Company is a 1970
musical comedy with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original
production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six.
Originally titled Threes, its plot revolves around Bobby (a single man
unable to commit fully to a steady relationship, let alone marriage), the five
married couples who are his best friends, and his three girlfriends. Unlike
most book musicals, which follow a clearly delineated plot, Company is a
concept musical composed of short vignettes, presented in no particular
chronological order, linked by a celebration for Bobby's 35th birthday. Company
was among the first musicals to deal with adult themes and relationships. The
theme is New York marriages with a central character to examine those
marriages.
Act I
Robert is a well-liked single man living in New York City, whose friends
are all married or engaged couples: Joanne and Larry, Peter and Susan, Harry
and Sarah, David and Jenny, and Paul and Amy. It is Robert's 35th birthday and
the couples have gathered to throw him a surprise party. When Robert fails to
blow out any candles on his birthday cake, the couples promise him that his
birthday wish will still come true, though he has wished for nothing, since his
friends are all that he needs ("Company"). What follows is a series
of disconnected vignettes in no apparent chronological order, each featuring
Robert during a visit with one of the couples or alone with a girlfriend. The
first of these features Robert visiting Sarah, a foodie supposedly now dieting,
and her husband Harry, an alcohol abuser supposedly now on the wagon. Sarah and
Harry taunt each other on their vices, escalating toward karate-like fighting
and thrashing that may or may not be playful. The caustic Joanne, the oldest,
most cynical, and most-oft divorced of Robert's friends, comments sarcastically
to the audience that it is "The Little Things You Do Together" that
make a marriage work. Harry then explains, and the other married men concur,
that you are always "Sorry-Grateful" about getting married, and that
marriage changes both everything and nothing about the way you live.
Robert is next with Peter and Susan, on their apartment terrace. Peter is
Ivy League, and Susan is a southern belle; the two seem to be a perfect couple,
yet they surprise Robert with the news of their upcoming divorce. At the home
of the uptight Jenny and chic David, Robert has brought along some marijuana
that they share. The couple turns to grilling Robert on why he has not yet
gotten married. Robert claims he is not against the notion, but three women he
is currently fooling around with—Kathy, Marta, and April—appear and proceed,
Andrews Sisters-style, to chastise Robert for his reluctance to being committed
("You Could Drive a Person Crazy"). David tries to tell Robert
privately that Jenny didn't like the marijuana, after she asks for another
joint. "I married a square," he reminds his wife, demanding she bring
him food.
All of Robert's male friends are deeply envious about his commitment-free
status, and each has found someone they find perfect for Robert ("Have I
Got a Girl For You"), but Robert is waiting for someone who merges the
best features of all his married female friends ("Someone is
Waiting"). Robert meets his three girlfriends in a small park on three
separate occasions as Marta sings of the city: crowded, dirty, uncaring, yet
somehow wonderful ("Another Hundred People"). Robert first gets to
know April, a slow-witted airline flight attendant. Robert then spends time
with Kathy; they had dated previously and both admit that they had each
secretly considered marrying the other. They laugh at this coincidence before
Robert suddenly considers the idea seriously; however Kathy reveals that she is
leaving for Cape Cod with a new fiancé. Finally, Robert meets with Marta; she
loves New York, and babbles on about topics as diverse as true sophistication,
the difference between uptown and downtown New York, and how you can always
tell a New Yorker by his or her ass. Robert is left stunned.
The scene turns to the day of Amy and Paul's wedding; they have lived
together for years, but are only now getting married. Amy is in an overwhelming
state of panic and, as the upbeat Paul harmonizes rapturously, Amy patters an
impressive list of reasons why she is not "Getting Married
Today." Robert, the best man, and Paul watch as she complains and
self-destructs over every petty thing she can possibly think of and finally
just calls off the wedding explicitly. Paul dejectedly storms out into the rain
and Robert tries to comfort Amy, but emotionally winds up offering an impromptu
proposal to her himself. His words jolt Amy back into reality, and with the
parting words "you need to marry some body, not just some body,"
she runs out after Paul, at last ready to marry him. The setting returns to the
scene of the birthday party, where Robert is given his cake and tries to blow
out the candles again. He wishes for something this time, someone to
"Marry Me a Little."
Act II
The birthday party scene is reset, and Robert goes to blow out his candles.
This time, he gets them about half out, and the rest have to help him. The
couples share their views on Robert with each other, comments which range from
complimentary to unflattering, as Robert reflects on being the third wheel
("Side By Side By Side"), soon followed by the up-tempo paean to
Robert's role as the perfect friend ("What Would We Do Without
You?"). In a dance break in the middle of the number (or, in the case of
the 2006 Broadway revival, in a musical solo section), each man (or actually
four of them, as there's not music for a fifth) in turn does a dance step (or,
in the revival, plays a solo on his instrument), answered by his wife. Then
Robert likewise does a step (or, in the case of the 2006 Broadway revival,
plays two bad notes on a kazoo), but he has no partner to answer it.
