Word: scoring
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Call it only a college romance if you like but for me it was a torrid love affair. For four years you led me around--the anticipation, the sudden passes, the excitement, and then the score...
...wasn't the same team that saluted Jackie Hughes when he won the MVP of the World Arena Tournament in Colorado Springs over the holidays, that embraced Gene Purdy when he played hide and score with Northeastern goalie Ed Arrington for the overtime win in the Beanpot, that raced and checked and connected on passes for three full periods on any given night before exams...
...annoying deficiencies. But this show has much more going for it from the start than most, for it features a superb brace of songs by Stephen Sondheim, arguably the premier songwriter of his generation. The cast cannot perform all of the numbers as well as one would like--the score, as in all Sondheim shows, has some difficult harmonies and is perhaps a bit too tough for an amateur cast--but this production is strong enough to be amusing and even marginally poignant...
Everything of importance in Company emanates from the score, a barrage of acid gripes, ironic laments and anxious yearnings set to and in between the noisy rattles of urban chaos. Sondheim can pack a stanza with so much cynicism that beyond the wit and polish of the lyrics it becomes almost a cry of pain...
Most musicals, particularly those in which the score towers over the book, tend to direct themselves, given a competent cast, so it is difficult to assess what Paris Barclay has done in his Mainstage directorial debut. Many of the dialogue scenes fall flat--partly because of easily anticipated jokes and a few wooden characterizations--and by the second act the audience waits only for the next number to start. Several fine performances, though, keep this production of Company from being a skein of loosely-woven songs, the foremost among them Bonnie Lander's funny and beautifully-timed Joanne, the bitch...