| re: My Company rant in general - not targeted to you, kidmanboy - with staging spoilers | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 11:49 pm EST 01/01/22 | |
| In reply to: re: My Company rant in general - not targeted to you, kidmanboy - with staging spoilers - Delvino 06:20 pm EST 12/31/21 | |
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| I don't find it to be "heresy" to find fault in Furth's book, and I don't think my post presumes that. I just don't agree with a lot of the fault you find. And I think you're undervaluing the strengths of it and overplaying the weaknesses. But perhaps we just simply don't agree. And to speak to Sondheim defending it -- which he need not do that often since it is a very popular show to produce and has been since it was a hit on Broadway in 1970... proving that the book has more worked than not worked for artists and audiences for a long time -- one of the reasons he does, and rightly so, is that the book to Company (and all the musicals he wrote scores to, especially the ones that aren't adaptations), is responsible for the invention and crafting and execution of the premise, story, and characters of the show. I think the characters are a huge reason Company is so enjoyable to perform and watch, and that is often overlooked in criticizing this book (and most times a book is criticized). And critics of these books seem to think Sondheim alone found more depth or wit or whatever in these character, knew them better and more deeply and effectively in his writing than the book writer... without considering that the book writer may be largely responsible for what Sondheim understood or used to get where he got with the lyrics and the sound of/use of the music, and that the book writer's job is to let the score shine where the non-score writing might have were it not a musical. So I'm quick to defend books and book writers, especially for shows I like and think work quite well, like Company. That doesn't mean it's the best book ever written, but I don't think I would say that Company is a show that successes in spite of its book. Take another fairly plotless, episodic, comedic and perhaps dated musical of the same era, about a man looking for something ... Pippin... that is much much more a musical that I think successes in spite of the book and not because of it. |
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