The Thinking Woman’s Theater—Mary-Mitchell Campbell

I first saw Company by Stephen Sondheim back in the 70s, when Elaine Stritch with her alcoholic rasp was singing “Here’s to the Ladies Who Lunch” and the whole show had a snooty, misogynistic quality that upset me.

But this past season, the new Company, directed by England’s John Doyle and starring Raul Esparza, exhibited a softer heart and consequently softened mine. (It also won the Tony award Sunday for best revival of a musical).

The actors didn’t just dance and sing, they also played instruments. (Doyle did the same thing in Sweeney Todd two years ago, with the same exciting results). I searched the program for who had re-orchestrated the score for this unusual production—and found Mary-Mitchell Campbell. One of the youngest people ever to teach at The Juilliard School in New York. Co–winner of this year’s Drama Desk Award for orchestrations. A woman determined to use the arts to help stamp out world poverty.

“Company, like Sweeney Todd, represents a way of telling the story that is completely specific to the instruments the actors play,” she explained. “It’s like a puzzle. This person who plays the violin, could play the bass, possibly guitar but could he play the role? You mix and match and search. Casting took more than a month.”

The orchestrations had to allow for wide variation in actors’ practical playing abilities, and also had to be re-matched to Doyle’s concept.

“We had to lose the organ sounds and the wah wah guitar from the 70s,” Mary-Mitchell said. “I wanted to establish a new sound for the show from the top that would take it out of any era, make it timeless. That was hard for me because I grew up idolizing Sondheim. The idea of messing with his music filled me with dread.”

To her relief, the revered composer came to a Cincinnati preview, liked what he saw, gave Campbell very specific notes—e.g. “the strings in this section are too heavy; you’ve got to lighten them”—and became a friend and mentor.

Mary-Mitchell Campbell comes from Wilson, North Carolina, outside of Raleigh. She’s been playing the piano since she was 10. As a teenager, she entertained in local restaurants and worked summers at a dinner theater. Things were not great at home—so she didn’t go back.

At 16, she was paying her own way at the North Carolina School of the Arts; then she enrolled at Furman University. Her teachers there were determined to develop the social conscience of the students. Campbell studied the textile mill workers’ villages, the brown lung pockets around the mines. She and her classmates covered themselves with dirt and sat in the streets begging, the better to understand the experience of homelessness. By the time Mary-Mitchell graduated in 1996, she was running something called “The Artists Against Poverty Musical Theater.”

When she married and came to New York, it was her businessman husband who was slated for success. “I was this crazy artist taking a chance in an impossible business.” But all expectations quickly turned upside down. Mary-Mitchell played piano for a Broadway Cares benefit for theater people afflicted with AIDS and met famed Broadway musical director Jack Lee. He got her job on a revival of Sweet Charity at Lincoln Center where she worked with composer Cy Coleman. He introduced her to Paul Newman with whom she worked on benefits for the “Hole in the Wall” camps for disabled children. Soon she was musical director of Tony Bennett’s 80th birthday celebration in Los Angeles, conducting a 30-piece orchestra, directing people like George Clooney and Julia Roberts. And her marriage was falling apart.

After the divorce, Mary-Mitchell changed course. “I felt I needed to stop wallowing in my own little personal drama, to stop being so caught up in my troubles.” She decided to place her career on the sidelines and revisit the major theme of her college years and spend some time helping others. She went to India, to work in Mother Teresa’s hospital and then at an orphanage for disabled girls in Bangalore. “I started to understand how little these girls were valued, what a miracle it was that they had been allowed to live at all.” She saw “the horrible corruption” that so often undermines the distribution of charitable funds overseas. “I couldn’t be the same person after that experience. So when the administrators of the orphanage asked me to take it over, I said okay.”

Mary-Mitchell had found another great passion to mesh with her work in the theater. She founded ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty), which supports arts camps in South Africa and Florida, an arts-based orphanage in India, and hospital outreach in New York City. Its goal is not just to raise money but to “connect artists who wish to share their talents with poverty-stricken children.” She has enlisted colleagues like Raul Esparza, Kristin Chenoweth, and Patti LuPone. Every month or so, she organizes a benefit concert.

The new “softer heart” of this season’s Company reaches out across the world.