Beard of the Week LXC: Good Company


This week's beard belongs to Stephen Sondheim (b 1930, on the right), joined here by George Furth (1932–2008, on the left). They're here to provide an excuse for me to write a bit about our musical-theater troupe's recent production of "Company", a musical with book written by Furth, music and lyrics written by Sondheim. The show opened in New York at the Alvin Theatre on 26 April 1970 and ran for 690 performances, closing 1 January 1972 (details). It won 6 Tony Awards for 1970:

"Company" was the show I chose to direct as the 29th show our musical-theatre troupe (our Facebook page; find photo albums with "Company" photographs there) has done, opening its 15th season. It's a show that I first performed in way back in 1977, when it wasn't all that long gone from Broadway. I played 'cello in the orchestra then and I played 'cello in the orchestra for our production–it keeps me from fidgeting during the show, otherwise I'd just be pacing about in the back of our theater worrying. Besides, it's lots of fun to play. (By the way, there are a number of differences between the "Company" I played for in 1977 and the "Company" we did in 2010; Furth and Sondheim made revisions in 1996 that changed quite a bit; they are amusingly summarized in this essay.)

So I chose "Company" because it's a show I've always liked with a strong score and an equally strong book, and because we had the performers to do it the way I wanted to see it done. Besides, our group had not yet "done Sondheim" and it was about time that we did. We've done our share of shows with challenges, but there's no challenge quite like a Sondheim challenge. After we'd finished the performances one of the cast members said to me, "After our read-through I went home and thought 'whew, we might never make it through this one' — but we did!" And indeed everyone performing did an admirable job with some very difficult material, creating an engaging theatrical evening.

"Company" is a show without a plot; it doesn't tell one story linearly from beginning to end. Some critics now and at its premier love to make a big deal out of this, calling it a breakthrough as the first ever "concept musical". True enough but overstated in my view, since non-musical theater had been using a number of such "theatrical" approaches to storytelling for a number of years. Let's remember that musical theater is still theater. Still, "Company" did break out of some confining boundaries limiting what musical theater could do and how it could do it. This show also does a delightful job of puncturing the overblown wind-bag critics who love to define "the modern musical" as having songs that "advance the plot". Perhaps they can rescue their little theories by proclaiming "Company" a post-modern musical!

The show functions as a collection of short stories–or perhaps "short plays" would be more precise–that all deal with the central theme : "relationships". The character about whom the show pivots is Bobby (or "Robert", or "Bob", or "Rob-O", or "Bobby Bubi"–everyone has a different pet name for him), an unmarried guy in his mid-thirties (or, ahem, mid-forties with our cast). The other characters are 5 couples, Bobby's married (or soon-to-be married) friends, and 3 of his current girlfriends, Kathy, April, and Marta; every character has only a first name.


Joanne & company singing "It's the Little Things You Do Together", while Bobby gets caught in the middle of Sarah and Harry demonstrating karate.

The short plays are vignettes looking as aspects of the relationships of the couples with themselves and with Bobby, who plays the role of observer, or between Bobby and one or another of his girlfriends. The question that keeps coming up is why isn't Bobby married yet. It's clear that Bobby has some relationship issues, but it's not clear exactly what those relationship issues are. A small industry of critics and analysts has grown up around the question of Bobby's motivations, but I don't think it matters that much. In practice it was enough for me to realize that as the show progresses, each of the relationship vignettes demonstrates to Bobby why it's better not to get married until, after a catalyzing moment toward the end of the show, Bobby can see all of the situations as demonstrating reasons to get married. It's part of the strength of Furth's writing that each vignette has a superficial portrayal of conflict or ennui between couples that's built over a stronger element of love and commitment.

In addition to using Bobby as a unifying character, the play uses a rather peculiar organizing frame : a surprise birthday party for Bobby's 35th birthday. The entire cast is assembled on stage for the party at the beginnings and ends of the acts, and parts of it intrude into other scenes throughout the show. Except for one instance (Marta meets Susan and Peter when Bobby takes her along for a visit), the characters never meet each other outside the birthday party. The musical theme for the birthday parties is an incessant "Bobby Baby" fugato that the audience has trouble forgetting but the cast has difficulty remembering!

At the beginning of the show it appears that Bobby's emotional life relies heavily on his relationships with the married couples and you can hear this in the "Bobby Baby" music, which is integrated with the opening "Company" number. The couples make a number of demands on Bobby and he tries to satisfy them all, but as the show progresses it becomes clear that Bobby is much more important to the couples than they are to him and the musical elements that represent that dependence start to become harsher and more irritating until finally it's a chaotic mess and Bobby yells "stop!" to it all. Coinciding with his transformation into a person truly ready for a significant relationship with another person comes his emotional independence from his married friends. All of this gets rolled into the birthday party fragments; it's a birthday party that keeps repeating, working out Bobby's emotional involvement until, in the final birthday-party scene, Bobby simply doesn't show up — and all his friends get the message.

Against this background of the recurring birthday party, which is the only part of the play that arguably takes place in the actual present time–although even that is questionable since the birthday party keeps replaying itself with slight differences each time–are all of the scenes with Bobby and the individual married couples or Bobby and one or another of his girlfriends. During many of these scenes songs are sung that comment on the emotional elements of the scenes. As often as not the songs are not sung by participants in the scenes, but by the rest of the company, who serve as an all-knowing greek chorus. The entire company sings as well at the opening of each act : "Company" at the start sets the stage for the storytelling and establishes a starting point for the relationships Bobby has with all the other characters; "Side by Side / What Would We Do Without You?" opens the second act with a singing-and-dancing psychodrama (who knows where it takes place!) that propels the show to its end (but is a lot less peculiar than the similar number at the opening of Act II of "Follies").

