Bucks County Playhouse's 'Company' an excellent, if aged, rendition

A funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century: The definition and importance of marriage shifted, gayness came out of the shadows and proliferated in public, pop cultural, and political life, and Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Company turned into a period piece.

Bucks County Playhouse's current production brings out the bright side of single-and-searching 35-year-old Bobby-baby-bubi and his well-intentioned married friends. But not even the casting of Bucks County celeb Justin Guarini in that central role can mask the fact that the time may have passed for this version of the show.

Sondheim certainly seems to agree. Of late, he toyed with a rewrite that cast Alan Cumming as Joanne, Elaine Stritch's "The Ladies Who Lunch" role, and employed the idea that Bobby isn't, in fact, just a "confirmed bachelor," but rather struggling with coming out. The Playhouse uses a less recent update that briefly floats the question of Bobby's sexual preference, but director Hunter Foster glosses over the scene with the same sort of jokey inconsequence he uses to characterize most of Bobby's experiences.

This production succeeds in many ways, with a strong cast that can rattle the rafters and charm each row. Guarini and Candy Buckley's Joanne, a tall, tough-as-nails copperhead clad in leather and python, who's also an auditory match for Stritch, excel in the former, and Kate Weatherhead's Amy, zipping neurotically through "Not Getting Married," achieves the latter.

It's just that certain updates, such as cellphones (one of which is permanently attached to Steve Rosen's David, a presumably philandering husband) don't jibe with the book's mentions of busy signals and Lorin Latarro's echoes of Michael Bennett's time-capsule choreography.

But, really, it all comes back to Bobby, and it's tough to get past Guarini's edge-dulling grin-and-shrug performance. The effect of all this insouciance is that Bobby comes off less as a man at the crossroads than as an empty vessel who cares as much for his friends as he does for the carousel of women in his life, which is to say, not at all. Even Jason Sherwood's set, primarily rows of empty, hanging window frames, reinforces his theme.

It's a curiously vapid, if legitimate, interpretation, and judging by the production's breezy tone, and Guarini's pained rendition of "Being Alive," which gives substance to some of that empty space, I'm tempted to pin it on Foster. Either way, as a Sondheim delivery system, Bucks County Playhouse hits the right notes on an old-fashioned tune.

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Through June 21 at Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., New Hope.

Tickets: $29-$85. Information: 215-862-2121 or BCPTheater.org

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