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Stephen Sondheim: "Company"

It's back. A gender-reversal production--led, of course, by Patti LuPone. The director did the buzzy Denise Gough Broadway revival of "Angels in America." Obsessed.

A recent version of the Harold Prince Songbook, on Broadway, exposed, for one critic, some home truths. Harold Prince had worked both with ALW ("Evita," etc.) and with Sondheim ("Company," "Follies," etc.). First: ALW's work looked very, very pale alongside Sondheim's. Second--and more interesting: "I'd sometimes thought of Sondheim's work as too cerebral, too dry. But this production made something clear to me. Ambivalence isn't the absence of emotion. It's *too much* emotion. It's emotion overflowing."

"Company" is about paralyzing internal conflict. Its people are at war with one another, and with themselves. The inmates are running the asylum. Words rarely mean what they "should" mean. "Poor baby" in fact means, "look at me, admire me, I'm caring." "Don't get up" in fact means, "Do get up." Like the Wolf, in "Into the Woods," the characters in "Company" are sometimes in disguise. Bobby impersonates "a PERson BETter...than a zombie should." A bride-to-be is, in fact, detritus, at least on the inside: "By Monday, I'll be floating in the Hudson....with the other garbage...."

Sondheim would go on--and on--and on--in his exploration of ambivalence. In "Follies," one of the main four famously recalls standing (daily) "in the middle of the floor...not going left....not going right..." Buddy suffers from the "God, why don't you love me...Oh, you do? I'll see you later..." blues. These are the acidic words Sondheim assigns to his young dewy-eyed quartet: "Love will see us through--till something better comes along!"

And, in "A Little Night Music," "half-in-love" remains the status quo. One of the smartest characters can't quite leave her oafish husband, and her situation leads her to count, "every day, a little death." In one of my favorite moments, the daffy ingenue declares that her nemesis "would be MAD if she thinks I would be such a fool as to weekend in the country...." Then, within the space of ten seconds, she does a one-eighty. (At another point, she assures her husband, "I want to [consummate our love]." At the same time, she runs away from him; she mutters, "even now, when we're close and we touch....and you're kissing my brow....I don't mind it....too much....")

Perhaps Sondheim had briefly exhausted his interest in ambivalence when he wrote "Merrily We Roll Along." Perhaps the examination of a theme--here--seemed shallow and slick, whereas, back in the days of "Company," Sondheim seemed to be writing with fire. Or maybe critics and audiences were wrong. Maybe "Merrily" is just as strong as "Company," and there was some unfairness in "Merrily"'s reception. (People grow tired of Anita Brookner and Anne Tyler--and it's maybe not because the quality of the Brookner/Tyler work has diminished. It's maybe just because people like fads, and they flit from one thing to another. They're not particularly loyal.)

In any case, "Company" introduced me to some adult emotions. I listened in high school and didn't understand--but wanted to. How could something as apparently simple as a wedding cause a person real terror? (What was the big deal?) And why was the woman in the eleven-o-clock number so bitter?

A road map for later years. Sondheim was my teacher then; he is my teacher now. I'd love to make my way to London and spend two hours in the company of Ms. LuPone!

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