One of the biggest challenges facing Victoria-based director Heather Jarvie these days is adapting an outdated show: for example, taking a musical and stripping it of the misogyny, sexism, and gender stereotypes of the 1970s. When a modern version of the show in question, Company, hit London’s West End in 2018, she jumped at the opportunity to put her own spin on the material. The catch? Due to legalities, she couldn’t actually change any of the dialogue or music, but that allowed her to dive even deeper into the show.
“What I’m really just focused on is revising how those lines hit the audience’s ear,” says Jarvie. “We can’t change anything, we can’t change the music, so then what does that mean for our players?”
That leaves them to dive headfirst into difficult character work, exploring motivations, backstories, strengths, and weaknesses. The difficulties of tackling outdated material can be conquered by making strong acting choices that, at first glance, might seem counter-intuitive to the dialogue, but Jarvie says that the answer is in the subtext. For example, the cast and crew spent a large part of one rehearsal focusing on how one line was said: the implication, motivations, and ramifications of it, says Jarvie.
“I think we were all pretty exhausted by the end [of that rehearsal] but it was worth it,” she says.
Jarvie says that depending on the show, sometimes the majority of a director’s work can lie in the subtext, but it also depends on how much information the playwright gives the audience.
“If you’re working on a show like Company, where you’re only seeing snippets of scenes and you have to fill so much in, for me, in a show like this, everything becomes about subtext and context,” she says.
It is indeed almost everything: 60 to 70 percent of the dialogue, says Jarvie, is about what’s not being said in this show, and she says that’s freeing for her. But she admits that it’s a lot more work for both her and the cast.
“We have to supply it and create it ourselves and test it, and see if it works,” she says. “You don’t have, really, the option of running through unseen workshops and re-writes if you’re just focusing on subtext.”
The really fun, happy music featured in Company is often in “complete juxtaposition” with the lyrics, like in the song “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” says Jarvie.
“[It’s] so fun and upbeat and it gets stuck in your head for weeks on end,” she says, “but when you listen to the words, it’s not a happy song, so we’re trying to also find that with the scenes as well as the music.”
The show is based around an experience people know all too well: family and friends shouting at you to make a wish before you blow out the candles on a birthday cake. Should you wish for love? Good health? Bobby—the show’s main character—isn’t so sure he wants what everyone thinks he should want.
“The expectations of the group are so not the focus for Bobby,” says Jarvie. “They all want him to get married, they all want him to find a love, and settle down… And the fact that that pressure comes from his friends and his family is something I think we can all relate to, whether it’s about romantic life or, ‘Why aren’t you doing more with your education or jobs?’ or whatever. It’s just such an unbelievably human and relatable moment. What was really interesting for us as a cast and as a team was to kind of look at that as a moment of going, so maybe the relationships and the friendships in his life actually aren’t as positive as they seem on the surface, because that kind of pressure can be really toxic, so it kind of made us look at all the scenes that surround the birthday party and go, ‘So what’s happening under the surface?’”
Company
Wednesday, January 15 until Sunday, February 1
Student tickets $10-$15, Langham Court Theatre
langhamtheatre.ca