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Couple and Family Psychoanalysis 10(1) 115–120 (2020)

ARTS REVIEWS

Company, by and George Furth, directed by Marianne Elliott, and starring Rosalie Craig Reviewed by Philip A. Cowan, Carolyn Pape Cowan, Christopher Clulow, and Pamela Clulow

On 4 December, 2018, two long-married couples went to see Stephen Sondheim’s musical comedy about marriage, , performed at London’s . Chris and Pamela had seen the original production back in the 1970s when it was first produced in London, and still have the original cast recording on LP picked up back then at the sale price of 50 pence. Phil and Carolyn saw a version by the Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley California (at the time a hotbed of the sexual revolution) around the same period of time. So now, about four decades later, with us four decades older, we enjoyed the evening so much we decided to write about it together. We were very aware that since the premiere in 1970, the social context of marriage has undergone a remarkable shift, which is graphically illustrated by changes from the original version to the current one. In 1970, Company was about unmarried Bobby on his thirty-fifth birthday, thinking about and observing his close friends—five heterosexual married or about-to-be married White couples. In 2018, the version of Company we saw features Bobbie on her thirty-fifth birthday, thinking about and observing her close friends—five married or about-to-be married couples, including one mixed race African–American/White couple, and one gay male couple on their wedding day. Despite cultural shifts in attitudes about diversity (by many but not all), there is a fundamental point made by Sondheim’s music and lyrics, and in the book by George Furth, almost identical in both versions: Sondheim wrote in a collection of all his lyrics along with his acerbic comments about his own shows, that years after writing Company, he read Chekov’s quote: “If you’re afraid of loneliness, don’t marry”—which Sondheim believed summed up the essence of his own message. Even back then, Sondheim was struggling with his own ambivalence as well as the jaundiced view of marriage emerging from the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In his collected lyrics in the book (2010), he describes his original ending of the song Happily Ever After (ironic):

What do you get? One day of grateful for six of regret With someone to hold you too close Someone to hurt you too deep Someone to bore you to death Happily ever after

Contact: Christopher Clulow, email: [email protected] 12,13-ARTS REVIEWS_CAFP_v10.qxp 25/02/2020 09:22 Page 116

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He then wrote a new ending in which Bobby (and now Bobbie) sings some of the same lyrics but winds up with:

Somebody crowd me with love Somebody force me to care, Somebody let me come through I’ll always be there As frightened as you To help us survive Being alive!

Ambivalence in both versions, but somehow a little more optimism in this later message—very welcome to the two couples surviving the years in between. Alongside ambivalence about marriage the institution—portrayed as constraining the freedom of men (Bobby) in the 1970s version and women (Bobbie) in the 2018 production—is the more enduring relationship theme of ambivalence towards any intimate involvement with one other person. In psychoanalytical terms this might be described as the ubiquitous version of the “core complex” (Glasser, 1979) which traces perverse outcomes that can follow from equating separation with isolation and commitment with engulfment. It’s not just that Bobbie’s friends try to woo her into marrying or partnering up by inviting her over to foursome dinner parties and suggesting suitable mates, they also use her as a buffer and foil in their own relation- ships. “One’s impossible, two is dreary, three is company safe and cheery …” runs their admission. Indeed, if someone does come along who threatens to take her away from them, the potential partners are quickly dissed as unworthy of her. Side by Side swings along with a seductive melody ambiva- lently eulogising marriage: “Isn’t it fun; Isn’t it cosy: side by side”, but then slips into a mournful bridge reminiscent of the opening bars of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue as they lament her “misfortune” in finding someone they consider unworthy: “Poor baby, all alone. Throw a lonely dog a bone it’s still a bone”. That the perception of Bobbie as lonely might be a projection of loneli- ness in their own marriages is conveyed here, as elsewhere, by contrasting point and counterpoint. While the “marrieds” sing “Poor baby, sitting there, staring at the walls and playing solitaire”, the background image (and music in the original production) is of Bobbie having hot, steamy, passionate sex! Yet Bobbie herself is conflicted. She’s supposed to be celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday, half way to her biblical three score years and ten, and the clock is ticking. She entreats her air steward one-night stand back to bed as he dresses to catch Flight 18 to Barcelona, and is then dismayed when he eventually relents. In the lilting, reflective melody of Sorry Grateful, she captures the tension between the fear of being alone, of loss, and of the implications of belonging:

You hold him thinking I’m not alone; you’re still alone. You don’t live for him, you do live with him, you’re scared he’s starting to drift away, And scared he’ll stay. 12,13-ARTS REVIEWS_CAFP_v10.qxp 25/02/2020 09:22 Page 117

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And this is the song that carries the analytic punch. This is the song that goes to the heart of intersubjectivity in the couple, where boundaries are fluid and, like the ebb and flow of the tide, trace out lines of difference and overlap in an endlessly familiar yet changing sequence defining personal identity. From the original, where (the male) Bobby is reflecting:

Everything’s different, nothing’s changed; only, maybe, slightly rearranged. You always are what you always were, which has nothing to do with— all to do with—her.

The words convey the message. So, in the 2018 production, did the highly original set, comprising a sequence of boxes that merged and melded before separating out again to repeat and reform. And, of course, the music speaks volumes. The wry descriptions in Little Things You Do Together (“concerts you enjoy together, neighbours you annoy together, children you destroy together”) juxtaposes ideal and reality knowingly punctuating the irony with a musical “m-hm”. The swinging music hall style of Side By Side sending up marriage. The breathlessly desperate I’m Not Getting Married. And behind The Ladies who Lunch (a show-stopper of great songs) the lounge lizard Latin beat underscoring a disillusioned toast from an ageing, increas- ingly inebriated, and disillusioned Joanne to those who have conformed to marriage and family life or, like her, have stood on the outside as bitter observers. The notes on the back of the original cast recording make the point that Company has no option other than to be a comedy. However seriously you try to treat marriage it will be funny, and humour is a great communicator: as the saying goes, “many a true word in jest”. But it also manages to touch on what the sleeve describes as “… the real, essential aloneness of each person, and what happens to people when they try to lose that painful independence via mutual consent, love, sex, vows and a contract”. From our vantage point of having been married fifty years (Chris and Pamela) and sixty years (Phil and Carolyn), what Sondheim saw clearly then and now is that regardless of whether partners are married, and regardless of their sexual orientation, long-term relationships are full of complexity, disappointments, compromises, and yet are the underlying force that keeps us alive, stimulated, and needing “company”. Can there be a more timeless theme for a musical?

References Glasser, M. (1979). Aggression and sadism in the perversions. In: I. Rosen (Ed.), Sexual Deviation (pp. 279–299). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sondheim, S. (2010). Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.