Show guide
Company
Company is the landmark concept musical that turns a single New Yorker's thirty fifth birthday into a witty, unsentimental meditation on marriage, commitment, and city life.
- Broadway premiere
- 1970
- Music by
- Stephen Sondheim
- Genre
- Comedy
- Setting
- 1970s
Company: quick answers
What is Company about?
- Company follows Robert, a single New Yorker turning 35, through a series of vignettes with the married and engaged couples who are his closest friends, as he weighs whether he wants marriage and commitment himself.
When did Company open on Broadway?
- Company opened on Broadway on April 26, 1970, at the Alvin Theatre and ran for 705 performances, closing on January 1, 1972. A gender-swapped revival with Katrina Lenk as Bobbie opened at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on December 9, 2021, and won five Tony Awards.
Is Company a Golden Age musical?
- No. Company opened in 1970, just after the Golden Age, and is a landmark of what came next: a Sondheim concept musical built from disconnected vignettes instead of a traditional linear book.
Where and when is Company set?
- Company is set in contemporary New York City, around Robert's 35th birthday and the apartments of his married friends.
Has Company played in London's West End?
- Company opened in London on January 18, 1972, at Her Majesty's Theatre, starring Larry Kert. A 2018 gender-swapped revival at the Gielgud Theatre with Rosalie Craig won the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival.
Is there a Company movie?
- Company has never been made into a film. D. A. Pennebaker's 1970 documentary Original Cast Album: Company captured the cast recording session, and a 2011 New York Philharmonic concert starring Neil Patrick Harris was released in cinemas and on video.
The story of Company
The show centers on a single New Yorker surrounded by a circle of married friends, whose relationships are examined in a series of vignettes rather than a single linear plot. Set in a contemporary New York City, the story moves through dinner parties, apartments, and late night conversations as the central character weighs the appeal and the risk of settling down.
Rather than following one straightforward romance, Company is structured almost like a set of interlocking character studies, each couple offering a different, sometimes contradictory, view of what marriage actually looks like from the inside. That structure was unusual for its time and helped define what became known as the concept musical.
The music and the makers
The score is by Stephen Sondheim, one of the most influential composer lyricists in American musical theater, known for intricate wordplay, conversational rhythms, and music that mirrors the emotional temperature of a scene rather than simply decorating it. The songs move fluidly between comic patter and moments of real vulnerability, often within the same number.
Sondheim's work on this show helped push Broadway songwriting toward something more psychologically layered and less formulaic than the traditional book musical, and its influence can be heard in the way later writers approach character driven songwriting.
Company on Broadway
Company arrived at a moment when Broadway was experimenting with form, and it became a touchstone for the concept musical, a show organized around an idea or theme rather than a conventional cause and effect story. Its frank, funny, occasionally biting look at adult relationships felt fresh against the more traditional romances that had dominated earlier decades.
Audiences continue to respond to its honesty about ambivalence, the way it lets characters be both grateful for and suffocated by the people who love them. That candor, paired with a justly celebrated score, has kept the show in regular rotation and revival on Broadway ever since.
Company: frequently asked questions
When did Company open on Broadway?
The original production opened in 1970.
Who composed Company?
Stephen Sondheim wrote both the music and lyrics.
What is Company about?
It follows a single New Yorker examining marriage and commitment through the lens of married friends' relationships, set in contemporary New York.
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