Sondheim Company Play Guide

7/27/2019 Sondheim Company Play Guide

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sondheim-company-play-guide 1/13



AbOUT THEATER LATTé DA

Founded by Peter Rothstein and Denise Prosek, TheaterLatté Da is now entering its 15th year o combiningmusic and story to illuminate the breadth o thehuman condition. Peter and Denise began theirsuccessul collaboration in 1994 by privately producing

ve original cabarets to showcase Twin Cities talent. They discovered that by placing equal emphasis onmusic and storytelling, they could weave tapestries o engaging, challenging, and oten surprising narrativesthat resonated with people on many levels.

Theater Latté Da ocially incorporated as a non-protorganization in 1998 and to this day remainscommitted to a rigorous experimentation with musicand story that expands the art orm and speaks to acontemporary audience, challenging us to think deeplyabout the world in which we live.

The venues we perorm in are an integral part o ourproductions. In 1998, Theater Latté Da beganperorming at the intimate 120-seat Loring Playhouse.

By 2007, Theater Latté Da productions were playing tosold-out houses. At this time, we began searching orspaces with dierent perormance congurations tomeet the unique needs o our productions. Since 2007, Theater Latté Da has produced shows at the Guthrie

Theater, Ordway Center or the Perorming Arts,Pantages Theatre, Southern Theater, History Theatre,Fitzgerald Theater, the Rarig Center Stoll Thrust Theatreand The Lab Theater.

Theater Latté Da is now emerging as a leader in themusical theater art orm, having produced 49mainstage productions including 8 world premieres, 6area premieres and dozens o productions celebratedor their bold re-imagination.

For more inormation about Theater Latté Da, visitwww.LatteDa.org.



Summary o Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Sondheim at a Crossroads: The Making o Company . . . . . . . . 5

Company and the Concept Musical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Company, Marriage and the Silent Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

For Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Online Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Play guide written by Je Turner, Theater Latté Da Dramaturg,

Associate Proessor o Threatre Arts at Hamline University

is being produced by Theater Latté Daat the Ordway McKnight Theatre.

Music Direction by Jerry RubinoChoreography by Michael Matthew Ferrell

Directed by Peter Rothstein

October 25 - November 18, 2012Previews on October 25 & October 26

Opening Night on October 27

TAbLE of cONTENTS



Stephen Sondheim summarized the dramatic action o Company quite succinctly:

“A man with no emotional commitment reassesses his lie on his thirty-th

birthday by reviewing his relationships with his married acquaintances and hisgirlriends. That is the entire plot.”

Sondheim makes it sound like a sophisticated 1930s comedy by Noel Cowardor Philip Barry, but Company is a ar more contemporary and rebellious musicaltheater experience. In the moment between a wish and the blowing out o hisbirthday candles, the central character, Robert, experiences a kaleidoscopic foodo memories poignantly revealed through song, dance and enlivening vignettes.As he revisits signicant moments in time with those close riends and lovers withwhom he keeps company, Robert struggles to understand what commitment toanother person can actually mean in an age where human intimacy is eclipsed by

technological innovation.

SUMMARy of ‘cOMPANy’

Company Play Guide | 4

Above: The original 1970 Broadway cast o Company. (Photo: Steve Paley)



It is hard to imagine a time when StephenSondheim’s eminence was ever in question, yeton the evening o April 26, 1970, waiting or thecurtain to rise on his rst Broadway show in veyears, the orty-year-old composer and lyricistremained an artist in transition – the measure o his success was still up or debate.

The celebrated lyricist o West Side Story (1957)and Gypsy (1959), Sondheim’s last true hit was1962’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to

the Forum, a witty, intricately-constructed andmelodious arce about a slave who attemptsto win his reedom. Adapted rom the Roman

comedies o Plautus, Forum was the rstBroadway production or which Sondheim hadwritten both music and lyrics. Over the nexteight years Sondheim pursued a number o projects, including two critical and nancialBroadway disappointments. The dark, satiricalcomedy Anyone Can Whistle closed ater nineperormances in 1964. More successul was Do

I Hear a Waltz? , which ran or 220 perormancesin 1965. Though he received his rst Tony Awardnomination, Sondheim was less than enthusiastic

about his participation in a production hedescribed as a “workmanlike, proessional show”which “deserved to ail.” Originally conceivedas a vehicle or Richard Rodgers and OscarHammerstein II, Sondheim stepped in to writethe lyrics to Rodgers’ music ater the deatho Hammerstein, his mentor, yet it was thisexperience that convinced the thirty-ve-year-old to ocus only on productions where he wouldbe solely responsible or music and lyrics.

