6/21/2024
Broadway Las Vegas
With the premature birth of his twins eight years ago, theater producer Chris Harper experienced a revelation.
To muster courage during his infants’ health issues, Harper repeatedly listened to one of his favorite songs, “Being Alive,” from beloved Broadway musical comedy Company, which heads to The Smith Center in Las Vegas from August 20 to 25.
“Looking at my daughter, I was thinking, ‘Gosh, aren’t I lucky, I’m 45 years old, I can have a child whenever it suits me,” Harper, who became a father as a single man with a surrogate, tells The Smith Center. “I thought of the pressures on my female friends, with people asking, ‘Are you married? You got kids?’ And even if they don’t want kids, people are telling them they should. I was thinking that I’m lucky people don’t do that with guys.”
All that led Harper to a revolutionary idea: staging a revival of Company – an iconic, 1970 musical examining marriages and commitment among New Yorkers – but reshaping the story by switching the main character from male (Bobby) to female (Bobbie), with the plot now set in modern times.
“It allows you to engage with what it is like be a 35-year-old woman in today’s society,” Harper says, adding that this aligned with his production company’s goal of highlighting women’s stories. “Portraying an empowered woman is the whole point.”
Winner of the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, the show now heads to The Smith Center on the first North American tour of Company, showcasing invigorating songs by eight-time Tony-winning composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, along with an uproarious script by George Furth.
“You could do this show lots of different ways, because the writing is so good,” Harper says. “It’s extraordinarily funny, and don’t we all need some fun in our lives right now?”
Reimagining a Broadway staple
With the protagonist now a woman weighing her choices as single and childless at 35, the show analyzes the web of possibilities that women navigate, Harper says.
“What we’ve tried to do is say, ‘life is about choices,’” he says. “I think Bobbie being a woman allows you to engage with the character in a way that was harder to do when he was a man.”
The show further swaps the story’s married couples, giving the men’s dialogue to the women and vice versa, Harper says, significantly changing gender dynamics. The creative team also changed one couple to be gay.
“It makes (the show) feel completely relevant for its time,” Harper says.
The musical’s focus on relationships resonates as strongly as it did decades ago, he adds. “The need and the desire and the fear of commitment is probably something that’s been going on for hundreds of years.”
Sondheim’s last show
This revival marked the final Broadway musical Sondheim ever worked on.
Closely involved with reimagining the show, the legendary composer-lyricist “couldn’t have been more supportive and generous and helpful,” Harper says.
Sondheim saw the final rehearsal, he adds, then died a week before opening night.
“His parting words to us were, ‘This is the greatest production of any musical I’ve ever seen,’” Harper says. “All of us involved were so grateful to have had the experience of knowing him and working with him and making him happy.”