If you've pigeonholed Stephen Sondheim's musicals as unremittingly clever and cerebral, this impassioned revival of Company will be a revelation. Raul Esparza is utterly, urgently adorable as Robert, the central character who finds himself reaching his 35th birthday unattached and still scared by the pitfalls of commitment.
Esparza doesn't actually sit down to the keyboard until late in the evening. By that time, we're so accustomed to the multi-instrumental exploits of his fellow cast/band members that picking up a trumpet or a clarinet or a violin in the midst of a dramatic scene doesn't seem any less natural than breaking into song.
But singing is what Esparza does best, and Barbara Walsh matches him in bravura as his would-be seductress, Joanne. Her icy disillusionment balances perfectly against his hard-won affirmation -- sparks it, actually. So at the end of Bobby's odyssey toward openness, Walsh's showstopping rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch" followed by Esparza's "Being Alive" make a 1-2 punch whose knockout force I've never encountered before.
Sondheim has deconstructed the happily-ever-after storyline elsewhere. But no musical explores Robert's dilemma -- "What do you want to get married for?" -- more deeply, relevantly or memorably.
