Favourite song from Stephen Sondheim's Company

One of my favorite Sondheim's. "The Ladies Who Lunch" is the obvious one, but I need to think for a bit. I really like "Getting Married Today" too.

I've never heard all of "Company." I could do a "Follies" poll.

The 2006 Broadway revival is on youtube here
I think the soundtrack album of this is the best after the orginal.

Raul Esparza is so perfect in this.

Favourite Song from Stephen Sondheim's Company: The Fall 2013 GAYLXORS Thread

Broadway revival is also on Netflix instant streaming (or at least, it used to be) and is well worth the watch.

"another hundred people"!

between the 2006 "company" and the 2005 "sweeney todd," that was an amazing time for sondheim revivals on broadway.

Both John Doyle directing?

Sorry-Grateful. it has such a melancholy melody, love the lyrics.

obv "Being Alive" is the gravitas ballad but I mean "Sorry-Grateful" is what I come back to.

I think I'd pick Another Hundred People as my favourite, especially Pamela Myers' version from the original cast recording... I'm not so keen on any of the versions I've heard sung by other people, they all seem go kind of shrill on the 'Did you get my message/'Cause I looked in Vain' part. I think I read somewhere that Sondheim wrote the song specifically for Myers?
Also, did young Pamela Myers look a lot like Lena Dunham, or are these two photos misleading?

http://www.masterworksbroadway.com/sites/broadwaymw/files/imagecache/preview/photos/MYERS_Pamela_phB.jpg

http://magazine.uc.edu/famousalumni/broadway/pam_myers/_jcr_content/MainContent/textimage_1/image.img.jpg/1320877143362.jpg

Both John Doyle directing?

yes, and both fantastic.

"getting married today" I think

I've only heard the versions of these on Side by Side by Sondheim - are they the originals or different?

I think Side by Side by Sondheim combines some of the songs from Company into a medley? The poll was not meant to be for any particular recording of Company, though, just favourite songs.

"Getting Married Today" is some insane diction calisthenics

“Why / Watch me die / Like Eliza on the ice? / Look, perhaps / I’ll collapse, / in the apse / right before you all.” Though the Uncle Tom’s Cabin reference may fly by too quickly, and the word apse might cause confusion or be mistaken for “abs,” Sondheim uses a catalog of references to literature to terrific effect in A Little Night Music.

Why would you mistake it for abs? How can you collapse in the abs?

I'd never seen this before today, but there's a fantastic documentary about the recording of the original cast recording of Company here on youtube

I've only heard the versions of these on Side by Side by Sondheim - are they the originals or different?

those are all different versions, performed anew for the "side by side" revue.

Has anyone here ever been in a production of Company?

I've always meant to get into Company. I think I listened to the soundtrack on Spotify about a year ago, but I don't remember much of it. I'm tempted to vote for "Side by Side by Side," but only since I sang it as part of a performance during college-orientation week.

What's the one with "Bobby, come on over for dinner" -- the title track?

My Sondheim jam is A Little Night Music, btw.

i love this musical. i love almost all sondheim stuff actually. we should poll all his plays.

i pretty much rate it as
Being Alive > Sorry-Grateful > The Ladies Who Lunch > Getting Married Today > You Could Drive a Person Crazy > The Little Things You Do Together > Someone is Waiting > Side by Side by Side > Have I Got a Girl For You > Company > Another Hundred People > Barcelona > Poor Baby > Tick-Tock > Marry Me a Little

blow out the candles and make a wish. want something. want something.

Oh this is impossible. "Another Hundred People," I guess, but "Sorry-Grateful" is one of the most accurate and harshest songs about marriage ever. "Little Things" is magnificent wordplay, and so on. Only song I don't care for is "Poor Baby."

even tho i voted being alive i'm happy sorry-grateful is getting a lot of love. always felt really insightful to me.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://www.sondheim.com/discussions/miller/past/in_gay_company.html

I thought this was interesting

Do you think Company has a 'gay aesthetic', in the sense that it is an outsider's perspective on hetro marriage? I was thinking that the lyrics to What Would We Do Without You? could almost be about someone chafing at a constricting role as a neutered'gay best friend':
What would we do without you?
How would we ever get through?
Who sends anniversary wishes?
Who helps with the dishes
And never says boo?
Who changes subjects on cue?
Who cheers us up when we're blue?
Who is a flirt, but never a threat,
Reminds us of our birthdays which we always forget?

Maybe this is only because I know Sondheim is gay, and this is reductive way to look at it, idk

a version w/ NPH, jon cryer + steven colbert is showing on pbs right now. i didn't even know such a thing existed

I believe they are doing a reconfigured-as-gay production somewhere soon

colbert can't really sing. i don't remember a lot of the non-music parts (i most recently watched it w/ raul esparza). i wonder if it's new material or i just forget.

