Time Capsule: Various Artists, Company (Original Broadway Cast)

Every Saturday, Paste will be revisiting albums that came out before the magazine was founded in July 2002 and assessing its current cultural relevance. This week, we’re looking at Stephen Sondheim's Company (Original Broadway Cast), which follows 35-year-old bachelor Bobby and his married friends. In spite of its more dated aspects, the musical's message of pursuing love in spite of its messiness endures.

By Clare Martin | January 4, 2025 | 12:06pm

Music Reviews Stephen Sondheim

Time Capsule: Various Artists, Company (Original Broadway Cast)

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“But this is the definitive, it’s the end all and the be all of this song, and god, that could drive a person crazy,” actor and singer Susan Browning tells the cameraperson in the 1970 documentary Original Cast Album: Company. And boy was she right—I know every inhalation, every tonal shift, every aside of the original cast’s recording of Company.

Growing up, my older sister inundated me and my little sister with her favorite musicals of the moment. We had our Wicked phase, naturally, then there was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Aida, A Chorus Line, Chicago, Once Upon a Mattress—I could go on. But above all else, we were obsessed with legendary composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s works. We loved the sonic ambition of his songs, which reached great heights that would test even the most talented Broadway actors, and his clever, tongue twisty lyrics (even though, by his own admission in the previously mentioned doc, he had really fallen into lyric writing). Sondheim’s musicals were often darker than the others, proving particularly transgressive due to their subject matter. Infidelity reigns supreme in A Little Night Music (1973), a tangled psychosexual web of dalliances set in Sweden circa 1900. The title character in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) slits his customers’ throats and so they can be baked into meat pies—all in order to exact revenge after a corrupt judge rapes his wife. The fairytale characters from Into the Woods (1987) find their happy endings dramatically unravelled in the second act. A group of dejected people are told they’ll achieve the American dream if they kill the president in Assassins (2004).

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By comparison, Company (1970) may seem rather light; the musical follows a commitment-phobic single man named Bobby about to turn 35 and his array of married or coupled friends. The story is non-linear, showing snippets of the various couples’ lives and Bobby’s dating misadventures in New York City. At the time, some 55 years ago, Company broke the mold by frankly discussing divorce and the ins and outs of modern romance. Of course, nowadays this may seem a bit passé. We have polyamory, open relationships, etc.—divorce hardly seems that big a deal. However, the central thesis of Company—that human relationships are complicated and imperfect but ultimately worthwhile—remains vital.

The opening number, “Company,” introduces us to Bobby (Dean Jones) and his pals—“Those good and crazy people, my married friends”—as well as the musical’s melodic motifs. There’s tight guitar, stirring strings, shimmying percussion, bombastic horns and synth that’s so ‘70s it’s practically wearing bell bottoms, all orchestrated spectacularly by Jonathan Tunick. Sondheim praised Tunick in a 2021 Vulture interview for his “sense of drama” when it came to orchestrating for musicals, and as someone who’s listened to this album countless times but never seen the stage play, I wholeheartedly agree. Through sound alone, we get a sense of just how much joy Bobby gets from his friends, as well as how they have a tendency to be lovingly overbearing. “Company” also leans into one of the musical’s core themes: that love and spending time with others are what life’s all about.

Over several numbers, we get a peek into married life with all its ups and downs: ”The Little Things You Do Together” to make a marriage work, how being hitched makes you feel “Sorry – Grateful,” and the husbands’ jealousy of Bobby’s bachelorhood on “Have I Got A Girl for You.” But while Bobby coolly observes his married friends’ foibles, he’s far from perfect; the three women he’s dating list out his faults on the sweetly sung yet biting Anderson Sisters-style track “You Could Drive a Person Crazy.” The song contains the f-slur (it’s worth noting that both Sondheim and Company playwright George Furth were gay), reminding us that this recording is a relic of its time. In the ‘90s, Sondheim updated the lyrics to remove it—after all, as a musical about modern dating, the words should reflect contemporary mores.

You know what’s timeless, though? Cold feet. The neurotic Amy (Beth Howland) breaks down on the day of her wedding to Paul (Steve Elmore) in the patter song “Getting Married Today,” which yo-yos between Howland’s frantic delivery and hymn-like intonations from Elmore and the rest of the cast. Often considered one of Sondheim’s most challenging songs, Howland sings impressively in a mile-a-minute fashion, with barely a moment to draw breath. Sondheim’s pitch-black humor is on full display here. Amy’s not just deriding her wedding as a “prehistoric ritual”—she throws in a touch of suicidal ideation for good measure (“I telephoned my analyst about it / And he said to see him Monday / But by Monday I’ll be floating / In the Hudson with the other garbage”).

