Stephen Sondheim's musical comedy Company, his 1970 breakthrough hit, will lead off Civic Theatre of Allentown's 2000-01 Season. The theater's new Artistic Director Lenny Leibowitz directs the play, his Civic debut. The show runs Oct. 6-21.

Sondheim's music also will be featured Oct. 15, in the first of Civic's Civic In Concert series, new this season. The concert, An Evening of Stephen Sondheim, will feature two hours of highlights of the composer's career, from West Side Story through Passion.

"Sondheim's genius really comes out in Company, I think," Leibowitz said. "And presenting the concert alongside the show lets us put the brilliance of the piece in the context of a whole illustrious career."

Company is underwritten by corporate sponsor Lafayette Ambassador Bank, and is made possible by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Company swept the major Tony Awards in its 1970 premiere, winning Best Musical, Best Score and Best Lyrics (Sondheim), Best Book (George Furth) and three other awards. The show remains one of Sondheim's longest Broadway runs.

A comic meditation on love and marriage set in the 1970s, on the cusp of the sexual revolution, Company takes place on the night of confirmed bachelor Robert's 35th birthday. In a series of vignettes, we meet his married and soon-to-be-married friends, as Robert contemplates his bachelorhood and weighs the pros and cons of getting hitched.

Honest, witty and sophisticated, Company features several classics of the modern musical stage, including "Another Hundred People," "Getting Married Today" and "Being Alive." The New York Daily News wrote: "Brilliance is all in this show," while The Wall Street Journal reported: "It's been a long time since a musical has come along with so many show-stopping numbers, the kind that get cheers and whistling from the good folk in the balcony."