Just watched this. Oh hey there's a Sondheim musical that is actually about my life? Yikes!

oklahoma is on great performances tnite! yay pbs

some genius has just put Sondheim's 'Inside The Actor's Studio' up on youtube. a thing of beauty and a joy forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRCzBeLzNPs

can't believe Ladies Who Lunch got 0 votes -- that is the best.

yes i was just marveling over the same thing. def deserved some votes. above i rated it as the 3rd best from the musical.

don't understand what ppl see in another hundred people which is okay but not imo near the heights of company

Ladies who Lunch and Getting Married Today are the best two imo

<3

I highly recommend getting stoned and listening to the original broadway cast recording of company on headphones. and then doing the same with pacific overtures...

big news

https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/company-katrina-lenk-patti-lupone_89649.html

I just watched the cast recording documentary by Pennebaker, which just hit the Criterion Channel. Why did they have to do the whole thing in one night? Did Steve lose a bet?

IIRC, a lot of studio cast albums are done that way on a day/night the show is black early in the run.

well they had to get Stritch to come back anyway in the end

I've played for a few revues that did songs from the show, but my first time actually seeing it staged was last year, when a friend of mine played April in a community production at the Winnipesaukee Playhouse in New Hampshire. For reasons that I don't fully understand (although I have some suspicions), the music was reduced to piano two hands, performed on a concert grand on stage. They also made Amy and Paul a gay couple, and the guy playing Amy/Jamie (also a friend of mine) couldn't sing, but got the manic energy down perfectly.

I love the pennebaker film and I watch this so frequently on youtube, or at least the highlights. the original cast recording is definitely the best version. Another Hundred People/You could drive a person crazy/Ladies who lunch all definitive versions. The deranged andrews sisters harmonies on you could drive a person crazy should literally pierce your eardrums and this is the only version that really goes for that (the 1996 London version gives pretty good as well) by contrast, Another Hundred people is so demanding and no other singer I know of has managed to avoid sounding too shrieking or strident or to balance the pathos, cynicism and romanticism in the lyrics - most settle for one register and battle through it. The film really gets across something very particular about the musical - its damp griminess; ugly, overdecorated park avenue apartments, synthetic fibres, midtown pianobars. The apalling makeup, the producer with the neckerchief. Sondheim is not at all handsome (I think he looks good in photographs from the period) and seems really slimey and imperious but also derangedly exacting and so identified with Bobby and Dean jones a brilliantly empty realisation of the character - but imagine anthony perkins (who was originally cast but dropped out during rehearsals), who I think could have brought out a nastiness in the character that the most anodyne productions gloss over. Nastiness is key to sondheim in general and Company in particular.

omg, how did I miss this? This is one of my favorite musicals!

"Being Alive" is too easy a choice, it's a song that speaks to me personally enough that I've performed it in public multiple times, but...I generally don't like to listen to it outside the show, because it's much more stirring when you get through the 2 hours of build-up to it.

I think "Sorry-Grateful" is my fav. love the melody and the lyrics.

I want to be in this when theater resumes. probably not as Bobby, that's already (kind of) my name and also it'll be kind of a mid-life crisis role.

So you can :D
thanks for the heads up!

there's a version with the commentary too

Totally did a double take when George Furth showed up in the real doc and thought I was back in parody land.

Beth Howland was married to another Company original cast member when she died.

Seems like there was the twenty-year-old commentary by D.A. Pennebaker, Harold Prince and Elaine Prince and there might be a new Sondheim commentary on the latest physical release, I think I read.

Ah, Ned posted about that upthread.

Does anybody know what the instrument at the start of 'Another Hundred People' is?

It's some sort of electro-mechanical organ/keyboard instrument that I recognise from TV and Film themes of the same period, sort like a short duration organ meets celeste with a bit of harpsichord.

Can be seen/heard at 17:38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IU80Ium0dM

I believe it's an RMI Electra-piano:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMI9brWq_kw

Also used wonderfully on Miles Davis's "Mademoiselle Mabry"

Yes, I read a few things about that over the weekend. The Co-op team sought to duplicate that sound and may have tracked down one of those instruments, or perhaps got a sample patch of one at least.

There was the Electra-piano and also its older brother, the cleverly named Rock-Si-Chord.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mount_Instruments

Okay, so does anyone know what other famous (or well-known, at least) TV or Film theme uses it prominently? It's making me a bit crazy.

I originally thought it was one of these - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpraz85asA

Tempted to start referring to one poster as "Bobby Bubi" but am resisting the govnaming instinct for now.

Also seeing some intriguing stuff about Sweeney Todd and the "Herrmann chord."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFaWBmVrCAM

Good stuff, thanks.

This thread is colliding with In every 70s US home ever for a serious time instability/anomaly.

And the brown and the beige and the brown and the beige and the brown ...

very tied with follies for best sondheim musical and obviously both drenched in 70s divorce misery and paranoia

Captain Fantastic and the Brown and Beige Cowboy.

I did wonder about the value of a thread that itemised the tropes, themes, and details of that upper-middle-class 70s NYC diaspora, or I could just leaf through my New Yorker Magazine coffee table book.

!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrRDrz53Q1E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTsuK_HGFJg

I liked the joke at Strich's expense.

