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shrimpchipsss) wrote2022-11-11 11:24 am
shrimpchipsss) wrote2022-11-11 11:24 am
Entry tags:
Stephen Sondheim’s Company, heterotemporality, and adult friendships
I’ve given versions of this post as a rant to any friend who would listen because Company, beloved Company! haunts me as an example of heterotemporality media that might make a case against heterotemporality. Which, for those unfamiliar with the term, describes the life path of [education->career->(het)marriage->(probably biological)children] that patriarchal society would have us believe is the only script that exists or can give us a rich and good life. Company isn't a manifesto against this but it does show how societal expectations and pressure to adhere to it alienate us from ourselves and each other.
One of my oldest friends took me to see Company on Broadway this spring and I spent the week feverishly listening to the 2007 recording with Raul Esparza in preparation and being totally charmed by Bobby, a single guy in New York City who is turning 35 years old and has an entire group of friends who are in various stages of marriage, divorce, nth marriage, about to be married, etc.
He dates and sleeps around and comes off confident, fun, and to use the word again, charming. He plays to his friends egos and insecurities and whims and it’s clear how much they all love and care for each other.
The recent runs of Company have genderswapped a few characters so that we have a female Bobbi and one gay couple (Matt Doyle as Jamie, absolute anxiety inducing tongue twister) and man. Bobbi. Love her but wonder how much of her we really get to see.
Original Bobby feels self assured and like he’s having the time of his unattached life. He’s involved in his friends’ lives in a meaningful way and seems to be enjoying himself and satisfied. Bobbi feels messier, anxious and acting out the pastiche of a fun single life. She is more reactive in dialogue with her friends and feels lost. Which in one way might be a really realistic depiction of the dissociated modern millennial woman. My good friend Augie brought up that Bobbi felt timely and real, the contemporary manic pixie dream girl who is good at social scripts, doesn’t stand out, blends into the social scene. Who can be anyone and therefore is no one at all. (And she did feel like someone I could know, like a coworker or a friend of a friend. Like, I know that woman. We all do.)
Bobbi is swiping and floating along, going from event to event to party to date (she does get head on stage by the ultimate himbo flight attendant, another win for feminism), but it comes off as a distraction. The current run of Company misses out on the richness of the original Bobby’s integration in his friends lives, swapping out a line about Bobby being the godparent to a bunch of his friends’ children for modernity’s sake but losing the extra weight of seriousness to the friendships, which was what really sold Company to me as a story at all.
Both the original and genderswapped versions of the story give me a vague sense of grief among all the fondness, I think it shows beautifully the way your friends are your family, but the limits to how much your friends can be your family under a societal model where marriage and the nuclear family is the ultimate goal, where heterotemporality is the only script people's lives are based on.
Still, the characters are trying! And the story continues to be compelling to me because it ends not with Bobby finding a significant other but admitting that they keep love at arms distance and want love and need to face the mortifying ordeal of being known and the risk of it all blowing up in your face in order to have love. And though Bobby realizes this through romantic love I take it to apply to his friendships too. It is his opening up to Joanne that sparks this realization after all.
Will end this post by saying that Patti LuPone onstage works stillness in a way that made me want to scream, that the line “keep me company” rewired something in my brain, and that the total fondness that carries through the musical is one of my favorite things about it.
One of my oldest friends took me to see Company on Broadway this spring and I spent the week feverishly listening to the 2007 recording with Raul Esparza in preparation and being totally charmed by Bobby, a single guy in New York City who is turning 35 years old and has an entire group of friends who are in various stages of marriage, divorce, nth marriage, about to be married, etc.
He dates and sleeps around and comes off confident, fun, and to use the word again, charming. He plays to his friends egos and insecurities and whims and it’s clear how much they all love and care for each other.
The recent runs of Company have genderswapped a few characters so that we have a female Bobbi and one gay couple (Matt Doyle as Jamie, absolute anxiety inducing tongue twister) and man. Bobbi. Love her but wonder how much of her we really get to see.
Original Bobby feels self assured and like he’s having the time of his unattached life. He’s involved in his friends’ lives in a meaningful way and seems to be enjoying himself and satisfied. Bobbi feels messier, anxious and acting out the pastiche of a fun single life. She is more reactive in dialogue with her friends and feels lost. Which in one way might be a really realistic depiction of the dissociated modern millennial woman. My good friend Augie brought up that Bobbi felt timely and real, the contemporary manic pixie dream girl who is good at social scripts, doesn’t stand out, blends into the social scene. Who can be anyone and therefore is no one at all. (And she did feel like someone I could know, like a coworker or a friend of a friend. Like, I know that woman. We all do.)
