The cast had been wrapping up a Friday matinee when the announcement came in. The cast of Company convened onstage before the night’s performance began. Patti LuPone, who has starred in three Sondheim productions on Broadway in the past decade and a half - not to mention a moment in his 80th-birthday concert that was truly one for the ages - spoke briefly, dedicating this one to him. Elliott introduced the cast, saying she wanted to “share this pain and love together,” and the curtain rose to reveal the assembled company of Company. “I really hope tonight will be a celebration of his joy.” It took only two or three sentences before she had to pause, because the crowd was on its feet, cheering and applauding. “Truly the greatest artist in our lifetime that we possibly will ever know in this art form,” she said in her short tribute. Then Marianne Elliott, the production’s director, stepped onstage. Tonight at Company there was instead flat silence. Usually when the lights go down in a Broadway house, a few minutes after 8 p.m., there’s a sort of excited quiet murmur, an exhalation as everyone sits up and prepares to take in the show. But …” He paused, and his point was clear, even before he continued: “We wanted to pay tribute in this very small way.” “We usually don’t sit down here” - he gestured to his very good seat, on the aisle a few rows back from the stage, “because our theater budget is limited. “We got the news alert on the train at 96th Street,” Daniel Hrdlicka was telling me tonight as we stood in the aisle of the Jacobs Theatre with his husband, Tyson Jurgens, “and had booked the tickets by 116th.” The tickets were for Company, the Stephen Sondheim–George Furth musical that is now in previews for a December 9 opening, and the news alert had been the startling fact of Sondheim’s death earlier today.
Company director Marianne Elliott addresses the crowd before Friday night’s performance at the Jacobs.