According to British theatre journalist Baz Bamigboye, choreographer Liam Steel has joined the creative team of the Elliott Harper Productions staging of Company in London featuring a female Bobby—to be renamed Bobbi and played by Rosalie Craig. The Marianne Elliott-helmed production will offer a gender-reversed take on several characters.
Steel has worked on the Broadway production of Ghost the Musical as well as the West End musical Imagine This.
Company is scheduled to begin performances September 26 at the Gielgud Theatre with a cast that also includes two-time Tony winner Patti LuPone. Performances will continue through December 22.
Further casting has not yet been announced; however, it has been revealed that in addition to Bobby being a woman, additional characters will similarly be portrayed by the opposite gender. Flight attendant April, who joins Bobby in the duet “Barcelona,” will now be male—renamed Andy.
Read: PATTI LUPONE JOINS LONDON’S NEW COMPANY, FEATURING A FEMALE BOBBY
Company, a musical by Stephen Sondheim and book writer George Furth, is a musical about life, dating, and learning to love.
Composer Stephen Sondheim himself has been involved in the development process of Elliott’s alternate take on the show. In an interview earlier this year, the composer said, “If you’ve got somebody as distinguished and inventive and good as Marianne Elliott, and she says, ‘I would love to do Company with a female central character,’ what is there to lose? It can only make the play either interesting or, if you dislike it…dislikable.... So I’m always open.”
For more information on the London Company, visit ElliottandHarper.com.