Bobby Turns Gay

Stephen Sondheim is considering a major revision of his 1970 musical “Company,” a project that the New York Roundabout Theater Company plans to produce. The biggest change in this new “Company” would be the central character of Bobby. Whereas he has always been a straight man struggling with commitment issues and multiple girlfriends, he will now be reconceived as a gay man with commitment issues and multiple boyfriends. For years Sondheim, who is gay, and the musical’s book writer, George Furth, who died in 2008, batted back suggestions that Bobby was furtively intended to be a closeted gay man. Now Steve Sondheim agreed to such a change. “It’s still a musical about commitment, but marriage is seen as something very different in 2013 than it was in 1970,” Mr. Sondheim said to the New York Times. “We don’t deal with gay marriage as such, but this version lets us explore the issues of commitment in a fresh way.”