compant Flashcards
Hammerstein teaches Sondheim
- Turn a play you admire into a musical: Beggar on Horseback by
George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly (All That Glitters) - Turn a flawed play into a musical: High Tor by Maxwell Anderson
- Adapt a short story or novel (a non-theatrical form) for the
musical stage: Mary Poppins, a series of children’s books by P. L.
Travers - Write an original musical: Climb High
Sondheim in the 1960s
Hammerstein dies
* Sondheim starts psychoanalysis
* A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
(music + lyrics)
* Anyone Can Whistle (music + lyrics)
* Do I Hear a Waltz? (lyrics only)
* Evening Primrose (music + lyrics, TV musical)
* A Pray by Blecht (lyrics only, abandoned)
Harold Prince in the 1960s
What do we already know about
Prince?
* Forum (producer)
* She Loves Me (producer-director)
* Fiddler on the Roof (prod.)
* Flora, the Red Menace (prod.)
* It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s
Superman (prod.-dir.)
* Cabaret (prod.-dir.)
* Zorba (prod.-dir.)
Premise and characters company
Sondheim on the premise of Company: “A man with no emotional
commitments reassesses his life on his 35th birthday by reviewing
his relationships with his married acquaintances and his
girlfriends. That is the entire plot.”
* Robert, a bachelor, living in present-day (ca. 1970) Manhattan
* Robert’s circle of friends includes 5 couples:
* Sarah and Harry, Susan and Peter, Jenny and David, Amy and Paul,
Joanne and Larry
* Robert’s 3 girlfriends:
* Kathy, Marta, and April
* There are 4 more singers, dubbed “the vocal minority,” who sing
from the pit
Working titles, birthday
parties..
Company was first called “Threes.” Why is “Company” a
better title?
* See playbill for trios and “Company”
* How is Company framed?
* Both acts are bookended by birthday parties for
Robert
* Use MacLib to stream the 2011 filmed concert staging
starring Neil Patrick Harris and directed by Lonny Price.
Watch the establishing number, “Company” (3:50-
11:40)
compant sonheim role
Composer-lyricist
company Bookwriter
goerge furth
Source comapany
One-act plays by Furth
compant Producer-director:
harold prince
Choreographer company
Michael Bennett
yr comapny
1970
Scenic designer: company
Boris Aronson
Billing company
Musical comedy;
also considered a
concept musical
company reception
Tony Awards: 14 nominations, 6 wins, including Best
Musical, Score, and Lyrics
Revivals: 3 Broadway revivals: 1995 (60p.), 2006
(246p.), 2020/21 (265p.)
Films: Concert staging (2011)
From Robert to Bobbie
The 2018-19 West End gender-
flipping revival directed by Marianne
Elliott cast Rosalie Craig as Bobbie.
Publications of revised script and
lyrics followed
* The West End production transferred
to Broadway where previews began
in March 2020; the pandemic
interrupted the production. In 2021,
the revival resumed and won the
Tony for Best Revival of a Musical
How did Company depart from
conventions?
No plot
* Sondheim: “Up until Company, most musicals, if not
all musicals, had plots. Up until Company, I thought
that musicals had to have very strong plots. One of
the things that fascinated me about the challenge of
the show was to see if a musical could be done
without one…The problem to find the form for it.”
No love story
* No villain
* No resolution or happy ending
* Little dance
metaphor company
Like Love Life and Cabaret, Company is a concept
musical tied together by an underlying metaphor
* Prince has explained that he used Manhattan as a
metaphor for modern marriage. Manhattan may sound
like a desirable place to live but Company portrays the
big city as a stark, cold, sterile environment where its
inhabitants feel isolated, lonely, and unhappy. The
creators of Company suggest that marriage is no
different; they posit that if you don’t want to be lonely,
don’t get married…
set design company
How did Aronson
capture the
metaphor visually
with his set
designs?
Aronson
created
space for
onstage
observers,
which
Prince
continued
to use after
Cabaret
Musical examples company
- “The Little Things You Do Together” as a comment
song - “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” as a comment song
and as pastiche - “Getting Married Today” as pastiche and as a
counterpoint song - “The Ladies Who Lunch” and 5. “Being Alive” as parts
of an 11 o’clock complex and also “I am/want” songs
The Little Things You Do
Together”
Sung by Joanne while Robert visits
Sarah and Harry
* Watch the 2011 staging (Act 1, scene
2 at 12:46-26:30)
* Note the fractured structure: dialogue
without adhesive underscoring
interrupts the number several times
* Where is Joanne?
* What is the song type?
What is pastiche?
Pastiche is an imitation of a familiar musical or textual
style with specific associations and contexts. Many
Broadway composers use pastiche in their scores to
evoke a certain setting or era
How does Sondheim use
pastiche?
Sondheim uses pastiche provocatively as commentary
and characterization. He often imitates a recognizable
musical style to set up expectations that can then be
twisted into unconventional versions, acquiring new
meaning in contrast with the original frame of reference
* His pastiche invites listeners to re-hear the music as a
borrowed object, as though framed between quotation
marks
* This approach to using pastiche can have a
metadramatic effect: the songs encourage listeners
to adopt a distanced perspective and stick out from the
rest of the score, as another ex. of interruption
You Could Drive a Person
Crazy”
Robert visits Jenny and David, and their
dialogue is interrupted by April, Kathy, and
Marta who pastiche the Andrews Sisters
(top), a close harmony trio popular in the
1920s-1960s. Listen to
“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” (1941)
* Watch documentary, Company: Original
Cast Album by D.A. Pennebaker (stream
with MacLib at 4:57-11:00)
The popularity of the Andrews Sisters has endured:
* Bette Midler (1973)
* Christina Aguilera (2006)
* Why do you think Sondheim evoked the Andrews Sisters
for Robert’s girlfriends?
* What is the song type for “You Could Drive a Person
Crazy”?
Getting Married Today”
Robert spends time with Amy and Paul on the morning of their
wedding
* Watch the 2011 concert staging (1:03:40-1:08:00)
* This trio is also a pastiche song. This time, Sondheim imitates
and combines 3 different musical styles:
1. Jenny as the mediocre church wedding singer
2. Paul as the enamored juvenile singing a ballad in the style
of West Side Story, “Maria” or Lerner and Loewe,
My Fair Lady, “On The Street Where You Live” (ff to 1:10)
3. Amy as the frantic bride singing a patter song like
Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance
, “Major-General’s Song” (FF 0:30)
