Antonio Banderas will direct and star in Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's 1970 musical Company, taking on the role of the perpetually single Bobby in fall 2021.
The production, first reported by Spanish newspaper El País, will be staged at Banderas' Teatro del Soho Caixabank in Málaga, Spain. The Tony and Oscar nominee founded the company in 2019.
Though COVID-19 makes planning difficult and the production is still months away, Banderas intends to stage the show in the round, and hopes to run the production for at least eight months, possibly taking it to Madrid as well.
The production follows Banderas and Teatro del Soho's 2019 production of A Chorus Line, which also featured Banderas as its director and star.
Debuting on Broadway in 1970, Company features a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth. Lacking a traditional plot, Company 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.
The most recent Broadway production, which was in previews when live theatre was shut down in the wake of COVID-19 in March, features a gender-swapped take on the show centering around a female Bobbie, the brainchild of director Marianne Elliott.
Banderas' production would not be the first performed in Spanish, nor in Spain; Company has enjoyed professional productions in Buenos Aires and Barcelona.
