At last, a hat trick–I praise three new Broadway shows, John Doyle’s revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, Tom Stoppard’s Voyage, and David Hare’s The Vertical Hour, in this week’s Wall Street Journal drama column:
In an act of recreative genius, Mr. Doyle has knocked the cobwebs off “Company” and turned it into an utterly contemporary chronicle of marriage and its discontents, one whose implications have never been more immediate.
Like Mr. Doyle’s 2006 revival of “Sweeney Todd,” this is a small-scale production in which the 14 members of the cast double as their own onstage orchestra, playing everything from piccolo to double bass. It’s no stunt, either: By making their own music, the actors create an atmosphere at once intimate and intense, and Mary-Mitchell Campbell’s astringent new orchestrations strip away all the tired pop-music clich