Company (musical)

Company
Original Broadway Playbill
Music	Stephen Sondheim
Lyrics	Stephen Sondheim
Book	George Furth
Productions	1970 Broadway 1971 US Tour 1972 West End 1995 Broadway revival 1995 West End revival 2002 Kennedy Center 2006 Broadway revival 2007 Australia 2011 New York Philharmonic 2013 Buenos Aires
Awards	Tony Award for Best Musical Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical Tony Award for Best Original Score Tony Award for Best Lyrics Drama Desk Outstanding Music Tony Award for Best Revival Drama Desk Outstanding Revival

Company is a 1970 musical comedy based on a book by George Furth with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six.

Originally titled Threes, its plot revolves around Bobby (a single man unable to commit fully to a steady relationship, let alone marriage), the five married couples who are his best friends, and his three girlfriends. Unlike most book musicals, which follow a clearly delineated plot, Company is a concept musical composed of short vignettes, presented in no particular chronological order, linked by a celebration for Bobby's 35th birthday.

Company was among the first musicals to deal with adult themes and relationships. As Sondheim puts it, "Broadway theater has been for many years supported by upper-middle-class people with upper-middle-class problems. These people really want to escape that world when they go to the theatre, and then here we are with Company talking about how we're going to bring it right back in their faces."

George Furth wrote eleven one-act plays planned for Kim Stanley as each of the separate leads. Anthony Perkins was interested in directing, and asked Sondheim to read the material. After Sondheim read the plays, he asked Harold Prince for his opinion; Prince thought the plays would make the basis for a musical. The theme would be New York marriages with a central character to examine those marriages.

Note: In the early 1990s, Furth and Sondheim revised the libretto, cutting and altering dialogue that had become dated and rewriting the end to act one. This synopsis is based on the revised libretto.

Robert is a well-liked single man living in New York City, whose friends are all married or engaged couples: Joanne and Larry, Peter and Susan, Harry and Sarah, David and Jenny, and Paul and Amy. It is Robert's 35th birthday and the couples have gathered to throw him a surprise party. When Robert fails to blow out any candles on his birthday cake, the couples promise him that his birthday wish will still come true, though he has wished for nothing, since his friends are all that he needs ("Company"). What follows is a series of disconnected vignettes in no apparent chronological order, each featuring Robert during a visit with one of the couples or alone with a girlfriend. The first of these features Robert visiting Sarah, a foodie supposedly now dieting, and her husband Harry, an alcohol abuser supposedly now on the wagon. Sarah and Harry taunt each other on their vices, escalating toward karate-like fighting and thrashing that may or may not be playful. The caustic Joanne, the oldest, most cynical, and most-oft divorced of Robert's friends, comments sarcastically to the audience that it is "The Little Things You Do Together" that make a marriage work. Harry then explains, and the other married men concur, that you are always "Sorry-Grateful" about getting married, and that marriage changes both everything and nothing about the way you live.