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"COMPANY"
Premieres on February 20, 2008 on PBS (check local listings)
ESSAY
"COMPANY" AND THE CONCEPT MUSICAL
(continued)
The astonishingly perceptive score was also nontraditional. Sondheim's songs were part of the collage. Some were multilayered and purposely confusing; others were solo expressions of a single idea. The music and lyrics also had a contemporary sound that required the show to be timely and relevant. Although the tone of the whole score was one of high-energy tension, there was amazing variety from song to song. The opening title number was a complex collision of voices, while the reflective "Sorry-Grateful" was nearly monosyllabic in its simplicity. The Andrews Sisters-like trio "You Can Drive a Person Crazy" had a 1940s sound with a 1970s sensibility; "Side by Side by Side" was an old-fashioned soft-shoe number with a wry subtext. The rapid "Getting Married Today" contrasted nicely with the cautious ballad "Someone Is Waiting." "Barcelona" was an awkward postcoital scene put to music, "The Ladies Who Lunch" had a subtle Latin beat that exploded as it progressed, and the heart-wrenching "Being Alive" was a cry for help that served as an emotional release for Bobby and the audience.
The critics recognized "Company" as something new and provocative, and audiences had no trouble enjoying the unusual but satisfying experience for 690 performances during its original run. Yet neither press nor public was aware that the show was opening up new possibilities for musical theater. There had been concept musicals before this one, but they had felt experimental; "Company" felt like a Broadway hit.
John Doyle's 2006 Broadway revival of "Company," which is being shown on Great Performances, is a very unconventional approach to an already unconventional musical. There is no specific scenery, no attempt to depict specific locales; there are no definite entrances and exits, and not even clear-cut distinctions between when one scene ends and the other begins. Physical action is often eliminated and suggested from facial expressions and body language, such as the karate scene between Harry and Sarah or the seduction scene between Bobby and April. Then Doyle further conceptualizes the piece by turning the actors into musicians as well. The cast is the orchestra, each character defined by the instrument he or she plays. Note how the cynical Joanne's idea of playing an instrument is to clink her booze glass. Bobby, who seems to pride himself on his noninvolvement, never touches an instrument until the end of the show when he finally opens up his heart, sits at the piano, and accompanies himself during the first part of "Being Alive." Some critics and playgoers felt the actors playing instruments got in the way, that it distanced them from the audience. Perhaps such a distance is intentional. Maybe it is a form of alienation that brings us back to Brecht and the very first concept musicals. Directors of revivals of "Company" over the years have struggled with the problem of time. Does one keep the show in the early 1970s? Update it? Does the swinger Bobby make sense in today's world? Is the battle between conformity and the bohemian lifestyle, so crucial in the past, relevant today? Doyle has solved the problem because his unrealistic, distanced approach is timeless. Neither the set nor the costumes suggest any specific era. In the true concept musical, time is a convention that can be disposed of. The details of an era disappear and only ideas remain.
The visual record of Doyle's 2006 production of "Company" is a vibrant example of a great concept musical pushed further than even its creators imagined back in 1970. Is this the best or definitive "Company"? That doesn't matter. It is a masterful version of a masterwork and, as such, adds to the richness of the American musical theater.
Top banner photo: Elizabeth Stanley, Kelly Jeanne Grant, and Angel Desai from "Company." (credit: Joe Sinnott -- Thirteen/WNET)
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photo: Heather Laws as Amy (credit: Joe Sinnott -- Thirteen/WNET)
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