Robert brings April to his apartment for a nightcap after a date. She
marvels ad nauseam at how homey his place is, and he casually leads her
to the bed, sitting next to her on it and working on getting her into it. She
earnestly tells him of an experience from her past, involving the death of a
butterfly; he counters with a bizarre remembrance of his own, obviously
fabricated, and designed to put her in the mood to succumb to seduction.
Meanwhile, the married women worry about Robert's single and lonesome status
(as they see it), and particularly about the unsuitable qualities they find in
the women he does date, asking, "Isn't she a little bit, well--Dumb?
Tacky? Vulgar? Old? Tall? Aggressive? Where is she from?...She's tall enough to
be your mother...." ("Poor Baby"). When the inevitable sex
happens, we hear Robert's and April's thoughts, interspersed with music that
expresses and mirrors their increasing excitement. This music often (as in the
original Broadway production) accompanies a solo dance by Kathy, conveying the
emotions and dynamics of making love; it has also been staged as a pas de deux,
a group number, or been cut altogether in various productions
("Tick-Tock").[4] The next morning, April rises early, to
report for duty aboard a flight to "Barcelona." Robert tries to get
her to stay, at first wholeheartedly, parrying her apologetic protestations
that she can't, with playful begging and insistence. As April continues to
reluctantly resist his entreaties, and sleepiness retakes him, Bobby seems to
lose conviction, agreeing that she should go; that change apparently
gets to her, and she joyfully declares that she will stay, after all. This takes
Robert by surprise, and his astonished, plaintive "Oh, God!" is
suffused not with triumph, nor even ambivalence, but with evident fear and
regret.
In the following scene, Robert takes Marta to visit Peter and Susan, on
their terrace. Apparently, Peter flew to Mexico to get the divorce, but he
phoned Susan and she joined him there for a vacation. Bizarrely, they are still
living together, claiming they have too many responsibilities to actually leave
each other's lives, and that their relationship has actually been strengthened
by the divorce. Susan takes Marta inside to make lunch, and Peter asks Robert
if he has ever had a homosexual experience. They both admit they have, and
Peter hints at the possibility that he and Robert could have such an encounter,
but Robert uncomfortably laughs the conversation off as a joke just as the
women return.
Joanne and Larry take Robert out to a nightclub, where Larry dances, and
Joanne and Robert sit watching, getting thoroughly drunk. She blames Robert for
always being an outsider, only watching life rather than living it, and also
persists in berating Larry. She raises her glass in a mocking toast to
"The Ladies Who Lunch", passing judgment on various types of rich,
middle-aged women wasting their lives away with mostly meaningless activities.
Her harshest criticism is reserved for those, like herself, who "just
watch," and she concludes with the observation that all these ladies are
bound together by a terror that comes with the knowledge that "everybody
dies." Larry returns from the dance floor, taking Joanne's drunken rant
without complaint and explains to Robert that he still loves her dearly. When
Larry leaves to pay the check, Joanne bluntly invites Robert to begin an affair
with her, assuring him that she will "take care of him." The reply
this elicits from him, "But who will I take care of?" seems to
surprise him, and to strike Joanne as a profound breakthrough on his part,
"...a door opening that's been stuck for a long time." Robert insists
it's not, that he's studied and been open to marriages and commitment, but
questions "What do you get?" Upon Larry's return, Robert asks again,
angrily, "What do you get?" Joanne declares, with some satisfaction,
"I just did someone a big favor." She and Larry go home, leaving Robert
lost in frustrated contemplation.
The couples' recurrent musical motif begins yet again, with all of them
focused anew on their "Bobby Bubbi," "Robert darling,"
"Bobby baby," and again inviting him to "Drop by
anytime...." Rather than the cheery, indulgent tone he'd responded with in
earlier scenes, Robert suddenly, desperately, shouts "STOP!" In their
stunned silence, he challenges them with quiet intensity: "What do you
get?" The music to "Being Alive" begins, and he sings, openly
enumerating the many traps and dangers he perceives in marriage; speaking their
disagreements, his friends counter his ideas, one by one, encouraging him to
dare to try for love and commitment. Finally, Bobby's words change, expressing
a desire, increasing in urgency, for loving intimacy, even with all its
problems, and the wish to meet someone with whom to face the challenge of
"Being Alive." The opening party resets a final time; Robert's
friends have waited two hours, with still no sign of him. At last, they all
prepare to leave, expressing a new hopefulness about their absent friend's
chances for loving fulfillment, and wishing him a happy birthday, wherever he
may be, as they leave. Robert then appears alone, smiles, and blows out his
candles.