Bobbi is swiping and floating along, going from event to event to party to date (she does get head on stage by the ultimate himbo flight attendant, another win for feminism), but it comes off as a distraction. The current run of Company misses out on the richness of the original Bobby’s integration in his friends lives, swapping out a line about Bobby being the godparent to a bunch of his friends’ children for modernity’s sake but losing the extra weight of seriousness to the friendships, which was what really sold Company to me as a story at all.
Both the original and genderswapped versions of the story give me a vague sense of grief among all the fondness, I think it shows beautifully the way your friends are your family, but the limits to how much your friends can be your family under a societal model where marriage and the nuclear family is the ultimate goal, where heterotemporality is the only script people's lives are based on.
Still, the characters are trying! And the story continues to be compelling to me because it ends not with Bobby finding a significant other but admitting that they keep love at arms distance and want love and need to face the mortifying ordeal of being known and the risk of it all blowing up in your face in order to have love. And though Bobby realizes this through romantic love I take it to apply to his friendships too. It is his opening up to Joanne that sparks this realization after all.
Will end this post by saying that Patti LuPone onstage works stillness in a way that made me want to scream, that the line “keep me company” rewired something in my brain, and that the total fondness that carries through the musical is one of my favorite things about it.
hi shrimps fancy seein' u here!!
When I first started to reflect on Company, it really struck me how quickly the story departed from a traditional heteronormative narrative despite what you might think hearing "dude in his 30s is a perpetual bachelor and all his friends ask him when he's gonna get married" - in the very first song, it's established that there's no lack of love in his life! He has so many people who love him and care about him and whom he loves and cares about in return. It was really nice to see that established upfront because the idea of "men only have their girlfriends and wives as sources of emotional support and can't handle being single because it means they have absolutely nobody they can open up to about anything", and he's not just looking to fill a very ambiguous desire for someone to talk to - it's specifically romantic companionship that he's craving and is scared of.
I find the idea of a genderswapped Bobby super interesting actually like how did "Have I Got A Girl For You" go, was everything the exact same? I was talking to pinya about this and like, societal attitudes towards a 35 year old single man dating lots and having tons of sex versus a woman in the exact same position - for men the whole young&wild&free-to-be-adventurous-in-bed thing maybe tracks a bit better whereas from what I've seen, women would probably just get the whole "you're wasting your fertile years sleeping with men who don't wanna give you a baby" spiel (actually wait in the production you mentioned, was Bobbi lesbian? I assumed that when I first read your post but now I'm not so sure?)
I also loved that Bobby was the one to answer his own question about what you get out of being in a relationship in the end. After seeing the details and nuances of his friends' love lives he finally realizes it's not a question you can really answer by just copying other people's answers - he has to figure it out himself if he wants to start earnestly opening up to others in a romantic specifically.
also just a sidenote Sorry-Grateful like, took a potato peeler to me personally. Especially "You hold her, thinking, "I'm not alone/You're still alone". like omg
I think we've already had a conversation about like, mentally shooting yourself in the foot regarding opening yourself up to.. romance.. love... relationships HAH so this was a fun watch and it was fun reading your thoughts on it too!! Some stuff you just can't half-ass if you want it to be fulfilling!! you gotta put your whole ass into it!! and keep putting your whole ass into it, no matter how scary and hard it is!!!
Re: hi shrimps fancy seein' u here!!
Bobbi is enthusiastically attracted to men! (they do have a line in "you could drive a person crazy" about "if they happened to be gay" and the three guys shrug and are like maybe?). i'll admit im a little disappointed they didn't still have Joanne be the one to proposition Bobbi. Instead, she offers her new husband which. Like, fine I guess? but couldn't we have a Joanne proposition still?
I do think they kept things mostly the same in "have i got a guy for you," but for "poor baby" (which i think is the funniest thing in the world), I think they had the guys worrying about Bobbi which I found interesting? You're so much more at risk of things sounding patronizing and I wasn't sure it totally worked for me given that it meant that the female characters were the ones not interested in Bobbi's love life when. probably aren't they the ones who want the tea and are invested and care that openly? maybe we're trying to break stereotypes? maybe i'm being normative here?
GOD YEAH THE "i'm not alone/you're still alone" is so the mountain goats "And I want to go home/but I am home"
I'm so glad you and pinya watched it and enjoyed it and that it SPARKED THOUGHTS, i love hearing what you have to say about it