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.

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.




Edited by falstaff29 - 1/08/12 at 4:47pm