Other projects during this period included twocollaborations with playwright James Goldman(The Lion in Winter ). In 1965 Sondheim hadwritten ve songs to accompany the rst drato a murder-mystery musical, tentatively titledThe Girls Upstairs, about a reunion o agingshowgirls who had once appeared in the ZiegeldFollies. Evening Primrose, a 1966 musical or anexperimental television series “ABC Stage 67,”was adapted by Goldman rom a short story by

John Collier. A macabre love story with a RodSerling-worthy ending, Evening Primrose airedon November 16th and starred Anthony Perkinsas a poet who drops out o society to live in adepartment store where he discovers a secretworld o nightly inhabitants. Critical responsewas mixed.

SONDHEIM at a cROSSROADS:

the MAkING of ‘cOMPANy’


Stephen Sondheim, 1970.



In 1968 Sondheim reluctantly collaboratedwith Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein andJohn Guare on the unortunately titled A Pray

or Blecht , an adaptation o a one-act play byGerman modernist Bertolt Brecht. The show ellapart during pre-production when, according toSondheim biographer Meryle Secrest, Robbins

walked out o the middle o auditions, jumpedinto his limousine and escaped to KennedyAirport.

Just a ew months later, the musical that wouldmark the turning point in Sondheim’s careerarrived via an unlikely source. In January 1969,while Goldman and Sondheim continuedto develop The Girls Upstairs, Sondheim wasapproached by George Furth, a lm andtelevision actor who had written a series o one-act plays which explored the complexities o contemporary romantic relationships. Originallyto be produced on Broadway with AnthonyPerkins directing and Kim Stanley playing allthe emale roles, Furth’s show was unexpectedlyhalted due to lack o unds. Distraught andseeking advice and, perhaps, new sources o nancial backing, Furth encouraged Sondheim toread the script.

Intrigued, Sondheim passed it on to producer/director Hal Prince who had been a closeriend or nearly twenty years and hadpreviously expressed an interest in staginga musical about marriage in America. AsSecrest writes, Prince had been workingthrough his own eelings “about theisolating and deadening eect o city lieon contemporary marriage,” and once thethree began to collaborate on Furth’s script,Company was born. Their rst major change

to Furth’s script was the creation o a centralcharacter, Robert – an unmarried man,thirty-ve and araid o commitment, whoobserves his married riends rom a lovingyet cautious distance. The action would turnon a central question Robert must answer:to be alone or not to be alone. A secondproblem was the search or a proper musicalorm in which to contain the ragmented,non-linear dramatic action.

In an interview with Craig Zadan, Sondheimacknowledged the process was “new or mebecause we realized early on that the kind o song that would not work in the show was theRodgers and Hammerstein kind o song in whichthe characters reach a certain point and then singtheir emotions, because George [Furth] writes the

kind o people who do not sing. To spend timeexploring the characters was wrong becausethey were primarily presented in vignettes, andas soon as you’d try to expand them with song itwould be a mistake. All the songs had to be used,I’m sorry to say, in a Brechtian way as a commentand counterpoint . . .We had our songs interruptthe story and be sung mostly by people outsidethe scene commenting on the action takingplace. You never want to make a statement, butCompany did become controversial because itdealt with the increasing diculty o makingone-to-one relationships in an increasinglydehumanized society . . . It’s that lonely crowdsyndrome. It’s also about expecting relationshipsto be what they’re not.”

