New York Philharmonic’s Company Concert Canceled

Concert performances of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical Company that the New York Philharmonic had planned for March 2007 have been canceled.

No casting had been announced for the concert, which was to have featured Paul Gemignani as conductor and Lonny Price as director. According to Eric Latzky, a spokesman for the Philharmonic, Company will be replaced by another event. “We’ll announce our plans for that week sometime this summer,” Latzky said. The Philharmonic has previously presented concert versions of Sondheim’s Follies and Sweeney Todd as well as Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, to which Sondheim contributed some lyrics.

Although Latzky would not officially confirm this, the Philharmonic’s Company was presumably canceled because director John Doyle’s production of the musical, seen earlier this year at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, will be coming to Broadway in the fall. That production stars Raúl Esparza in the central role of Bobby and Barbara Walsh as Joanne; they and the rest of the Cincinnati cast are expected to reprise their performances in New York.

A watershed in Sondheim’s career, Company originally opened on Broadway on April 26, 1970 at the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon). The show was directed by Harold Prince and featured musical staging by Michael Bennett; it earned 14 Tony Award nominations and won in five categories, including Best Musical. A limited-run Broadway revival was presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company in 1995.