A Conversation with Emily Phillips
on directing Company
It’s a pleasure to welcome director Emily Phillips to The Sondheim Hub, as she prepares a new production of Company at London’s Bridewell Theatre this May. In this conversation, she reflects on first encountering the show as a teenager, the challenge of setting aside the influence of landmark productions, and her desire to place audiences inside Bobby’s world — less as spectators than as guests at the party. We also discuss her process, from long Thames walks to the discovery of a concept rooted in contemporary London social spaces. Our conversation begins below:
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It’s great to meet you. Before we discuss your production of Company, do you remember how and when you first encountered the show?
As long as I can remember, Company has been my favourite Sondheim musical. I have this big playlist on Spotify of every Sondheim — a recording of every major Sondheim album. I’d seen people perform the most iconic numbers from the show at cabarets and concerts and on YouTube. But it was actually the Marianne Elliott production in 2018, which I saw just as it opened. I remember dragging some friends to go and see it, sitting right at the top of the gods in the Gielgud Theatre. I would have been about 14, 15, I think? And I was just absolutely blown away.
I remember leaving thinking: how can a show that is about something I relate to not one bit, as a 15-year-old girl, feel so relevant, funny, and real? My realisation of that at an early age — of how universal the show can feel, even though it’s about a very specific lived experience that a lot of its audience members won’t have had, or won’t have got to that stage in their life yet, or their life has been different for whatever reason — is really what brought me to wanting to direct Company. Because even though it was written in the 1970s, it feels like it was written for the generation that’s navigating relationships today.
The older you get, the more Company stops becoming a comedy and starts becoming a mirror. That’s a really exciting challenge as a director, and as a younger director, finding ways to incorporate the actors’ own lived experiences into this story, to make it as real as possible. As an actor and a director, the playground you’re given is far more substantial than anything I’ve ever done before.
Given that the Elliott production had made such an impression on you, how much were you able to prize yourself away from that and any other productions you might have swimming around your head? How did you go about unburdening yourself in that way?
That’s something I’ve been thinking about from very early on in the process. Pretty quickly, I had to say: the Marianne Elliott version is not what we’re doing. Dwelling and fixating on that production was never going to be helpful — as much as I’ve read lots of interviews she’s done, and I saw it several times, and listened to podcasts and all sorts. Ultimately, what we’re doing with the show is another very different version. And I think if I were to jump from one very different version — i.e. the gender-reversed production — to my very different version, you run a real risk of losing the text and losing what the root of the story actually is. It would feel like dramaturgical Chinese whispers. Because Marianne Elliott changed a lot, and it worked fantastically — but it all came back to the text and the story.
So my thinking is always: how can I best serve the story? We’re doing the show with the male Bobby. I said this to the cast quite early on, because they were like, oh, aren’t we gender-bending it? And it’s actually lovely, because in terms of commercial theatre, apart from the Elliott version, I wouldn’t say there’s actually a recent, hugely iconic, long-running production of Company that a mainstream audience has as a reference point. If you’re a Sondheim fan, you know about the Sam Mendes production, you know about Raúl Esparza’s production, you know about Neil Patrick Harris. But in terms of a big commercial audience, there isn’t a specifically clear and obvious frame of reference for this version of the show, which I think is a fantastic thing for us. We have no trope to fall into, no prior expectation to live up to. I’ve tried to frame that in rehearsals as a really great blank canvas. There’s no one that the cast are feeling like they have to replicate.
Talk me through the way you’re thinking about the audience experience. From your promotional material, it looks like there won’t be too great a barrier between the company and the audience. I’d love to know more about that.
Totally. Rather than describing it as an immersive production, I’d say that we want the audience to feel immersed in the story and in the space. We’re creating Bobby’s apartment within the theatre, fully — so you’ll step in and you’ll be in an apartment rather than a theatre space. The audience should feel like guests at a party rather than spectators watching from a distance, inside the room with Bobby as it unfolds. And ultimately, the question of how you can feel alone in a room full of people — something Bobby battles with for the whole show — is something that I’m hoping the audience will be able to connect to even more significantly.
