THEATER NOTES : Doing It the ‘Company’ Way

Who’s the most controversial theater character of 1995?

A strong candidate would be Bobby--otherwise known as Bobby Baby--the focal character in “Company,” a 25-year-old musical by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth.

Bobby, 35, is the bachelor friend of five married couples who try to fix him up--with women. But last summer in Seattle, the Alice B. Theatre decided to expand Bobby’s sexual horizons.

The Alice B. production presented a bisexual Bobby who has a fling with a steward instead of a stewardess in the “Barcelona” scene. One of the five couples, Sarah and Harry, became a lesbian couple. With another of the couples, Susan and Peter, “Susan” was a man.

When Music Theatre International, which licenses rights to the show, found out about the Seattle changes from an anonymous fax on the eve of the opening, it issued a cease-and-desist order. After exchanges between lawyers, however, the order was lifted and the production was allowed to continue--”because of the time factor,” said MTI head Steve Spiegel, and “because the authors felt that Alice B. understood that what they did was wrong.”

Still, Sondheim hasn’t let the matter rest. In a recent statement in the Sondheim Review, a magazine about his work, he wrote that the Alice B. producers and director “distort[ed] what George and I wrote in order to point attention to themselves . . . their changes make the show ring completely false . . . it’s infuriating.”

He also explained that for the 1995 New York production of “Company,” he had indeed changed a famous line in one of the songs. “I could understand a person/If a person was a fag” became “I could understand a person/If he happened to be gay.”

“Fag” is “no longer politically acceptable . . . the meaning is the same,” Sondheim wrote. The line “clearly states that Bobby is not homosexual, no matter what you would like to think.”

Meanwhile, in a current London production of the show, there is an allusion to the character of Peter making a pass at Bobby, Spiegel said. This was dug up from an early draft of the show, and its use was approved by the authors, “who were involved from the first day” with London director Sam Mendes, according to Spiegel. (Bobby declines Peter’s offer.)

The London production is also making news by casting Adrian Lester, who is black, as Bobby--apparently the first time a black man has played the role. But this has necessitated changing another line: A question to Bobby, “How many blacks do you know?,” has become a line about gays instead.

The recent New York production was beset by a Bobby flap of a different sort. When the show was slated to move from a nonprofit to a commercial Broadway theater, producer John Hart wanted to replace the production’s Bobby, Boyd Gaines, with Michael Rupert, but Sondheim and director Scott Ellis balked. Hart then chose to call off the show’s transfer rather than keep Gaines, who had been afflicted by vocal problems. Sondheim released another angry written statement, belittling Hart, who responded that he was simply doing his job as producer.

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“CANDIDE” CLOSING: We may be in the season of lights, but for the L.A. theater scene, this is probably 1995’s weekend of greatest darkness. Last Sunday, 35 shows were listed in The Times’ “Closing Today” column. Other than holiday-oriented shows, not many theatrical productions venture onstage during the weekend before Christmas.

One of the rare exceptions, “Candide,” which closes today with a matinee at the Ahmanson, has also become one of the most talked-about shows of the year, drawing a wide range of critical reaction. Center Theatre Group’s artistic director/producer Gordon Davidson, who chose to mark CTG’s return to the Ahmanson Theatre by staging “Candide” himself, is generally happy with the way it turned out.

This “Candide” begins with a prologue in which a group of the show’s actors, dressed as revelers at a fancy party, wander onstage while a huge slide of the newly renovated Ahmanson’s interior seating area is projected on the backdrop--so that we see an image of what the “partygoers” are supposedly seeing.

“Oh, it’s so beautiful, I can’t get over it,” exclaims one of the partygoers.

“I never thought it would be so intimate!” says another. “Hey, this is great--what a feeling!”

Although some critics found these indirect references to the Ahmanson itself too insular or boosterish, Davidson said that “a prologue unique to this moment” was appropriate for the return of Center Theatre Group to its remodeled theater. When the revelers then go on to utter a few lines from Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov, “it’s kind of a celebration of the authors whose work might be in here,” he said.

However, Davidson added that these lines are uttered only in passing. The narrator of the show itself interrupts the revelry and guides the guests into the world of “Candide,” where they change their clothes and join the action. The prologue “is not about the theater, it’s just that transitional moment” that takes the audience from L.A. in 1995 to another continent, another century, Davidson said.

Not that we escape the 20th century completely. Some of the critics attacked a few satirical references to 20th century institutions and events. “For me a satire works because of the universality of the thing being satirized,” Davidson said. “I wanted a sense of both the timelessness and the timeliness.” So, for example, two Parisians who vie for Cunegonde’s services as a courtesan are a senator and a judge in this version, not a sultan and a marquis or an archbishop and a merchant, as in previous versions.

Davidson said he was trying “to give this episodic tale connective tissue.” The songs “aren’t storytelling music in the conventional sense.” So, like his own 1966 production but unlike some previous versions, he brings the young couple right up to the verge of matrimony before their adventures begin. And he restored a climactic song for the title character, “Nothing More Than This,” that is missing from most previous versions.

Not even Davidson would claim that his is the “best of all possible” versions of the show. Although he trimmed the show after it opened, he would have liked to have sheared a bit more. “I haven’t had more fun working on anything,” he said.