In July 1969, thinking The Girls Upstairs wouldbe his next show with Company ollowing closebehind, Sondheim and Goldman were surprisedto discover the show they had been developing

or nearly ve years was alling apart in pre-production. The producer walked away, nancial


Harold Prince (Company ’s original Broadway producer anddirector) and Elaine Stritch (original “Joanne”).(Photo: SandySpeiser)



backing was in jeopardy, and the director elt thescript needed substantial revisions. Sondheimbegged Hal Prince to postpone Company whilehe attempted to resurrect the troubled showgirlsproject, but Prince, a rising director-auteur, wouldhave none o it. In an interview with Zadan,Prince discusses standing up to the rustrated

composer/lyricist: “I’m working, I’m ready, myset is designed, my costumes are designed, youhaven’t written any goddamned music, but myshow’s ready.” Sondheim was disheartened andworried he would be unable to shit his creativeenergies onto Company . In the end, Princeagreed to take on The Girl Upstairs, but he wantedto produce Company rst. Delighted, Sondheimbegan composing new songs.

Out-o-town previews in Boston resulted in songscut and songs reinserted, scenes rearranged, newsongs written and a new ending devised. Whatsome critics described as a bitter and cynicaltone was sotened and massaged. The newending was now more armative and optimistic.Company was ready or Broadway.

On April 27, the morning ater opening night,Sondheim, Furth and Prince must have beendevastated by the review in the New York Times,

where Clive Barnes castigated Company ortracking in cocktail party grotesques – a slick portrait o the urban jungle or tourists seekingout an authentic New York City experience.Although Barnes acknowledged Sondheim tobe “one o the most sophisticated composersever to write Broadway musicals,” praisinghis lyrics or their “sparse, elegant wit,” henevertheless suggested the songs to be ar tooclever and bordering on the academic. Barnes,who appreciated Boris Aronson’s constructivist-

inspired scenery, argued Prince did not generatethe appropriate pacing necessary to sustain therepetitive dramatic action, and Furth’s characters

were dismissed as “trival, shallow, worthlessand horrid.” Sondheim has never been a criticaldarling and such a review had the ability toclose a show in 1970, but something intriguinghappened the very next day. Times critic MelGussow acknowledged the reviews were indeedmixed, “but the ones that were avorable were

violently avorable, the kind o notices that sendpeople running to stand in line at the box oce,as they were yesterday. Mr. Sondheim, or therst time in ve years, had a huge success.” Fivedays later in the Sunday New York Times, WalterKerr added an enthusiastic albeit measuredresponse. Suggesting the show to be a little toocool and sardonic, Kerr wrote that Company “isbrilliantly designed, beautiully staged, sizzlinglyperormed, inventively scored, and it gets rightdown to brass tacks and brass knuckles withouta moment’s hesitation, staring contemporarysociety straight in the eye beore spitting in it.”

Company would eventually run or 690perormances and win six Tony Awards, includingBest Musical, Best Original Music, Best OriginalLyrics, Best Book o a Musical, Best Directiono a Musical and Best Scenic Design. In 1971Hal Prince kept his word and staged a newlyreworked version o The Girls Upstairs – now titled

Follies – which would run or 522 perormances,receive seven Tony Awards and generate nearlegendary status. Sondheim had indeed arrived,his reputation unqualied, and over the nextdecade he would produce three additionalmasterpieces in collaboration with directorHal Prince – A Little Night Music (1973), Pacifc

Overtures (1976) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon

Barber o Fleet Street (1979). Subsequent hitsincluded Sunday in the Park with George (1984),Into the Woods (1987), Assassins (1990) and

Passion (1994). As scholar Ethan Mordden argues,Sondheim had surely become an American“master without equal.”




‘cOMPANy’and

the cONcEPT MUSIcAL

Though the history o the American musical is ascomplex as the history o modern dance or thecinema, conventional narratives tend to privilegea turn away rom more discursive orms o early-twentieth-century popular entertainment –star-driven vehicles where jokes and gags werelayered over the dramatic action while songstended to interrupt narrative momentum asopposed to orwarding the plot. The idea o an “integrated musical” can be dated back toJerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show

Boat (1927), but it is most oten associated withthe work o Rodgers and Hammerstein whoseOklahoma! (1943) ushered in a golden age o American musicals which combined dramaticaction, song, dance, orchestration and settingsinto a seamless narrative whole. The book orlibretto provided the dramatic architecture whiledialogue, lyrics and choreography moved theaction orward. Comedy was not layered over theaction but emerged organically out o characterand situation. Richard Rodgers articulated as

much, writing that “when a show works perectly,it’s because all the individual parts complementeach other and t together. No single elementovershadows any other. In a great musical, the

orchestrations sound the way the costumeslook. That’s what makes Oklahoma! work. Allthe components dovetailed. There was nothingextraneous or oreign, nothing that pushed itsel into the spotlight yelling ‘Look at me!’ It was awork created by many that gave the impressiono having been created by one.”

