A few years ago, the brilliant British director Marianne Elliott, decided to create a new production of the 1970 Stephen Sondheim/George Furth/Hal Prince creation, COMPANY. COMPANY began as a series of short one-act plays about marriage by George Furth. Producer-Director Harold Prince had the idea of turning them into a musical. To give the skits some continuity, Furth created a character, Robert, a commitment-phobic thirty-five year-old bachelor who was good friends with the married couples. The wives had crushes on him; the husbands envied his freedom. Still, all the couples hoped that Robert would find a partner and settle down as they did. The problem is that Robert is something of a cipher, an affable man who doesn’t reveal himself to anyone. As three of his lovers sing, “You impersonate a person better than a zombie could.” At the end, he gets the big 11 o’clock number, “Being Alive” in which he finally admits that he wants and needs a loving partner. It’s one of those instant conversions only possible in musicals and situation comedies.

Dean Jones, the original Robert, pulled out of the show a few weeks after it opened. Larry Kerr stepped in and, though he sang the part well, never made Robert into much of a character. In my many viewings of COMPANY, I only have seen two actors, both British, make the audience care about Robert. Adrian Lester did it on sheer charisma. Rupert Young truly presented a charming guy who seemed to have something he was scared of showing other people.

Many of us gay men back at the beginning of gay liberation saw Robert as a gay man. Like him, many of us were the safe gay third wheels for our married friends. We were safe to be around the wives and the husbands showed how cool they were by being chummy with a gay guy. Robert made sense in that context. When I was writing my book, SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS, COMPANY book writer George Furth called me to assure me that Bobby was not gay. However, no one can stop audiences from reading plays, movies and musicals from their own experience.

Marianne Elliott has turned Robert into Bobbi, a thirty-five year old marriage-phobic woman. Bobbi is frightened of all the physical facts of marriage, pregnancy and child-rearing: wiping the husband’s urine off of the rim of the toilet bowl, cleaning house, being left home while the husband goes out to play. She sees marriage as a trap, the end of the party. She also sees the quirky relationships her married friends have.

Oddly, the one man she proposes to is gay. That will eliminate anything physically intrusive from the relationship. He wisely marries the man he loves.

Yet, Bobbi clearly feels the biological clock ticking. In fact, the sound of the busy signal that dominated the original production has been replaced by a loud ticking clock.

To turn Robert into Bobbi, some other characters needed to have sex changes. Bobbi’s eccentric fuck buddies turn into men. One of the heterosexual couples has morphed into a gay couple. In some scenes, to give the wives more agency, Elliott has given the wives lines that used to be assigned to the husbands.

Does it all work? Well, it works better than many productions I have seen with a male Robert. It partly works because the National Touring Company is so well cast. Britney Coleman looks gorgeous, sings beautifully and successfully projects Bobbi’s charm and her elusiveness. Matt Rodin steals the show with his “I’m Not Getting Married Today,” and his love for but frustration with the totally loving Paul (Ali Louis Bourzgui, the brilliant star of the Goodman’s recent revival of TOMMY). All the couples have been directed to be characters, not caricatures. The one weak link was Joanne (Judy McLane), who gets all the wonderful bitchy barbed lines and the classic “Ladies Who Lunch.” Somehow in this production, you wonder why Joanne is part of this younger gang, and “Ladies Who Lunch” seems unnecessary. Why does she sing it in a trendy nightclub? It now seems pasted into the show. McLane’s shrill delivery doesn’t help.

Sondheim’s score is still brilliant, and, with the exception of “Ladies Who Lunch,” all the songs are well-sung and acted and cleverly staged. In Marianne Ellliott’s hands, the show really works. Stephen Sondheim approved of the changes. So do I. It’s a brilliant, inventive take on a flawed classic.