It's gonna be legen-wait for it and I hope you're not lactose intolerant, because the second half is
Rehearse Me a Little, Wherever You Are
Neil Patrick Harris, center, during a rehearsal for the New York Philharmonic's production of the musical "Company."
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: April 6, 2011
It’s not so hard to be married, as one wry lyric from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” reminds us. But rehearsing when only half your cast is available is a different story.
On Friday, Lonny Price, the director of a new production of “Company” that will have four performances with theNew York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall starting Thursday, was guiding the performers he had on hand through a dry run of “The Little Things You Do Together.”
In a clammy studio in Midtown, Martha Plimpton lay on the floor after a karate demonstration gone awry, sandwiched between two Pace University students standing in for her missing co-stars Neil Patrick Harris andStephen Colbert. Surrounding them, an ensemble that included Patti LuPone, Jon Cryer and Jim Walton, and two more college students who represented the absentees Craig Bierko and Katie Finneran, was trying to keep straight the song’s tricky rhyme scheme while stepping over the strewn bodies.
After a few successful run-throughs of the song Mr. Price congratulated the cast members and told them it was now time to don their vaudeville gear to rehearse “Side By Side By Side/What Would We Do Without You?”
When the resulting chorus of groans, boos and oh-come-ons subsided, Mr. Price said: “I know, it’s mean. It’s mean and it’s necessary.”
This latest version of “Company,” Mr. Sondheim and George Furth’s meditation on modern couplehood as seen through the eyes of a lonely bachelor, has entered into an unusual contract: It has recruited a star-studded roster, including Mr. Harris (of the sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”) as the perennially single Robert; television stars like Mr. Colbert, Mr. Cryer, Ms. Plimpton and Christina Hendricks (of “Mad Men”) as his good-and-crazy married friends and gal pals; and Tony winners like Ms. Finneran, Anika Noni Rose and Ms. LuPone as Joanne, the predatory wife who belts out “The Ladies Who Lunch.”
But to accommodate its A-list performers - who, with their multitude of day jobs and existing commitments, will not be all in the same place until Thursday - the production has resorted to a grab bag of strategies, shortcuts and cheats, some old school and others newfangled, to get its far-flung cast up to speed as quickly as possible.
“It’s going to be show by numbers,” Mr. Harris said by phone from Los Angeles. “I think Lonny’s worried that if it’s a success, it’s how they’re going to ask him to do every show.”
On a break from rehearsal Mr. Price, who has previously directed “Sweeney Todd,” “Camelot” and “Candide” with the New York Philharmonic, said he had been contemplating a production of “Company” for several years, an idea made temporarily redundant by John Doyle’s Tony-winning Broadway revival in 2006.
He returned to the project after directing “Sondheim: The Birthday Concert” with the Philharmonic last year, working with several people from that creative team, including the conductor Paul Gemignani and the choreographer Josh Rhodes. Mr. Price also tapped Mr. Harris and Ms. LuPone, both “Sweeney Todd” alumni, as his earliest cast members (though he diplomatically declined to say who signed on first).
Starting with two leads who lived on different coasts - each with complicated schedules right up to opening night - Mr. Price began making provisions for cast members to learn the show individually.
Turning to Amy Rogers, a former assistant of his who directs Pace’s musical theater-program, he recruited students there to learn the show over the winter; they were then recorded singing the songs and performing the blocking and choreography in audio and video files given to the production’s official cast.
Mr. Harris said he had been practicing while “driving, at the gym, between takes”; listening to MP3 files of piano orchestrations or vocal arrangements in which his character’s tracks have been removed; and checking in viaSkype for lessons with his voice instructor. “It’s very Epcot Center,” he said.
Ms. LuPone did not go the virtual route. While spending the winter in South Carolina she hired a piano-playing, musical theater-loving pre-med student at the University of Charleston to teach her the show “in between physics and microbiology,” she said.
“I’d come in and go, ‘Alex, what grade?’ ” Ms. LuPone said. “‘93? O.K., you can play.”
Mr. Cryer, who came to “Company” only a couple of weeks ago, demonstrated how he could perform his dance moves while gazing down at a video playing on his iPhone, which is essentially how he had learned the routines.
As a cast member who could practice in person (you may have heard that his CBS comedy, “Two and a Half Men,” is on hiatus), Mr. Cryer said the revolving-door rehearsals, if occasionally taxing, were running smoothly.
“We rehearse till 7 p.m. at night,” he said. “By 6:15 it’s adventures in deodorant. Nothing lasts that long.”
The greater challenge, Mr. Cryer said, was simply that this “Company” was more than he realized he was committing to. “On the actual night of the performance,” he said, “you will hear me scream from the wings, ‘It was supposed to be a concert staging!’ ”
Mr. Harris joined rehearsals in person over the weekend, and was on hand Monday afternoon for a run-through of “Side By Side By Side/What Would We Do Without You?” that included Mr. Cryer, Ms. Finneran and Mr. Bierko (but not Ms. LuPone or Mr. Colbert). No one seemed to mind when Mr. Harris missed an errantly thrown cane, or when Ms. Finneran shrieked at the unexpected movement of the couch she was on, or when the entire proceedings had to briefly compete with a piercing fire alarm.
Mr. Price’s nights will be spent plotting camera angles for the show, which will be filmed in performance and shown in movie theaters in June, and working with a computer program designed to light the show in advance (without the presence of live actors).
But for the Pace students in the show’s backup cast, the assignment hardly feels like homework at all.
“I had lunch today with Jon Cryer and Jim Walton,” said Cathryn Salamone, a 20-year-old sophomore who has been covering for Ms. LuPone and Ms. Finneran. “These little things, I kind of have to pinch myself sometimes. People can be however famous they can be, but people are people and it’s so cool.”
She added: “I honestly have been to maybe two classes in the past three weeks, so I’ll be very depressed when this is over.”
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Seriously, this might be the greatest cast ever assembled. I don't even have words, except to say that that picture of Martha Plimpton and Neil Patrick Harris is making me happier than anything else at the moment. bwaydaily , come SQUEE with me!
(Also, if anyone can figure out how to fix the wackiness HTML has wrought on this post, go for it.)