Teatro Soho CaixaBank's production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Company, directed by and starring Antonio Banderas, begins performances November 17 in Málaga, Spain. The production is the musical's premiere Spanish-language production.
Joining Banderas in the cast are María Adamuz, Roger Berruezo, Albert Bolea, Lorena Calero, Lydia Fairén, Nando González, Dulcinea Juárez, Silvia Luchetti, Pepa Lucas, Anna Moliner, Julia Möller, Paco Morales, Beatriz Mur, Mariola Peña, Marta Ribera, Ángel Saavedra, Carlos Seguín, and Rubén Yuste. The production features music direction by Arturo Díez-Boscovich, who leads a 26-piece orchestra. Mamen Márquez is the production's vocal technician and assistant director.
Company is Teatro del Soho's second production of a Broadway-originating musical, following their debut production of A Chorus Line in 2019. Banderas, who founded the theatre and serves as its president, starred in that production as well.
Banderas, whose 61 years makes him a few decades older than his character's traditional 35, discusses his take on the musical in a Spanish-language director's note on Teatro del Soho's website: "I'm doing Company as a flashback, or a dream of its protagonist, Bobby, who travels back to the '70s to revisit his 'crazy friends.' That distance makes him witness what in another time were his contradictions, his fears, his loves, and heartbreaks," he writes in the statement, translated into English by Playbill. "He's confronted with his chosen solitude and embraced by the idea of 'being alive,' the certainty of the relentless and inexorable passage of time, and the proximity of ...someone?"
Originally debuting on Broadway in 1970, Company features a score by Sondheim and a book by Furth. The Tony-winning musical was among the first successful musicals built around a concept rather than a story, centering on the single, middle-aged Bobby and his married friends, all of whom want him to get married. The work introduced such Sondheim favorites as "Being Alive," "Another Hundred People," and "The Ladies Who Lunch," and has since been revived on Broadway three times.
Across the pond, Tony-winning director Marianne Elliott's take on the work—which re-imagines Bobby as a single woman—resumed performances on Broadway November 15 with The Band's Visit Tony winner Katrina Lenk starring as "Bobbie."
Known best for screen appearances in The Mask of Zorro, The 13th Warrior, Desperado, Evita among many others, Banderas also starred in the 2003 Broadway revival of Nine, earning a Tony nomination for his performance as Guido Contini.