Though a highly contested term and oneor which Sondheim has expressed greatdissatisaction, the “concept musical” turned the

cohesively integrated, book-driven musical intoa vehicle or newly emergent orms o artisticexpression during the sixties and seventies wheregrand ideas take precedence over traditionalorms o dramatic storytelling. For many theconcept musical include a strong directorialpoint-o-view, a bold design aesthetic, a recurringsong which underscores the central idea, anda non-linear, oten ragmented dramatic actionwhich circles in on itsel. Here, as critic MartinGottried has written, “music, lyrics, dance, stage

movement and dialogue are woven througheach other in the creation o a tapestry-liketheme.” The action is oten inner-directed,ocusing on character and theme rather than a

straight-orward plot. Still, theatre historianBruce Kirle circles around the term, asking“what exactly is it?” Kirle writes: “Perhaps thebest denition is a musical that conrontsthe audience with ideas it usually goes tomusicals to escape . . . The appropriation

o serious subject matter rom non-musical theatre was now intellectualized,”subversively challenging Rodgers andHammerstein’s “romantic idealization o postwar American values.”

Concept musicals have their roots in BertoltBrecht’s didactic “epic theatre” o the


Stephen Sondheim and Pamela Myers (original “Marta”).(Photo: Sandy Speiser)



1920s. In America there are hints o resistanceto the status quo in Rodgers and Hammerstein’smodernist Allegro (1947) with its use o a barestage, a Greek chorus, and a more ragmentedscore in which dialogue, music and song weavein and out o each other. In 1948 Alan Jay Lernerand Kurt Weil’s Love Lie utilized a more non-linear

orm o storytelling. According to historian EthanMordden, however, “the show that launched anew era” o musical dramaturgy was John Kanderand Fred Ebb’s Cabaret , which was directedand produced by Hal Prince and premiered onBroadway in 1966.

So what role does Company play in this history?Sondheim’s show is unique in that it is therst successul concept musical to conront its1970 Broadway audience head on. Hal Prince,George Furth and Stephen Sondheim did notutilize history as a distancing eect as Princehad done in Cabaret . This was no WeimarGermany unctioning as a metaphor or thespiritual bankruptcy o American culture in the1960s. Furth’s book had the acerbic wit o anEdward Albee play, going straight or the jugularwhile interrogating the social mores o the

city’s privileged jet set. There was no gimmickyconvergence o anti-war rhetoric, sex, drugs androck-n-roll on the “Great White Way” as witnessedin 1968 when Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragniand James Rado’s Hair: The American Tribal Love-

Rock Musical opened on Broadway. Company was clearly located in contemporary New York

City, a land o skyscrapers and martinis anddiscoteques. The musical utilized irony to explorecontemporary marriage, holding a mirror upto its audience as products o a hurried, urbanlandscape while ocusing on a sel-questioningcentral character whose inner-directednessrefected an entire generation o Americansushering in the “me decade.” What is mostinteresting about Company is that Sondheim,Furth and Prince provided audiences with acomplex, entertaining portrait o a man on thecusp o personal discovery as well as an honestexamination o marriage as a vital, evolvinginstitution. The audience was invited to enterinto debate and discussion, teasing out their ownmeanings and answers around one o the mostcompelling choices any one person can make intheir lie.


Dieter Bierbrauer as Robert in Theater Latté Da’s Company. (Photo: Tom Sandelands)



‘cOMPANy,’ MARRIAGE and the

SILENT GENERATION

On Novemeber 5, 1951, Time magazinepublished a sociological study o Americanteenagers and twentysomethings, contrastingtheir values with those born during the rst twodecades o the twentieth century. The magazinenoted: “By comparison with the Flaming Youtho their athers and mothers, today’s youngergeneration is a still, small fame. It does not issuemaniestoes, make speeches or carry posters.It has been called the ‘Silent Generation.’”Predominantly children o the Great Depression,

sociologists labeled them silent or theirdesire or security and their adherence to civicengagement, suburban prosperity and corporatehegemony. Traditionalists by nature, the SilentGeneration “were more sober and conservative,”avoring uniorm allegiance to behavioral norms.Time concluded its study by suggesting theywere “the oldest young generation in the world.”