Still down the Company rabbit hole this week, Seth Rudetsky's deconstruction videos are addicting.

In one he goes into great detail about the title song's big 'We Loooooooooooooove You' bit and how Elaine boldly sings a half step flat and then just ducks out a full 10 seconds before everyone else, gloriously dgaf and cannot be unheard.

I was wondering if Joni Mitchell was a fan of SS, there are so many parallels there between Company and 'The Hissing of Summer Lawns'

RIP

rip :(

Damn :(

I chose, and my world was shaken
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken
The choosing was not

You have to move on

RIP

A legend, my favorite musical composer :(

Any film list with both Elephant and The Elephant Man on it is OK by me

About 15 years ago, Stephen Sondheim was asked by The Sondheim Review to make a list of his favorite movies. It's a really fascinating and eclectic list - I don't think I've even seen half of them - but a lot of my favorite films are on there too. pic.twitter.com/hV7dVUqu1e

— Jeremy Fassler (@J_fassler) November 27, 2021

Elephant? Alan Clarke?

The other one

Gus Van Sant school shooting movie.

(which is a more-or-less-remake of the Clarke film)

This is a pretty fascinating detail - Sondheim almost quit musicals in 1981 to work on video games instead, and was a big fan of Myst

This was real. Steve loved video games and took them seriously as an art form. Especially adventure games—an extension of his love of math and puzzles and, later on, escape rooms, which he and his partner Jeff really crushed. We talked about his love of Myst a lot over the years. https://t.co/fJMUH5nxx4

— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) November 27, 2021

it is super interesting to me that ILM is utterly disengaged from the death of this man…just a few posts since his universally lamented passing…
but maybe someone steeped in broadway/musical theatre, which I performed in as a kid but foreswore for the kinds of music that ILM concerns itself with, and which I have since strongly disliked, can help me out here…my impression is that Sondheim changed broadway/musical theatre, what, several times over? Who else pushed musical theatre forward during his lifetime? myself and every other ILMnik can go all day long talking about hundreds of artists who changed R&B, rock and roll, country, hip hop, electronic music and on and on… but I struggle to name Sondheim's artistic peers…
like, Lloyd Webber is younger, but did he introduce formal innovations? I am wondering if this paucity could be down to musical theatre being possibly more risk averse than almost any other american, or rather, popular idiom? Like, almost any other idiom has relatively infinite amounts of flexibility…for musical theatre to succeed and to later enter the popular consciousness over the past 50 years, there has to be such ironclad fealty to formula as to make the pop craftsmanship that ILMniks tend to valorize seem like alvin Lucier or some shit…
I so dislike broadway that hamilton annoys the shit out of me…I do think that LMN deserves credit for bringing something new to musical theatre (and is he the first one to do so since Sondheim?) but I can't stand the goddamn thing…

FWIW, Alex in Montreal is a Sondheim superfan (as I've discovered via Twitter), but he hasn't posted on ILM over a year.

I'd guess Jonathan Larson would be considered influential between Sondheim and LMM.

my partner has been super down about this

the video game thing is a shock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf_I_oHHc4I

definitely thinking of heading to NYC in 2022 for the gender-swapped version with Katrina Lenk - she was marvelous in The Band's Visit

― Feta Van Cheese (Neanderthal)

I saw this last night. Will maybe write a longer post about it soon but Katrina Lenk was indeed magnificent and her interpretation of 'Being Alive' had me weeping uncontrollably. The gender reversals mostly felt pretty seamless during the show. It wasn't until i got home listened to the original cast recording that i realized how *necessary* it is to present the show this way.

Patti Lupone was great on 'The Little Things' but her 'Ladies who Lunch' wasn't nearly grizzled enough, Elaine Stritch still defines that role for me.

https://playbill.com/article/hours-of-unseen-sondheim-interviews-released-by-library-of-congress

Cool. I just found out about this weird unproduced Sondheim project, a musical version of The Jet-Propelled Couch.

i can't find a better thread to update about this, but the current revival of into the woods is utterly dope

Wrong thread perhaps but did anyone see the version of Follies at the National in London? It played also in UK cinemas as a live broadcast and was streaming supposedly and may well be again (I saw an ad somewhere or other..). Damn I’d really love to see it.

Belatedly, I think the right song won this one

It really did.

I had the Blu-Ray of the documentary in my hand today, gonna give it another watch this week.

Some of you may know this but there's an incredibly comprehensive (and really quite entertaining) Sondheim podcast called 'Putting It Together', in which they go through *every song* one by one for at least an hour, plus adjacent interviews, it's kinda amazing.

Here is the start of the season they dedicated to Company

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/company-overture-company-with-eric-matthew-richardson/id1435108436?i=1000459363920

This is the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life pic.twitter.com/FQiXwYAfeY

— the tweeter fka LuxuryTrash™ (@2trash4luxury) November 18, 2022

Final show (the Bunuel musical) happening after all:

https://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/sondheim-here-we-are-premiere_94978.html