From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Subject: Re: "Company" in concert
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 23:29:41 GMT

Hey folks, this wasn't intended to be a duolog -- anybody can feel free
to jump in!  Arne and I share an interest in this show, but I hope
others are interested in the info too.

In article <1k1qe9INNkfv@mizar.usc.edu> 
adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:

>In article <C1FJFr.IEr@news.udel.edu> 
>conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) writes:

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

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

By the way, Alice Cannon is erroneously listed as having created the
role in the published version of the play.  I have a feeling that when
plays are printed, the production office sends along their current
credits, and unless it's a matter of a big star, discrepancies aren't
always caught in proofreading.  (Even when it's a star sometimes; the
published script of BARNUM lists Catherine Cox as having created the
role of Chairy, rather than Glenn Close -- who is clearly identifiable
in the photos in the book.)

>I lost interest in Sondheim after "Pacific
>Overtures" and haven't bothered to see anything of his on
>stage since.  

Hm.  No accounting for tastes....

More precisely: I can certainly imagine being uninterested in the
direction he pursued in the shows with Lapine (not to mention bored by
Merrily We Roll Along).  But finding Sweeney Todd uninteresting?  And
you an opera fan?  Oh well....

>Although I did like "Pacific Overtures" quite
>a lot.  I think I was the only person in the 4000-seat Dorothy
>Chandler Pavilion who *did* like it. 

Gack.  That show, in the Chandler?  The mind reels.  (Though I saw it in
NY at the Winter Garden, I think the biggest of the old-time houses.)

[Dean Jones]
>Did anyone see him in that mega-flop Christian musical he did
>on Broadway about 5 years ago?  It was called something like
>"The Light" or "Into the Light".  

Into the Light.  What an amazing occurrence that was.  As Ken Mandelbaum
aptly put it in "Not Since Carrie," the only musical ever, past or
future, about the Turin Shroud.

>Dean Jones' Bobby
>was really quite complex.  I wonder what Anthony Perkins would
>have been like.  *He* had those A flats. 

This is one of my major self-congratulatory coups.  After seeing the
show (Kert) and buying the album when it came out (Jones), and finding
the former vocally capable but not quite interesting enough, and the
latter unacceptable aurally, I started asking myself, "Well, who WOULD
be a good Bobby?"  And came up with Anthony Perkins, who was the right
age and persona, a good actor, a sufficient singer, a box office name,
and known to be a friend of Sondheim's.  Only a year later did I
discover that he had actually been the initial casting for the role!  I
still wish he'd done it.  Or that they had done a video version after it
closed, on the stage set, bringing back the original cast but
substituting him in the role.

>A friend of mine saw it on Broadway when Jane Russell was doing
>Joanne.  I can't quite imagine that.  

Yes, she was among the people who joined the show when the original cast
left (about a year after opening).  Kert stayed in at this point though
-- they must have been paying him extra to work right through to the
London opening.

Actually Jane Russell wasn't bad.  Very cool and remote, not bitchy like
Stritch but a valid interpretation, and with the needed wry edge.  Two
innovations adopted by several later Joannes (Vivian Blaine for one,
when I saw her) began with Russell.  Both were in "The Little Things You
Do Together":  She took up the very lowest notes an octave (just 2 of
them: "When two maneuver [as one}" -- low D# and C# if I recall).  And
she wouldn't use "Jesus Christ" as an oath; instead she sang "And my oh
my is it fun."  I guess Sondheim authorized the change, however
unwillingly, in order to get her.

Barbara Barrie's replacement was Cynthia O'Neal, by the way.  People may
know her from various tv appearances.

[George Maharis as Bobby]
>That sounds ghastly.  If you can't sing Bobby, you shouldn't
>do the role.  Period.  What were the producers thinking of?
>And it's not like George Maharis was any kind of box office 
>magic, either.  They'd have done better to get Sergio Franchi.

At least back then, in any given summer, there would be a few tv
ex-names that would let it be known to stock packagers that they were
"willing" to appear in a show (i.e., not getting much other work).  And
the packagers would try to figure out which names would still bring in
the $$ from the summer crowd, and what vehicle would be right for them.
Let's face it, most "stars" on that kind of circuit are slightly over
the hill, or else never quite made it.  (There are exceptions: that same
summer, the following attraction was Lansbury in Mame, with several of
the original cast.  But that's a lady who loves to perform, knows what
she does well, and can insist on good talent surrounding her.)

>I was awfully young (15, I guess)

Good lord, I'm 7 years older than you, and hitherto I've been thinking
how wise you were?....  :-)

>Company wasn't like that at all.  Well, in any case, it 
>came as a revelation to me at the time.  The only other musical
>I flipped for as I did for Company was Follies.

Same here.  The two of them seemed to portend a revolution that never
quite happened.  (Though they DID influence shows as different as Chorus
Line and Baby.)

Jon Alan Conrad
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre