From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre
Subject: Re: "Company" in concert
Date: 25 Jan 1993 13:30:32 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <C1F133.FqJ@news.udel.edu> 
conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) writes:
> In article <1jvcbrINN7k@mizar.usc.edu> 
> adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:
>
> >The Long Beach Civic Light Opera's AIDS benefit concert
> >yesterday -- "Company" performed in concert by the original
> >cast (with the exception of the late Charles Braswell) 
>
> Who'd they get to replace him?  I read this somewhere, but can't call it
> to mind.

Charles Braswell was replaced by Stanley Grover (who took over
the part from Braswell on Broadway).  There was also one other
replacement: Merle Louise was replaced by *her* Broadway
replacement, Alice Cannon.  And the Vocal Minority quartet wasn't
made up of the original singers either.

> >-- has
> >to have been one of the most exciting nights I've ever spent
> >in the theater.  
>
> Argh.  *envy*

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.

> >The concert was hosted by Angela Lansbury and
> >narrated by George Hearn, 
>
> So what did Angela's "hosting" involve?

She came out at the beginning and said a few words (that
"Company" is "the most revered and least revived" of
musicals, for instance), and then she introduced George 
Hearn.  Then, at the end, she reminded everyone that this
was a benefit to fight AIDS (it was a benefit for the
Actors' Fund of America AIDS Initiative and St. Mary's
Comprehensive AIDS Resource Program), and she talked a
bit about the 3 men to whom the concert was dedicated
(Larry Kert, Michael Bennett, and Fritz Holt (the 
production stage manager).  And then she introduced 
George Furth, Harold Prince, and Stephen Sondheim.

> >and when it was all over Stephen
> >Sondheim, Harold Prince, and George Furth were brought on
> >stage to say a few words.  That was all exciting enough, but
> >the concert!  It was an evening of highlights.  Everyone
> >without exception sang better last night than they had on the
> >original cast album.  
>
> That's amazing right there.  I was sure they'd have to transpose the
> whole show down a perfect fifth to accommodate everyone's voice now
> (let's face it, few of them save Teri Ralston and maybe Pamela Myers
> were primarily vocalists, and some sound to be pushing their limits on
> the cast recording).

Barbara Barrie sounds exactly the same.  Elaine Stritch is
having problems on the bottom, rather than the top.  (Merman
had the same problem when she got old.)  The men sound 
exactly the same too, although Steve Elmore ("Today Is for
Amy") sounds more like a bargain basement bar mitzvah tenor
know than he did then.  Pamela Myers sounds much better now
than she did 23 years ago, and Teri Ralston sounds like a 
dramatic soprano these days.  Dean Jones really doesn't
sound all that different.  Oh, but he used falsetto on a couple
of piano notes in "Barcelona", and the effect was hauntingly
beautiful.

> >....And that was
> >followed by Pamela Myers' "Another Hundred People".  Myers
> >sounds better now than ever before, and she's rethought the
> >song a bit and was absolutely devestating.  
>
> She turned up on one of those Broadway Tributes on PBS a few years back
> (to do You Could Drive a Person Crazy with the other two), and I was
> stunned by her improved appearance and sound.  She's made good use of
> the years since Company, whatever she's been doing.

I saw her at an AIDS benefit in 1990 where she sang a Brechtian,
*chilling* version of "And the World Goes Round".  (It was a 
tribute to Kander and Ebb, and Susan Johnson came out of 
retirement to sing "Married".  She was *stunning*.  This year's
benefit, a tribute to Gershwin, will also have Susan Johnson
and Pamela Myers, and Shirley Jones, Gogi Grant, and about 40
other people.)

> >....  And then there was Stritch singing "The Ladies Who
> >Lunch".  I was worried that she would go overboard and do her
> >shtik, but she didn't.  It was a superbly acted -- and
> >superbly *sung* -- version of the song.  (Although she dropped
> >a beat near the end, 
>
> Of course.  (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"?

> >the gifted conducter (John McDaniel)
> >managed, somehow, to get the orchestra -- and they used the
> >original orchestrations, by the way -- back into synch with
> >Stritch almost instantly.  And then there was Dean Jones'
> >"Being Alive".  No one else comes close to Jones on "Being
> >Alive", and his performance of it last night was electrifying. 
>
> 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.  And yes,
he really still can get up to those A flats.  (Are they really
A flats?)

> >I'm sorry this event was left to Long Beach to put on, for if
> >it had been done in New York it would have been videotaped
> >and, no doubt, recorded.  But I don't imagine I'll soon forget
> >how fabulous it all was.
>
> It'll be all the more of a feather in your cap -- so many of the
> ShowFreaks(TM) were on the wrong coast to attend this.  Still, I bet
> there will be a brisk trade in bootleg audio tapes, one way or another.

Well, Barry Brown *is* thinking of doing it again, this
time in New York.

> 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.

> And good as Beth Howland
> was, her replacement after a year, Marian Hailey (moviegoers may
> remember her for her scenes with Bob Dishy in the movie "Lovers and
> Other Strangers"), actually did the whole song as written (including the
> little notes that are customarily omitted to snatch a breath), with the
> tune and the words both audible.

Beth Howland is not one of my favorites by a long shot,
but she was absolutely superb on Saturday night in Long
Beach.  There was none of that gasping for breath that
mars her performance of it on the original cast album,
and she didn't lose her place as she seems to do every
other time I've heard her perform the song.

> But let me not seem to carp.  This was one of the most talented casts
> ever assembled for a musical,

And they've still got it in them.  

> and the show itself is one of the ones
> that changed the form.  In 1970 I was sure the musical was running out
> of steam (the 60s had been a pretty uneventful decade in that respect),
> and then Company came along and showed us that there were whole areas of
> possbility still to explore, and exciting music still to be written.
> I'm grateful to have seen the original production.

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

Arne

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