Personally, I see theatre-going as quite a solitary experience. When those lights go down, it’s just you and your thoughts and your interpersonal connection with the show, and that’s very intimate. But being in a theatre party space where everyone can see you and you can see everybody is quite a vulnerable thing. My goal is to make the audience, regardless of their lived experience, feel like they can relate to an element of Bobby. Bringing the audience into this space, and having all the cast members rushing around them, makes that feel more personal. Inviting the audience into Bobby’s personal space means he’s never really alone — he’s constantly surrounded by people and thoughts, and it really exacerbates the loneliness that he feels.
We’re blessed with such a great book. George Furth wrote incredibly dynamic scenes. Even though they’re all situated in kitchens and living rooms and parks and on balconies, they’re all so dynamic with their pacing and the text. So it’s been a really exciting challenge. We want to create a place where the audience can move through the space before the show, hear fragments of conversations and relationships and songs, and be able to feel the excitement of the party — but also how alienating, actually, that can feel.
This is a Sedos production — a London-based theatre company with a rich Sondheim history of its own. I’d love to hear about how your relationship with them came about, and how the concept for this production took shape.
Absolutely. Sedos is a very unique company in what it provides. It’s got such a significant platform — it has a residency at the Bridewell Theatre, a connection with the Sondheim Society, and a really long-standing and reputable history. I’ve actually never worked with Sedos before. In February last year, Thomas [Marples], my musical director, and I sat in a pub and said to each other: if you just had to do another show right now, what’s a favourite show you’re dying to do? And we both said Company.
Sedos has quite a significant pitch process, so I was reading all the journals and the articles, re-watching, re-listening, and putting together this vision from probably as early as April or May of last year. What I like to do is collate as much listening material as I can. I’ll make a big super-Company playlist of all the different versions, any concept albums, any Sondheim-related material. Then I’ll add any podcasts about the show — there’s a great one, I’m sure you know it, called Putting It Together, which has a whole series on Company. I download all of those, plus any interviews with previous cast members of various versions, and even things about what it was like to live in New York in the 1970s, or what music was popular at that time. I’ll put it all in this jumbled playlist and I’ll just go on a walk. I’ll block off a Sunday and I’ll walk by the river for hours and hours on end, sometimes seven or eight hours. And any images that come to my head, I’ll just write them down, or I’ll try and find an image that matches it and save it. I’ll bring a little notebook, I’ll have my Notes app, and any questions that come to my head I’ll just write down and add them in. That’s my process for everything I do, because it’s such a great way to get started. I think best when I’m moving.
I was doing this big long walk around the Thames, and then I walked into Clapham. There’s a series of bars called the Little Doors — the Little Violet Door, and so on. They’re basically bars designed to make you feel like you’re in someone’s apartment when you’re having a drink. I’d been to some of them before, and I walked past the one in Clapham — the Little Orange Door — and I went, oh my goodness. At this point, you can imagine I’m walking along listening to “The Ladies Who Lunch,” and I see some Clapham socialites drinking martinis outside this place, and I go: actually, this is really, really cool. I went home and did some more digging into these places, went back to visit one of them, and that’s how the idea came about.
So then I went to our producer, Adam [Coppard], and said: I have this idea, it’s really ambitious, but I know that Sedos are real advocates and proprietors of doing things differently and taking those creative risks that in big commercial theatre, or even subsidised theatre, often aren’t taken — especially on younger creatives. I don’t have the money to put this musical on myself, but I knew Sedos had this really ambitious ethos and this collaboration with the Sondheim Society, in that they tend to do a Sondheim each year. And Company hasn’t been put on for ages, because so many people are holding tight for the gender-flipped rights to come out. But actually, why wait? The show wasn’t written like that — as much as that version is fantastic, and I’d love to do it that way round one day. It’s such an amazing show that isn’t being touched nearly as often as it should be. So we started working on the pitch together, and then we had to submit a whole load of information and do an in-person pitch, and we got it.