It can all sound rather weird and hard to follow, but none of that troubles the audience one bit. The dialog and situations are engaging and there's a perceived emotional flow to events that make it quite easy to follow, despite the fact that there are at least 11 different locations used with only one set, and that there is nothing that really moves in any sensible way through real time. Some analysts like the conceit that the birthday party is the only "real" part of the show and that everything else takes place in Bobby's head as he's blowing out his birthday candles. Well, whatever. Again, I don't think it matters too much and the audience is willing to accept all the theatrical elements without hesitation — so long as there's good direction, I guess I should assert.

As an element of the birthday party, there's a birthday cake that plays an important role as symbol, or at least seems to. At several points (I didn't count but it's about 5) Bobby is encouraged to make a wish and blow out the candles. In the first instance, he fails totally. Later on he's assisted by everyone else at the party. Later he blows out some. In the last party instance, at the very end of the show, all the guests leave and Bobby appears alone ons stage. He smiles and successfully blows out all the candles just as the curtain closes and the show ends. The audience is left with the feeling that the birthday cake was a very important symbolic element and that Bobby accomplished something at the end when he finally blew out all the candles on his own, but I daresay that no one would be able to articulate exactly what the birthday cake symbolized. It evidently represents something like Bobby's relationship impotence brought on by his reliance on superficial relationships with his married friends, a reliance that disappears during the show, or something like that. But it, too, doesn't matter so much since the audience finds that it provides a sense of emotional closure to the story.

Clearly the birthday cake was to be a very important prop in the show, which is why, months before we came close to production, I talked to our chief stage engineer and asked him how he felt about creating a fake birthday cake with LED candles. Fortunately he loved the idea and made for us a splendid one.

The birthday cake also had an important task in getting the show started. I feel that exactly how a show starts deserves some attention so that it can draw the audience in immediately. Many, even most musicals do this with a musical overture followed by the curtain's opening on a theatrical world in progress on stage. To me, "Company" seemed too post modern, too self-conscious for this traditional style of beginning, especially as there is no musical overture that precedes the first action on stage. To start, then, I made us of a tradition we have of having Isaac enter the darkened hall to speak about the show directly before it begins. Normally we would follow Isaac with a spotlight until he finished, let the overture play, and then open the curtain as indicated.

Instead, I left the curtain open before the audience arrived. They saw the set in darkness but forgot about it by the time the beginning of the show arrived. When Isaac emerged for his remarks, I had him carry on the lit birthday cake that, without comment, he set at the edge of the stage. After his remarks he walked down the main aisle to the orchestra "pit" in the back of the hall at the same time that Bobby walked onto the stage and the stage lights came up to start the show. A few minutes later, during the first birthday party scene, character Amy picked up the birthday cake for Bobby to essay blowing out the candles and the story was fully underway. No one in the audience mentioned this device in my hearing, but it worked for me.

There was one other little innovation for our production that I don't think anyone noticed, but which I think had an important effect. I used only stage lighting for this show, and no follow spots. The spotlights work nicely and are very useful, but "Company" seemed so much an ensemble storytelling effort to me that I felt a follow spot would be intrusive. I think it worked well and accomplished the effect I was after.

Speaking of "ensembles", we've done a number of shows, some with biggish casts and some with small cast, that were "ensemble" shows, but "Company" felt to me like it relied more on the ensemble efforts of the cast than others I can think of. There are 14 named parts in the show (which we did with 13 players because health problems forced one cast member to leave the show before we finished production), and every part requires acting, solo and ensemble singing, and dancing. Except for the role of "Bobby" none of the character roles are terribly large, nor starring roles, but they are each terribly important. (You try singing that "Bobby Baby" fugato with one of the voices missing.)

So, while the cast aren't here to defend themselves I'll tell you that each one of them did a remarkable job pulling with all the others to make our production of "Company" a successful evening of musical theater. When I cajoled each of them into doing it I'm not sure they knew what they were in for, but they found out soon enough to worry it some but they confidently met the challenge. In the end I think it was the right show for the right people to perform at this, the right time to perform it, and they pulled it together into something quite memorable. As part of my thanks I'll also mention Karen who did choreography for "Side by Side" that delighted me, our crack stage-management team who did some of the fastest, most precise scene changes ever, the orchestra of 11 players who sounded remarkably orchestral, Steve (sound), Melissa (lights) and George (sound effects) who made all the magic seem easy, Jane for her graphic design & production assistance, and the intermission gnomes who kept the audience sweet for the second act.

There are endless stories I could tell–our journey through this production was not always smooth–but I don't know that anyone would care much about them except for me and maybe one other person.

The source of the photograph above is this obituary of George Furth.

Posted on November 7, 2010 at 19.00 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Beard of the Week, Music & Art, Personal Notebook

One Response

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  1. Written by S.W. Anderson
    on Tuesday, 9 November 2010 at 23.08
    Permalink

    Sounds like a wonderful and rewarding enterprise, Jeff. A vicarious bravo.

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