Two decades later in 1970, thirty-two-year-old Gerald Clarke, an Associate Editor or Time,revisited what he termed the one truly lostgeneration o the century. Clarke writes: “Tobe in your 30s is, by popular denition, to bein the middle—the middle o your career, themiddle o your marriage, the middle o yourlie.” Recognizing his to be the last generationo Americans to accept without question thetraditional values o patriotism and hard work,Clarke noted: “We stand between two angry

lines o what has become a war o generations. The middle in any war is seldom sae ground,but when we look at today’s angry, rustratedyouth and their equally angry rustrated parents,the middle is where we would elect to be.”Sandwiched between the “Greatest Generation”and the “Baby Boomers” born between 1946and 1964, the Silent Generation was too youngto ght in World War II yet too old to initiate the

progressive cultural shits o the 1960s. By the time many

reached their thirties andorties, they ound themselvessubject to (yet observing roma distance) the destabilizingorces o social change. Onearea o concern was marriage.Writing in the same yearthat Company opened onBroadway, Clarke notes: “Manyo our marriages have not

survived the strain o beingpulled in two directions. Thenumber o divorces or thosein their 30s is alarming, thenumber o unhappy marriagesstaggering. Sex is probablythe same or us as it is oreveryone else past puberty.

The dierence is that ourexpectations are now those


A stereotypical 1950s amily. (Photo: Ancestry.com)



o the young, while many o our marriages wereormed according to the rules o the old.”

Marriage in America went through anunprecedented revolution in the twenty yearsbetween the Time magazine articles. Accordingto Stephanie Coontz, this seemingly stable

institution “lost its role as the ‘master event’that governed young people’s sexual lives, theirassumption o adult roles, their job choices,and their transition into parenthood. Peoplebegan marrying later. Divorce rates soared.Premarital sex became the norm. Andthe division o labor between husbandas breadwinner and wie as homemaker,which sociologists in the 1950s had

believed was vital or industrial society, ellapart.” When Company opened in 1970, StephenSondheim had just turned orty. George Furthwas thirty-eight. Hal Prince was orty-two.With brutal honesty and a wry sense o humor,their musical refected the world as they wereexperiencing it. It can be argued their central

character, Robert, stood or an entire generationo Americans who aced an uncertain uture inthe wake o seismic change.

The cast o Father Knows Best, a popular TVshow that ran on network television rom1954 to 1963, played the “ideal” amily.


A newly married couple toast their wedding, 1970.



FOR FURTHER READING

ONLINE RESOURcES

Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, A History: How Love

Conquered Marriage. New York: Penguin, 2005.

Jones, John Bush. Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social

History o the American Musical Theatre. Hanover,N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 2003.

Kirle, Bruce. Unfnished Business: Broadway

Musicals As Works-In-Progress. Carbondale:Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.

Mordden, Ethan. One More Kiss: The Broadway

Musical in the 1970s. New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2003.

---. Open a New Window: The Broadway Musical in

the 1960s. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.

Secrest, Meryle. Stephen Sondheim: A Lie. NewYork: Alred A. Knop, 1998

Sondheim, Stephen. Finishing the Hat: Collected

Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments,

Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and

Anecdotes. New York: Alred A. Knop, 2010.

Swayne, Steve. How Sondheim Found His Sound .Ann Arbor: U o Michigan Press, 2005.

Zadan, Craig. Sondheim & CO. 2nd Edition. NewYork: Perennial, 1989.

www.sondheim.com – the rst major websitedevoted to Sondheim. It includes news,interviews, eatures and critical essays.

www.sondheimguide.com – a comprehensiveonline reerence guide to all things Sondheim.

www.sondheimreview.com - a quarterlypublication devoted to the work o StephenSondheim. The website includes news rom thecurrent issue, subscription inormation, currentproductions o Sondheim shows, and more.




www.LatteDa.org

Sondheim Company Play Guide

Documents

Transcript of Sondheim Company Play Guide