Thursday, October 31, 2002
What life is all about - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER – It's a faux pas in theatre criticism to review a production having only viewed a preview. I'll break that convention here, because after taking in a preview performance of Company, playing at the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island, I've got a few thoughts. Company opens tonight, the 31st of October.
Often, the simplest things in life are the most complex. Company, at face value is simple. It's an often funny, musical comedy about relationships, love and life. Alas, if you're watching it on a strictly superficial level you will miss the deep meaning found in the subtext. There are musical idioms of course, as well as plot lines and metaphors that are easy to dissect and follow. Beneath the double entendres and the often pretty ditties, there is something deep, something remarkable. Something that is simply Stephen Sondheim at his finest.
Stephen Sondheim, in 1971 when Company debuted, was adding to string of hits that have become landmarks in the American musical theatre. He began as a lyricist to Leonard Bernstein and Jule Styne's music on West Side Story and Gypsy, respectively. He began writing both the lyrics and the music to such hits as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum, Follies, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Merrily We Roll Along etc. etc. To say Sondheim is prolific is an understatement.
On a musical level Company is his most accessible show. It does not divert too much into musical territory uncharted as his other shows do. This is a straight up musical that is accessible to any and all. To get beyond the basic simplicity though takes some smarts, or at least some careful attention. It is a show about relationships in that great metropolis of Manhattan. Sort of like Friends, but deeper. Robert is the lead character. He's a perpetual bachelor, looking for love and trying to figure out life. All of his friends around him are married. They have something he wants, or does he? He wants to be married, then again he doesn't want to make the commitment. It's an interesting show that makes the audience ever more pensive as to their own lives and their own relationships. I defy anyone taking in this show, to walk out of the theatre without considering their own lives after witnessing the colourful characters on stage bitching and boozing about life.
This production has an ambitious cast that does well in interpreting the dense Sondheim material. The songs are not easy, though they sound simple enough. Some of the performers have difficult lyrics to navigate and manoeuver, making the audience work to pick out the angst of life and really, the amazing reality of living in New York. The cast are all veterans of the local theatre scene. Some are Jessie nominees, as well as the odd winner. (The lead, who plays Bobby, won a Jessie for Forever Plaid.) It's a good production.
Company is an amazing piece of work. It's – as Freddie Gershon once wrote – "about growing up, getting older, feeling (or trying not to), loving and hating, adoring and ridiculing, sharing, surviving, feeling overwhelmed (or sometimes not feeling at all). It's about being afraid to feel even knowing that the alternative may be more frightening."
Company is about people who are searching for that special person to spend their life with. Even when they find that someone, they're still looking for the meaning of it all. That's the way life is I guess: Questions and even more questions. Only when life is examined, is it worth living. And only then do you realise what being alive is all about.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .