How Matt Rodin Nails THAT Song in a Queer Company
Company, and Rodin, who performs it in the production now at the Kennedy Center, refers to it as a “rollercoaster.”Company debuted on Broadway in 1970 with music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Firth.
Director Marianne Elliott conceived of this production before the pandemic as a way to mark the musical’s 50th anniversary.Collaborating on the work with Sondheim until his death at the end of 2021, Elliott’s idea was to adapt the work to focus on Bobbie — a single woman whose 35th birthday is more cause for angst than celebration — rather than the original’s Bobby, a 35-year-old single man confronting the same anxiety.All of the lead character’s friends and lovers also swapped genders in the adaptation except for Paul, who is now the financé of Jamie (replacing the original character of Amy), the role played by Rodin.Company is the 31-year-old actor’s biggest show yet.
It’s also his first national tour, and the crowd’s response to the character being reconfigured as a gay man has varied from city to city.“One of the unique challenges of the tour — and that probably didn’t happen in New York — is dealing with audiences that are so vastly different,” he says.“Playing an audience in Naples, Florida, is different than Memphis, is different than Philadelphia, is different than Washington, D.C., is different than Fayetteville, Arkansas.
They’re just all going to receive that song in a different way. And they’re going to receive a queer relationship, and queer people, in a different way, too.
