How Matt Rodin Nails THAT Song in a Queer Company
Matt Rodin stars as a commitment-phobic groom-to-be in the touring production of the gender-swapped "Company."
“Depending on the cities that we’re in, people have more or less familiarity with the piece, and with the song specifically,” says Matt Rodin of the Stephen Sondheim classic “Getting Married Today.”
The showstopper is a highlight of the composer’s Tony Award-winning musical Company, and Rodin, who performs it in the production now at the Kennedy Center, refers to it as a “rollercoaster.”
Company debuted on Broadway in 1970 with music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Firth. Director Marianne Elliott conceived of this production before the pandemic as a way to mark the musical’s 50th anniversary.
Collaborating on the work with Sondheim until his death at the end of 2021, Elliott’s idea was to adapt the work to focus on Bobbie — a single woman whose 35th birthday is more cause for angst than celebration — rather than the original’s Bobby, a 35-year-old single man confronting the same anxiety.
All of the lead character’s friends and lovers also swapped genders in the adaptation except for Paul, who is now the financé of Jamie (replacing the original character of Amy), the role played by Rodin.
Company is the 31-year-old actor’s biggest show yet. It’s also his first national tour, and the crowd’s response to the character being reconfigured as a gay man has varied from city to city.
“One of the unique challenges of the tour — and that probably didn’t happen in New York — is dealing with audiences that are so vastly different,” he says.
“Playing an audience in Naples, Florida, is different than Memphis, is different than Philadelphia, is different than Washington, D.C., is different than Fayetteville, Arkansas. They’re just all going to receive that song in a different way. And they’re going to receive a queer relationship, and queer people, in a different way, too. I think that’s probably the best word for it: interesting.”
Rodin is looking forward to another week of performances at the Kennedy Center Opera House, where the audiences “have just been so, so wonderful,” he says.
“A place like here, where people know Sondheim, every other line is getting a laugh,” he says. In fact, Rodin is surprised to hear he’s been getting standing ovations after performances of “Getting Married Today” in D.C. “A standing ovation after the song?” he says. “I can’t see anything [from the stage]. That is very moving.”
Rodin believes it’s fate he got this role now. “I had my first audition, it went very well,” he recalls. “My first callback, I bombed, and I thought for sure this job had passed me by. And then about a month later, they came back around, because I guess whoever they had picked ended up taking a different job.
“And so I went back and my final callback was on the day of my wedding. So I got married to my now-husband at 11 a.m. in Central Park and then at 2 p.m., I was singing ‘Getting Married Today’ in the same outfit that I wore to my wedding. So it felt like it was all kind of meant to be.”
Of the rapid-fire patter song, notoriously one of the most difficult to perform in Sondheim’s canon, Rodin says, “I no longer have to think about the lines — they just come out. But in terms of what they mean, and how I say them, that changes night to night, just based on whatever I’m feeling in that moment. And I feel very blessed not to feel like it’s rote at this point.”
Company runs through Sunday, March 31, in the Kennedy Center Opera House. Tickets are $45 to $185. Call 202-467-4700 or visit www.kennedy-center.org.
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