Antonio Banderas-Led, Spanish-Language Company Releases Cast Album October 28 - Playbill

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Cast Recordings & Albums Antonio Banderas-Led, Spanish-Language Company Releases Cast Album October 28

The Tony nominee sings "Being Alive" in English in a bonus track.

Antonio Banderas in Teatro del Soho CaixaBank's *Company* Javier Naval

Concord Theatricals and Craft Recordings release an original cast album of Teatro del Soho CaixaBank's Spanish-language production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Company, starring Antonio Banderas as Bobby, October 28. Now available for streaming and digital purchase, the album will get a physical release in Spain November 11.

The album is the first Spanish-language cast recording of the 1970 musical, and only the third non-English release, following albums in German and Portuguese, both released in 2001. The new album is also the first to use Jonathan Tunick's full, original orchestration since the 1970 original Broadway cast album; though Teatro del Soho's production featured an orchestra of 15, the recording has been supplanted with additional players bringing the total to 29.

A bonus track features Banderas singing "Being Alive" in English, recorded live.

Listen to the album below:

The album features the entire cast of Teatro del Soho's 2021 production of the Tony-winning musical, including Banderas alongside María Adamuz, Roger Berruezo, Albert Bolea, Lorena Calero, Lydia Fairén, Dulcinea Juárez, Silvia Luchetti, Anna Moliner, Julia Möller, Paco Morales, Marta Ribera, Carlos Seguí, and Rubén Yuste. Rounding out the company are Nando González, Pepa Lucas, Beatriz Mur, Mariola Peña, and Ángel Saavedra.

Banderas, whose 61 years made him a few decades older than his character's traditional 35, discussed his take on the musical in a Spanish-language director's note on Teatro del Soho's website. "I'm doing Company as a flashback, or a dream of its protagonist, Bobby, who travels back to the '70s to revisit his 'crazy friends.' That distance makes him witness what in another time were his contradictions, his fears, his loves, and heartbreaks," he writes in the statement, translated into English by Playbill. "He's confronted with his chosen solitude and embraced by the idea of 'being alive,' the certainty of the relentless and inexorable passage of time, and the proximity of ...someone?"

Banderas also directed and produced the production as Teatro del Soho's artistic director, with Arturo Díez-Boscovich serving as music director. The production ran November 17, 2021-April 3, 2022, in Málaga, Spain, before moving to Barcelona's Teatre Apolo this past summer, with Roger Berruezo taking over as Bobby. The production is set to play Universal Music Hotel Teatro Albéniz beginning November 17 in Madrid with Banderas starring once again.

Company is Teatro del Soho's second production of a Broadway-originating musical, following its debut production of A Chorus Line in 2019. Banderas, who founded the theatre and serves as its president, starred in that production as well. A new production of Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak's Godspell, directed by Emilio Aragón, is set to start at the Málaga venue November 3.

Debuting on Broadway in 1970, Company features a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth. Company was among the first successful musicals built around a concept rather than a story, centering on the single, middle-aged Bobby and his married friends, all of whom want him to get married. The work introduced such Sondheim favorites as "Being Alive," "Another Hundred People," and "The Ladies Who Lunch," and has since been revived on Broadway three times.

Broadway's most recent revival of Company, which closed July 31 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, was reimagined by director Marianne Elliot to center around a female protagonist, played by Katrina Lenk.

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