Why is "Company" so great???
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Topic: Why is "Company" so great???
Posted By: falstaff29
Subject: Why is "Company" so great???
Date Posted: 1/07/12 at 9:20pm
A friend is directing "Company" and wants me to audition. I'm admittedly not a big musical guy, but I figured I'd look into the show.
And I don't get it.
Why is Bobby having this big crisis anyway? He doesn't want to settle down. Big freaking deal. Why do his problems matter?
And then, what happens in the scene with Joanne right before "Being Alive" that makes him change his mind? There's not enough motivation for his realization. The final song seems to come out of left field.
And who's he going to be alive with? It'd be nice if Sondheim gave us a hint. (I hope not Marta--I wanted to strangle her, she was so annoying.)
The whole play just seemed like a waste to me. There are so many protagonists in plays and musicals (maybe more the former than latter, but still . . .) with REAL problems, REAL crises. Why couldn't Sondheim create another one of them? Aren't we a little full of ourselves to say that Bobby deserves a song or scene let alone a musical?
Some of the music was catchy, but the whole conceit of the show just seemed idiotic and a little pompous.
Agree? Disagree? Come on, all you Sondheim fans: somebody explain this show to me.
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Posted By: edh915
Date Posted: 1/08/12 at 1:57pm
I'm not exactly sure where to start. My immediate reaction is to say, "Please stay away from this show. If you don't like it now you never will, and you'll never be able to do it justice." Then again, your friend thinks you should audition for it. Maybe he sees something in you that even you aren't aware of. And, too, I'm passionate about the greatness of this show - easily in the top three of all Sondheim musicals ever written. So I hate to hear that anyone doesn't "get it".
"Company" was one of the first "concept" musicals. It is about couples and relationships. The idea that a person isn't really complete until he shares his life with someone else. There is no plot per se. It's a series of vignettes illustrating the lives of Bobby and the people around him. Bobby lives in an apartment building surrounded by couples, and all of them seem (in Bobby's eyes anyway) to be miserable - each in their own unique way - but they (oddly enough) wouldn't have it any other way. Meanwhile, almost all of the individual members of these couples envy Bobby his singleness and get a kind of vicarious thrill watching him live his life alone - even while they urge him to look for someone more permanent than the latest airline hostess.
Bobby doesn't "end up" with anyone specific. What he manages to discover for himself is the probability that his life has been empty up until now. That what he really needs - emotionally - is to have someone to share that life with. His song "Being Alive" has to do with that realization. The show ends with Bobby ready to move on in his life and commit to a relationship - whatever kind it may be. (I'm told that the latest revival was ambivalent in it's depiction of Bobby's sexuality. I can see how that approach would work, but I don't think it's crucial to the development of the character.)
Please listen to the lyrics of the songs...
"Another Hundred People"
"Sorry Grateful"
"Side by Side by Side"
"Barcelona"
"The Ladies Who Lunch"
etc, etc, etc...
but mostly "Being Alive".
If you can't understand that song, you can never play Bobby effectively, however good a singing voice you may have.
Check out YouTube...
http://youtu.be/am8qrrZAtP4
(Dean Jones from the original cast recording session. You'll never see better.)
Break a leg...
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Posted By: falstaff29
Date Posted: 1/08/12 at 4:39pm
No; I get that it became important historically because it was the first "concept" musical, with songs that "comment on the characters instead of moving the plot forward," blah blah blah, as everybody remarks (even though I disagree largely with that assessment--take, for instance, the gorgeous song "Sorry/Grateful": does it actually COMMENT on Harry and his marriage? No! It's generic. Most of the songs are.).
I'm beyond auditioning for the show; that's not the question.
But I do want to make legitimate attempts to expand my tastes, and so I'm wondering IF and WHY people think this show to be GOOD rather than just IMPORTANT.
Bobby just seems like such a bore; why would all his friends love him so much? And where's the real arc of his character? We're not let into enough of his thoughts and feelings to see the development of his decision to grow up. And again, I feel like the scene leading up to "Being Alive" in no way motivates the piece, even though structurally it seems like it's made to (with Bobby's exasperated "What do you get?").
That's my main issue; not that I don't get what the show's supposed to be saying, but that it never says it. It just feels half-baked because there is no Bobby; he's all reaction to a bunch of married friends. Because it's Bobby's story, there's maybe an excuse to underwrite the rest of the characters, but then Bobby's underwritten too.
Some individual scenes work in isolation, but the whole is far less than
the sum of its parts; it'd be nice if each scene meaningfully augmented
the last in terms of how Bobby revises his worldview; as is, you could
present the vignettes in about any order; it wouldn't matter. That's a
weak script. I think I could almost live with "Company" more if they'd scrapped Bobby and simply presented entirely unconnected vignettes; then the shoddy plotting would seem justified. (But then again I hate "Family Guy" for the same reason; you could chop up the digressions and put them into any episode; it wouldn't matter. I'm not so traditional that I need the stereotypical "well-made" plot, but at least give me a plausible anagnorisis.)
I also think the restored gay scene with Peter is disastrous; if Bobby's less than unambiguously straight, then the whole play's asking the wrong question about his commitment issues, and it's even a more pointless evening we're spending.
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Posted By: edh915
Date Posted: 1/08/12 at 5:18pm
Are you basing all of this negativity on the less-than-inspired Raul Esparza version available on DVD? Sounds like it. That's like criticizing the Mona Lisa based upon seeing a magazine photo, or Beethoven's ninth symphony upon hearing a music box play a little tune. Go back to the original material and you should be able to see what all the fuss is about. Or, better yet, leave it alone and move on to something else. Your remarks strongly indicate that your mind is absolutely closed to the possibility that you might have got ahold of the wrong end of the stick on this one. All I can tell you is that a bad production of a great play will make the play seem mediocre, and you seem unable or unwilling to look any further. So move on.
"Cats" anyone?
BTW - I never said it was "IMPORTANT" (although it is) and it is far better than "GOOD" - it is GREAT!!! I'm really sorry that you've missed that.
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