| re: COMPANY -- original ending/staging | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 10:37 am EDT 08/10/20 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 10:33 am EDT 08/10/20 | |
| In reply to: COMPANY -- original ending/staging - MRH 04:44 pm EDT 08/07/20 | |
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| When things are better, and the third-floor at the Library for the Performing Arts is open again (and I feel comfortable going there), I hope to read the drafts of Company there. I think one of them is a rehearsal script so it should have at least some version of that original last scene. But Sondheim did write about it in Finishing the Hat. Do you have the book? It's on page 196. According to Sondheim, Robert, in despair, goes to a park (rather than his birthday party), where he meets an entirely new group of 13 people, played the actors we've seen all evening but now in different roles. Some of them are single, and some of them are couples. "Determined to take a step forward, he finally makes a gesture of open and needful connection to one of them, a distracted and lonely young woman. The scene was cut because the show was running much too long, and after it was gone, 'Happily Ever After' seemed too much of a 'downer,' as Hal persistently called it." The original staging of the opening number was great. If you can get to TOFT, once it's open again, you can view something very close to the original staging by watching the video of the national tour, shot at the next-to-last performance of the tour, in D.C. in May 1972. Some things were simplified for the tour. The change that most affected the staging of the opening number is that there were no elevators. If memory serves, they simply went up and down stairs when they would have used the elevator. But other than that, and the lack of projections (not really part of the staging, and the projections weren't even visible at the Alvin to people sitting too far over on the sides), I believe it's the original staging. I don't have the energy at the moment to type up any more about the staging, and I don't think the things I remember all these years later would sound especially thrilling. |
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