Sedos have been a dream to work with. They’re really, really supportive, and considering how many shows they put on in a year, the amount of love and attention and support we’ve been given is really fantastic. I’m really excited to connect with and meet the audiences who come in. I’m quite new to the Sedos community, but I’m really excited to see who this show is going to reach. I really hope it can reach as many Sondheim fans as possible. I’m hoping they’ll come away thinking: I’ve actually never thought of Company in that way before. And as many times as you’ve seen Company, this will feel different and energised and new and exciting. But also, I think it’s a great first Sondheim show if you’ve never seen one before. It’s funny, it’s about real people living their real lives, talking about issues and arguments and jokes that are still relevant and are still funny.
Talk me through your roadmap between now and opening night. The show has been cast, we’re beginning to see little windows into the rehearsal room on the Sedos social channels. And of course, your cast members have busy lives outside of the show — this isn’t their full-time day job. So how does the schedule work, and how intact is the show at this point versus where it’ll be in a few weeks?
You’ve asked me this at a great time, actually. I’m just about to run Act 1 tomorrow. As a director, I have to work chronologically, which feels paradoxical in this case, because Company is not a chronological show. But that’s just how I have to work. We’ve worked really, really hard over the past five and a half weeks to make sure we can do a good run tomorrow.
How it works is: we rehearse in evenings and on Saturdays, and then often I’ll pull people for one-to-ones on other days, too. I’m not a big fan of setting everything and then coming back to it in more detail. I think when working with something like a George Furth text and a Sondheim score, where the music, lyric and text are so interdependent, no one benefits from breezing through that. So I actually just prefer to do a really long session on each scene from the get-go. Do some text work, make sure we’ve done all our sessions on acting through song, make sure the detail comes through. That relies on a lot of commitment and time from the actors, but I set that expectation quite early on. So I’m hoping tomorrow will feel as much as possible like a full run of Act 1.
Act 2 is challenging, because “Side by Side by Side” is pretty much a third of the whole second act. But aside from that, it doesn’t involve a huge portion of the characters in the show — you have “Barcelona” and the April scene, and then you basically hop, skip and jump to “The Ladies Who Lunch” and then “Being Alive”. So the pace and structure of Act 2 is going to be a challenge — how to keep the energy high after “Side by Side by Side”.
Getting used to the logistics of the space will probably be the most challenging thing when we do a full run. And then the best day of every process: the sitzprobe. Thomas has booked an absolutely amazing band, truly. We kind of have the band in an apartment across the road, a bit like in Friends. We’re building our own separate second building for them to be in, which means the monitor situation is going to be challenging, figuring out how the cast can see the band.
But yes, it’s a timeline, really, of short, sharp bursts. I love working with companies like Sedos, because everyone is coming at you from a different place. Some people have come in having spent a day in court as a barrister, or in a hospital, or as a teacher, and you’ve got to meet everyone where they’re coming from. It’s really helped me with that skill of levelling out a room, of helping decipher what people need to do their best work. It’s no easy job, but it’s really, really rewarding.
Finally — you’ve also got West Side Story at NYMT (National Youth Music Theatre) coming up this summer, so it’s a Sondheim-filled few months for you. I’d love to know a little bit about your role there — and, for those who might be less familiar, about the experience of working with NYMT.
Totally. I’m the assistant director for NYMT’s 50th anniversary production of West Side Story, which is really, really, really exciting. It’s my fourth project with NYMT, and I’ll be working with the incredible Rupert Hands, alongside George Beet and Flynn Sturgeon. It’s going to be at the Birmingham Hippodrome from the 6th to the 8th of August. NYMT is the largest youth musical theatre organisation in the UK. They have a whole array of projects going on year-round, with West Side Story opening their season this year. I don’t know much yet about what it’s going to feel like and look like — but it’s definitely going to be a really monumental production.
And it’s young people telling a story about young people. West Side Story is very rarely done to quite such a high level with this age range, so I’m absolutely thrilled to be working on that. They do intensive rehearsals in Easter, and then come back and do another week in summer straight into their production week. I’m taking a week out of Company and handing over to Thomas to do all the music for that week. But yes, I would really, really highly recommend any Sondheim enthusiasts go and see the NYMT West Side Story at the Birmingham Hippodrome. It’s going to be very, very special.
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