Appreciations: Sondheim’s “Company” on PBS

There’s a song in the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along that’s called “Our Time,” but for the next week, the composer could charitably be forgiven for thinking it’s “My Time.” Filmgoers are taking in Johnny Depp’s typically spot-on performance in Sweeney Todd; a revival of Gypsy, his youthful 1959 collaboration with Jule Styne, is preparing to open on Broadway soon; Sunday in the Park with George has just opened to critical acclaim. (I saw it last weekend, and will have more to say on it in the near future.)

But the immediate cause of this post is the PBS airing of Company, as part of the Great Performances series. Though John Doyle’s re-imaging of the classic 1970 musical was shown a few days ago on Channel 13, it’s bound to be repeated in the New York metropolitan area soon within the next week, either on that station or any public broadcasting station around here. By any means necessary, watch it.

The taping is a pleasant reminder for me of the day I attended the show—its July 1, 2007 final performance at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. From first to last, these were the most ecstatic, moving, memorable hours of musical theater I’ve ever experienced—more like a rock show than Broadway, if you can believe it.

As the lights came up, a roar went up from the audience, which proceeded to cheer wildly throughout the show, urging cast members to heartfelt performances. By the end, when Raul Esparza, in the central role of 35-year-old bachelor Bobby had concluded the climactic “Being Alive,” the applause had become thunderous, going on and on for five minutes, finally bringing the actor to tears.

Doyle’s staging of this musical resembles what he did with Sweeney Todd: The entire cast not only acts and sings but plays musical instruments—with one significant difference: Bobby does not play any instrument until “Being Alive,” when his piano playing—at first slow and tentative, finally relentless and impassioned—underscores that he’s ready to stop being a romantic bystander and will not participate fully in life and love.

Sondheim’s songs here—which are not only central to his own career songbook but, I’d suggest, also to the history of American musical theater—still stand the test of time 38 years after the fact. The book, by George Furth (a character actor perhaps best known for playing the persnickety railroad clerk in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), holds up less well.

I was not especially bothered by its ramshackle form (Furth wrote it as a revue until he was advised by Hal Prince to turn into it into a more conventional musical), but by Doyle’s attempts to modernize some aspects of the show while leaving intact several anachronisms. For instance, it may have been considered “cool” for a middle-aged couple to get stoned in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but it’s lost its shock value today to such an extent, I would bet, that drug use in this age group is down today. Moreover, the couple in the hilarious “Not Getting Married Today”—a Jewish groom and Catholic bride—are nowhere near as uncommon now as then, given the loosening of restrictions on marriage outside the faith by Catholicism.

But this play is performed—and deserves to be performed again and again—because it is Sondheim at his zenith. Each song offers each member of the ensemble cast behind Bobby a chance to shine by providing a glimpse into that character. At the same time, each song seemingly represents an entirely different technical challenge that Sondheim has created for himself, then met. “Another Hundred People,” “Not Getting Married Today,” “The Ladies Who Lunch,” “You Can Drive a Person Crazy,” and “Barcelona” either make extraordinary vocal demands on the cast and/or overturn audience expectations at every turn.

Finally, Company puts paid to the cliché that Sondheim is all head and no heart. “Sorry/Grateful” and “Being Alive” are adult songs about everyone’s need for love and their terror at the emotional nakedness to which they are reduced by their longing. Company, together with the musical pastiche Sondheim and longtime producer Hal Prince created the following year, Follies, retains the ability to rend the heart even as other musicals woven inextricably into the fabric of their time, such as Hair and Rent, already begin to show their age.