For a musical with a male protagonist, Company is full of songs, like “Getting Married Today” and “You Could Drive A Person Crazy,” that showcase the talents of the women in the show. (Of course, in the modern revival, which gender-swaps Bobby and most of the other characters, that goes by the wayside, but we’re talking about the original cast recording here.) One such track is “Another Hundred People,” a gorgeous paean to New York sung by Bobby’s paramour Marta (Pamela Myers). The quicksilver guitar here is utterly enchanting, just like the Big Apple itself. Marta shares her love of this “city of strangers,” in spite—or even because of—its “rusty fountains” and “postered walls with the crude remarks.” The romantic swell of strings amplifies Marta’s starry-eyed soliloquy, and trumpets in the background repeat the “Bobby” call-and-response notes from “Company.” In Marta’s eyes, the city is like nature: an unfeeling force unto itself, yet beautiful and magnetic at the same time. Hundreds of people may filter through New York, but that makes those unlikely connections that do happen all the more precious.

No essay about Company would complete without touching on “The Ladies Who Lunch,” sung by the late, great Elaine Stritch as Bobby’s jaded friend Joanne. The Original Cast Album: Company documentary is utterly worth a watch, but especially in the context of this song. It was the last of the numbers recorded, well after midnight (“I think we’re going to finish at roughly four in the morning. Everybody smile,” producer Thomas Z. Shepard cheerily informs them at one point). Stritch is stressed and fatigued, so after numerous takes they eventually just record the orchestra and have her come back in to do the vocals the next day. The resulting performance is even more of a triumph considering how she’d been put through the ringer; Stritch returns in the morning, refreshed and singing what would eventually become her signature number. In “The Ladies Who Lunch,” a drunken Joanne mocks all different types of women—“the girls who stay smart” and “the girls who play wife”—but like most people who insult others, it comes from a place of dissatisfaction with herself. She turns her critical eye inward as she sings: “And here’s to the girls who just watch—Aren’t they the best? When they get depressed, it’s a bottle of Scotch / Plus a little jest.” The way Strich stretches out the first word of “I’ll drink to that” as the number goes on teeters between hilarious and a cry for help. Stritch’s salty, iconic delivery of “The Ladies Who Lunch” reminds us that the best voices aren’t always the most mellifluous—they’re the ones with the most character, the most convincing emotion.

After all of his friends’ relationship troubles and his own struggles to connect, Bobby realizes at his 35th birthday party that he’s ready for a long-term relationship, even if it’s messy and terrifying. He finally dares to open up on showstopper “Being Alive,” encouraged the entire time by his pals (Howland’s line never ceases to give me chills: “Blow out the candles, Robert, and make a wish. Want something. Want something.”). Bobby wants a partner in life, even if that means they might “hold you too close” or “hurt you too deep.”

For a long time, I resented Bobby’s conclusion that “alone is alone, not alive.” Surely he was never alone—his friends were always there with him, and there’s nothing wrong with deciding not to have a significant other. However, in the context of the musical and Bobby’s experiences, it makes sense. Sondheim is not being prescriptive here, but writing something that is true to the character. The vaudevillian “Side By Side By Side / What Would We Do Without You” best highlights Bobby’s loneliness: While each of the couples tap together, Bobby has no partner to dance with. This realization that he wants to share his life with another person feels earned. Dean Jones’ rich vibrato and the timbre of his voice are so moving on “Being Alive”; this is the definitive version of the song, even though Jones had to leave the show shortly after opening night for personal reasons. “Being Alive” shines with sincerity, making it stand out all the more in a musical rife with sarcasm and acerbic humor.

It’s hard to imagine Company coming out in the current Broadway climate. Most new musicals are either of the jukebox variety (Hell’s Kitchen, Buena Vista Social Club, A Wonderful World), historically-inspired (Hamilton, Six, Suffs), or based on pre-existing IP (Death Becomes Her, Smash, Back to the Future: The Musical). An original work set in the present day is hard to come by. And while the 1970 cast recording of Company feels dated in a number of ways, from word choice to particular instruments, its message is enduring—whether applied to romantic or platonic love: “Somebody crowd me with love / Somebody force me to care / Somebody make me come through / I’ll always be there / As frightened as you / To help us survive / Being alive.”

Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s associate music editor.