RIALTO CHATTER: Roundabout Hosting Private COMPANY Readings, Including Steggart, Urie, Cumming & More

BroadwayWorld.com has confirmed online reports that the Roundabout Theatre Company has been hosting private readings for a potential new production of Stephen Sondheim's Company, which might include some gender reversals in the casting of SOME of the show's iconic characters. Also, contrary to published reports, Nathan Lane is not currently attached to the workshop. We have confirmed that featured amongst the cast are Bobby Steggart, Michael Urie, and Alan Cumming.

We will bring you more details when and if they become available, though as always readings are not necessarily (at all) indicative of future productions or casting and of course it's a work-in-progress so there are changes happening daily.

Legendary composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim's groundbreaking musical Company - which premiered in 1970 with a book by George Furth and a cast including Broadway luminaries Dean Jones, Elaine Stritch and Donna McKechnie - has continually acquired generations of new fans through various regional productions and its 1995 and 2006 Broadway revivals.

Centering on Bobby, a bachelor celebrating his 35th birthday with his ten closest friends (who happen to be five couples), Company culminates in Bobby's transformation from unattached swinger to tentative monogamist.

The show was most recently seen in a New York Philharmonic gala concert production starring Neil Patrick Harris as Bobby and directed by Sondheim veteran Lonny Price, won rave reviews. Harris' co-stars include Patti LuPone, Stephen Colbert, Christina Hendricks ("Mad Men"), Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls), Jon Cryer and Martha Plimpton, who perform the show's many standards including "Another Hundred People," "Barcelona," "Side by Side," "The Ladies Who Lunch," and "Being Alive." Also starring Craig Bierko, Katie Finneran, Aaron Lazar, Jill Paice, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Jim Walton and Chryssie Whitehead.

Roundabout Theatre Company is a not-for-profit theatre dedicated to providing a nurturing artistic home for theatre artists at all stages of their careers where the widest possible audience can experience their work at affordable prices. Roundabout fulfills its mission each season through the revival of classic plays and musicals; development and production of new works by established playwrights and emerging writers; educational initiatives that enrich the lives of children and adults; and a subscription model and audience outreach programs that cultivate loyal audiences.

Roundabout Theatre Company presents a variety of plays, musicals, and new works on its five stages, each of which is specifically designed to enhance the needs of Roundabout's mission. Off-Broadway, the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, which houses the Laura Pels Theatre and Black Box Theatre, with its simple sophisticated design, is perfectly suited to showcasing new plays. The grandeur of its Broadway home on 42nd Street, American Airlines Theatre, sets the ideal stage for the classics. Roundabout's Studio 54 provides an exciting and intimate Broadway venue for its musical and special event productions. The Stephen Sondheim Theatre offers a state of the art LEED certified Broadway theatre in which to stage major large-scale musical revivals. Together these distinctive homes serve to enhance Roundabout's work on each of its stages.

Roundabout Theatre Company 2013-2014 season includes Joshua Harmon's Bad Jews, directed by Daniel Aukin; The Old Vic Theatre Company's production of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy, starring Michael Cumpsty, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Alessandro Nivola, Roger Rees, directed by Lindsay Posner; Sophie Treadwell's Machinal, starring Rebecca Hall and directed by Lyndsey Turner; Donald Margulies' Dinner with Friends, directed by Pam MacKinnon; Masteroff, Kander & Ebb's Cabaret, starring Alan Cumming, Michelle Williams, directed by Sam Mendes & Rob Marshall (co-director/choreographer) and Bekah Brunstetter's newly commissioned play, Cutie and Bear, directed by Evan Cabnet.