What do you guys think of COMPANY?

So, I recently watched the COMPANY concert from 2007-I know, I'm waaaay late to the party-and I really enjoyed it. This was the first time I had a chance to get into it because I was not really going through the "watch anything and everything that has anything to do with musical theatre" phase then. What's your take on it? My favorite thought explaining the ending is that the whole show was in Robert's head, and he stood outside the club and thought about what happened when he got together with each couple, except when they returned to the night of his birthday, when he thought of what would happen if he went inside. At the end, he "wishes" that someone would come "make him alive".

---

Yes.

---

For those interested, PBS will broadcast Company, this Friday, November 8, at 9:00

It is a landmark show, and I envy the people who were in Boston for its first preview in 1970. Whether they loved it or if they were baffled, they were seeing something completely new. And whether one liked it or not, it was a game changer and thrilling.

I didn't see the original, but I've never loved any production or recording of the show other than the 1970 OBC album and other recordings and artifacts of its type. I thought certain aspects of the NY Phil concert were quite good, but Neil Patrick Harris bores the crap out of me. (Though his last...and hopefully final...sojourn as Tony host wasn't bad. I rather liked him then.) Bobby is not a showy part (Mr. Esparza...) but it requires a little heft. (I didn't see the Sondheim Festival production at the Kennedy Center in '02, and of all the ones I've heard about since 1970, I think I would have liked that one.)

I really hope that someone decides to give COMPANY the production it deserves in NYC someday: with Tunick's charts, a cast that doesn't feel like a bunch of pleasant Midwesterners singing Sondheim, and set back in 1970 with a good scenic concept. And I do hope the rumor I heard that Sondheim didn't turn out to enjoy the reading of the "gay COMPANY" is true.

Company is a masterpiece, a watershed, a game-changer. It was and still is a pivotal moment in the development of the American musical. A "seismic jolt," to steal from one of my favorite smart people.

It's also one of my greatest loves. That 2006-7 production (concert? really?) changed me as an artist in ways I still feel every day.

---

Sorry, the interesting and rather unique way COMPANY was staged, I guess, made me believe the version that was recorded from 2007 to be a concert. It was fantastic nonetheless, and I loved every minute. I also really liked the way Raúl Esparza played Bobby, but that's just my opinion.

---

I'm not a fan. It's cold, mean, and nasty (The Ladies Who Lunch). Misogynistic, too. I feel nothing for Bobby. Nothing except contempt and impatience, that is. He's a selfish, self-absorbed whiner, and a bore to boot. Get married, don't get married: Bobby, we don't give a damn! Just stop whining about it, or better yet, get off the stage.

The music is cold and hard, and the lyrics are mean-spirited and self-consciously clever.

P.S. I saw the original production. It was one of those shows proclaimed to be ""groundbreaking." I was prescient enough to know even then that that expression was actually a perfidious way of saying "bad for our theatre." Nowadays, the word is bandied about all the time. And each time it represents one further step into the abyss.

Updated On: 11/6/13 at 04:17 AM

Company was the first non-liner musical in New York , It is indeed one of the best written and best musically to appear on Broadway.

Indy,

First you need to have a game. :)

As for Bobby, if the wishy-washy whiner ever decides to actually tie the knot, I feel sorry for his luckless spouse. She will live happily never after.

I was 14 and had just come from seeing a Saturday matinee of Minnie's Boys, which I thought was pretty good stuff, seeing as I got an autograph and all--and a kiss!--from Miss Shelley Winters.

So I went into school that early May Monday morning and Karl Tiedermann, who read Jeeves stories and liked Carry On movies and Burns and Allen and Ernie Kovacs and things I'd never heard of, said to me, "Oh, you should see Company. It will change your world."

So the next Saturday matinee I saw Company, and Karl Tiedermann was right: I was never the same.

---

Updated On: 11/6/13 at 08:22 AM

I loved the 2006 Broadway revival. It was my only experience with this show so I cannot compare it to other productions. It is still a favorite CD and DVD of mine.

^ Well, to be fair, After Eight was only responding to the question directly asked in the thread title.

I do disagree, though.

---

God, I couldn't stand that Doyle production. Raul Esparza is a very charismatic leading man, but that staging was so lifeless and don't get me started on the damn actors-as-musicians bull****. I only saw the NY Phil concert recently myself and absolutely loved it. While NPH is probably a better "personality" than actor, the rest of the cast was excellent. The laughs and even the darkness were nicely mined throughout. And of course the score sounded fantastic.

Speaking of which, I think setting Company in the present day is never going to work. Not because of the lyrical or book references to outdated references to "analysts" or "call services" or the idea that smoking pot is such a daring thing for a Manhattan couple to try. I can imagine tweaks to the script and the lyrics which could help with those references, but the score itself just sounds so of its time in many places -- very late 60s/early 70s. I think it will always need to be set in the 70s or a non-specific time.