Last night, we saw the dazzling big-screen presentation of the New York Philharmonic’s recent mini-production of Company. What threatened to be an awkwardly-staged concert turned out to be a full production of the show, enacted before the Philharmonic Orchestra instead of a set. Because Company is a hybrid of the book musical and the revue, the material perfectly matches the approach.

The director, Lonny Price, has now made a career of events like this; he directed the 2002 concert version of Sweeney Todd, the Sondheim eightieth birthday concert, and many similar projects. He’s the best man for the tricky job of making live theatre work on video. (It was as an actor that Price began his association with Stephen Sondheim, creating the role of Charlie in the original Broadway production of Merrily We Roll Along.)

When the Times reported that this all-star cast was rehearsing via Skype, we had every right to expect a slapdash, thrown-together evening. But, to the credit of Mr. Price and the cast, this Company feels like a legitimate production, with all the precision timing and subtle character comedy demanded by George Furth’s libretto.

Going in, I was not convinced that this was a dream cast, but every member of the Company company is exemplary. The marquee names — Christina Hendricks, Jon Cryer, Martha Plimpton, Stephen Colbert (!) — shed their familiar personas and disappear into perfect realizations of their characters. (If you’re interested, listen to Colbert’s recent Fresh Air interview, in which he discusses his involvement with Company and describes how Sondheim himself asked him to appear in it. While we’re on the subject, if you somehow missed Sondheim’s December appearance on The Colbert Report, watch it right now.) 

Among the theatre people in the cast, I was especially impressed with Jim Walton as Larry. Mr. Walton, who played Frank to Mr. Price’s Charlie in the original Merrily, has become a conspicuous carrier of the Sondheim torch; his rendition of Merrily’s “Growing Up” was a highlight of the birthday concert. In Company, he invests Larry with melancholy joy. And Anika Noni Rose, excellent as Marta, breaks with recent tradition by singing “Another Hundred People” exactly as written.

The peerless Patti LuPone has spent the last decade making her mark on the Sondheim canon, often in roles so closely associated with their original interpreters that only an artist of LuPone’s magnitude could even attempt to claim them. As Joanne in Company, she’s brilliantly true to the character, yet she manages to avoid the footprints of Elaine Strich. In LuPone’s hands, the explosive eleven o’clock number “The Ladies Who Lunch” seems to emerge more gracefully than ever from the harrowing scene which frames it.

And Neil Patrick Harris, in the role of Robert (Bobby, Bobby baby, Bobby bubi, etc.), is a revelation. I feared this would be an excessively cute performance, because the very entertaining Mr. Harris is one of the great hams of our time, but I was wrong. This is a mature, subtle, haunting performance of one of the most difficult roles in musical theatre. I thought the Philharmonic would drown out Harris’s thin voice, but I was wrong there too. He’s become a relaxed and assured vocalist, miles beyond his work as the Balladeer in the 2004 revival of Sondheim’s Assassins.

It’s worth noting that this is the second recent filmed version of Company. In 2006, the show was revived on Broadway, in a compelling and innovative production directed by John Doyle. That version was committed to film (beautifully directed by, guess who, Lonny Price), broadcast on PBS, and released on DVD. Thanks to Doyle’s reinterpretation of the show and Raul Esparza’s knockout performance as Bobby, it seemed to be the last word on Company for some time to come.

Like Doyle’s 2005 Sweeney Todd, his Company hinged on having the actors double as the orchestra. By necessity, the orchestrations were reduced to their barest essentials, and the staging was largely based on the transit and placement of musical instruments. It worked astoundingly well, because Doyle turned the gimmick into a metaphor: Robert, the single man among couples, was the only character who didn’t play any music, until the end, when Esparza sat down at the piano and accompanied himself on a raw and emotional rendition of the show’s heartrending finale, “Being Alive.”

But Esparza’s unique performance, and the orchestral concept, made the Doyle Company a departure. For the first time, Bobby was a character, not just a cipher through which the other characters are perceived. Company in 2006 was a show about Bobby, more than a show about marriage.

That, I think, is the justification for the Philharmonic version. This is a more traditional Company, in which Bobby is the blank screen onto which his friends’ personalities are projected. After the sparse arrangements of 2006, hearing the full orchestrations — played by the Philharmonic, no less — reinforced the idea that what we were watching was really the Broadway Company, and the 2006 revival was an experimental detour.

This exhilarating production is a fine entry in the recent spate of Sondheim revivals and celebrations, and it whets the appetite for what’s around the corner. It was recently announced that the Kennedy Center’s revival of Follies will be coming to Broadway this summer, and that the City Center’s 2012 Encores series will include Merrily We Roll Along.

You’re always grateful.