some rollicking comedy routines and brash, political commentary in between.
COMPANY is always like an entertaining evening in the company of good friends. And that’s true of Barrington Stage’s version for both Sondheim aficionados and initiates alike.
'Bach on Parade: Voices, Strings and Keys' will feature performances by the Mendelssohn Glee Club, a string quartet, selected vocal soloists and conductor Gene Wisoff.
