From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Subject: Re: "Company" in concert
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 21:52:38 GMT

In article <1k1m5oINNi05@mizar.usc.edu> 
adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:

>Merle Louise was replaced by *her* Broadway
>replacement, Alice Cannon.  

Any reason given?  Last I heard, Merle Louise was still performing.

>According to the review in today's LA Times, Barry
>Brown, the producer of the benefit and artistic director
>of the Long Beach Civic Light Opera, is thinking of 
>repeating it in New York at the theater where "Company"
>played (the Alvin, was it?).  That undoubtedly would
>be videotaped and recorded.

I was wondering if this had occurred to anybody.  (Yes, it was the
Alvin.)  Good news; just don't let Tom Shepard in there to screw it up.

[Pamela Myers]

>I saw her at an AIDS benefit in 1990 where she sang a Brechtian,
>*chilling* version of "And the World Goes Round".  

Didn't she also do Dot in the first LA production of SUNDAY IN THE PARK
WITH GEORGE?

[Me:]
>> (Sorry, I'm not an admirer of Stritch, though I agree she
>> was classic in this role.)

>How could you *not* be an admirer of Stritch?  Sheesh.  Don't
>you even like her early stuff, like "Zip", or "The Heart Is
>Quicker than the Eye"?

Well ok, the *really* early stuff like that.  Or in Goldilocks, I guess
she's ok though still not a favorite of mine.  But from about 1970 (the
COMPANY year) on, she has struck me as a sloppy, self-indulgent
performer.  Her rendition of "Broadway Baby" in the FOLLIES concert is
its low point.

[Me on Dean Jones:]
>> I find his sound excruciating on the cast recording.  Has he improved in
>> this respect?  And can he really still get up to those A flats?

>Excruciating?  Hmmm.  I think his sound is thrilling.  Well, if
>you thought he was excruciating then, you certainly won't like
>him now because he sounds just the same, only more so.  

I guess I won't like him then.  But maybe (hoping for the best) I'd find
it easier to buy in person, and seeing him at the same time.

>And yes,
>he really still can get up to those A flats.  (Are they really
>A flats?)

Yes, two of them.  One in the middle of the opening number: "And that's
what it's all about isn't it, that's what it's really about, really
ABOWWWWTTT!!"  And the other (spelled as G sharp) at the very end of
"Being Alive":  "BEEEEEE-ing alive!!"

[Me:]
>> I have to say that I did not find the original cast *quite* beyond
>> improvement.  Larry Kert really did sing the role of Bobby more
>> easefully and expressively than Dean Jones. 

>I never could stand Larry Kert.  He always sounded like a 
>lounge singer to me.  And he was so *stiff* on stage.

He had the range for Bobby, though.  And in this show he was playing a
contemporary guy not unlike himself, so he wasn't stiff the way he
tended to be in period or "characterization" parts.

>I wish I *had* seen the original production.  I got to see
>the national tour.  I can't remember who all was in it, but
>George Chakiris was not my idea of a fabu Robert.  

Chakiris didn't stay with it long; Gary Krawford took over for him.  I
think Vivian Blaine did Joanne.  And during a run in one city (I think
Washington DC) Donna McKechnie joined them to play her original role.)

I saw the first summer stock package that made the rounds with it,
summer of 1972.  Vivian Blaine again, but the real prize (sarcasm) was
George Maharis as Bobby.  He couldn't handle the range, but they didn't
transpose it for him -- he "styled" the music in a semi-sung way.  And
he went completely up on his lyrics and the alternation of sung/spoken
sections in "Being Alive," the part where his friends say things to him
between phrases.  He was so off that finally the cast left the stage to
him, to finish the number however he could.  I would have to say that
the high point of Maharis's Bobby was the undressing-for-bed scene. :-)

>Company
>was the first musical that made sense to me as a *play*,
>rather than just a collection of songs and book.

Interesting that you should say that.  Because it was revolutionary in
being structured as, not a *play* but an alternation of songs and book,
often (deliberately) not integrated.

Jon Alan Conrad
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre