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Watch Company National Tour Star Britney Coleman Sing 'Being Alive' (via Playbill)

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I know I say this a lot, but Sondheim was truly fucking insane for this. If you've never heard this before, please do. You can skip to 1:00 if you want.

A lot of subsequent versions of the song slow it down a little bit, but this is how it was originally meant to be sung in 1970. This has to be one of the hardest songs to perform on Broadway just on a literal level

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this post is for a niche audience but i've been thinking about another hundred people from company all day - a song about how people come and go constantly, traversing the same paths without crossing, or suddenly drawn together, then passing back out of your life again, this never ending cycle of arrival and departure, discovery and loss. whispers of what if, what if, what if at every road not taken. another hundred people just got off of the train...it's a city of strangers, some come to work, some to play, a city of strangers, some come to stare, some to stay, and every day, some go away...it's an ode to new york, but like everything sondheim, it's not nearly that simple, because it's also about the human condition. in the middle of the song, bobby sits in the park with kathy, and we know, somehow, that kathy could be the person, maybe should be his person, but they can never say that. they sit together on a bench, everything unsaid, not on the same page, and she says she's like the park, verdant and peaceful in the middle of the bustling city, but forever out of place. he tries to counter, she's like the park because she's lovely. she tells him - very importantly, perhaps the first moment when someone is asserting who he is on his own, not in relation to them, their friendship, what role he plays for them (because bobby is always playing a role for everyone, filling a space, being bon vivant) - that he's a good man, and has meant so much to her. and there's warmth and so much grief in it, her voicing this because he's about to become a part of her past.

"i'm getting married," she says. and sharply, in shock, he responds: "did you just suddenly fall in love?"

she never answers this. it's not the point. she defers she'll be a good wife. "i want real things." as if what bobby is isn't real, isn't possible. it's not her city. she was always passing through, waiting for the train. "there's a time to come to new york, and a time to leave. enjoy your party." it's this quietly devastating thing, walking away and leaving him there to go to a party, where he'll sparkle and amuse and distract, but not be quite real.

it's a major catalyst in the story, but doesn't get as much attention as the bigger moments - the romantic idealism he hits in marry me a little, thinking love can be weightless, without consequence (love me just enough, cry but not too often, play, but not too rough. keep a tender distance, so we'll both be free...we won't give up a thing, we'll stay who we are... passionate as hell, but always in control...how gently we'll talk, oh how softly we'll tread, all the stings, the ugly things, we'll keep unsaid, we'll build a cocoon of lobe and respect, you promise whatever you like, i'll never collect! right?). it's still not real, it's still not the realization he needs to come to, but it's his first imagining of what that might represent.

and then joanne offers him sympathy, and then joanne offers him an affair, and it would be so easy, despite how terrible it would be for them, for everyone they know. she gives him the simplicity, the attention. she says, "i'll take care of you." and bobby says, "but who will i take care of?" it's so achingly clear, when it hits him. when that door comes unstuck.

and it's only that which gets him to being alive. something that isn't simple or easy, but real, even though it means sacrifice and vulnerability and potential pain. someone to hold you too close, someone to hurt you too deep. someone to make you aware of being alive. make me confused, mock me with praise, let me be used, vary my days.

it's such a beautiful slow burn awakening and maturity, all these subtle transformations and realizations that make bobby come to this place where he can step forward to desire something of his own. where he can risk his hand. and it doesn't really start for him until someone else leaves. until the magic of the party is faded, and it's just him alone, blowing the candles out, and deciding to let his guard down.

we don't know what he'll find, who he'll love, what his wanting even looks like. that's a journey he takes without the audience. because he has to do that on his own. the point isn't knowing, the point is that he's finally brave enough to try. every day, some go away, but some people stay. make a wish. want something.

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BUT WHO WILL I TAKE CARE OF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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more patti lupone in 2011 company appreciation

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they fucking WHAT in genderswapped company why would you even

GREAT question LET'S get into this. so of the many (many!) of my least favorite changes about the (extremely ill advised and poorly executed!) gender flipped company from like 2021? that started in london. anyway. that one. yeah so of the many changes they made they FAR more firmly than the original grounded bobby (or bobbi when I'm talking about the female gender swapped version) in being Straight. It's just about the most aggressively straight and heteronormative rendition of company i've seen yet. anyway. regardless. regardless.

so in this version of company at the end of the show when bobby gets dinner with joanne and joanne makes a pass at bobby to prompt him into realizing he wants someone to take care off -- he wants the pains and difficulties and miseries of being open and tied to another person -- and this is obviously one of the top ten most insane-making moments when you are a repressed cartoonishly anti-marriage extremely closed off closeted dyke so like. life imprinted on patti lupone age thirteen drinking her vodka stingers #milfs. anyway. so that's the original version of the scene -- bobby and his oldest friend a thrice married socialite joanne have drinks and by "when are you and i going to make it" she forces him to realize what he actually wants out of life and then we go into the closer (being alive).

in the gender flipped revival, joanne is still a woman -- still played by patti lupone even LOL -- and they've committed to an aggressively heterosexual bobbi with no other possible interpretations, so they can't play this scene out like anything else. so instead they have joanne's husband make a pass at her (and this lands very awkwardly like they have no longstanding relationship OR understanding of each other and WE don't have the understanding of this random dude like we do joanne so it's literally a much less emotionally rich version of this and also i was seeing this with three other people who had no familiarity with company and all of them were confused by that scene so it genuinely is very out of the blue nonsensical and a little dissonant i had to explain the original to them which they agreed made much more sense. ANYWAY so it's a flop scene to begin with i'm mad they're confused and we get to the line "but then who will i take care of"/bobby having his realization that he wants someone to take care! but because it's gender flipped -- and this is insane this genuinely makes me insane -- they change it. to. "but who will take care of me" which is just crazy!!!!! it's crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! literally definitively making the statement that men need someone to take care of and women need someone to take care of them!!!!!!!!!!!! what! what!!!!! those are not gendered things!!!!! changing the heart of who bobby if he's a woman like that isn't at ALL how characterization works!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Phone rings,

Door chimes,

In comes

Company!

No strings,

Good times,

Just chums,

Company!

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back on my Company revival bullshit but in my defence, good god. it’s an absolute masterclass in causing you to notice little ways in which we incorporate gendered assumptions in stuff - just by noticing all the unchanged lines that play differently or sit oddly once you’ve changed the main character’s gender.

(if you’re just joining us, the current revival of Stephen Sondheim’s musical about relationships, Company, swaps out the gender of the lead role, Bobby (and also Bobby’s casual partners, and one of Bobby’s many married friends, making that couple a gay couple), while keeping most everything else the same.)

one i’m currently rotating in my mind (from You Could Drive a Person Crazy) is that - I don’t know that I’d ever have thought about this otherwise - it strikes me that men, and not women, are ever conventionally referred to in a dating context as “attentive.”

the line is:

So single and attentive and attractive a chick is anything a person could wish

and.. yeah. That’s weird, isn’t it? if you agree with me anyway, by all means say if you don’t!

but i wonder why women in a relationship are not ‘attentive.’ I feel like (esp in the original 1970s idiom) it’s something to do with the notion that ignoring a partner is a kind of bad behaviour we expect from men, so it makes sense to comment positively that a guy is attentive - whereas, stereotypically, the kinds of bad behaviour we expect from women in a relationship tend more towards a surfeit of attention (nagging, needy).

anyway i’ve always found Bobby very relatable and cool as a woman who is bad at relationships in a slightly conventionally male-coded way.

speaking of this song, it’s also entertainingly surprising to have a bunch of guys complaining that a woman is definitely giving them all the (noted as good) sex they could ask for, but just won’t commit emotionally.

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ummmm something about in trousers and Company.

I’m working on my charms. A zombie’s in my arms. i felt him slipping away. i felt him die in my arms, his charms were not for me. Someone to sit in my chair. she cut her lip on the sofa by the door. you make a person feel all huggy while you make her feel a fool. i’m just a sweetheart i’m a too re-dic-u-lous sweetheart. what should i think about 5 seconds before i die? go and cry at another person’s wake! And there's some milk rotting in my refrigerator. I left the refrigerator door open so the orange juice is warm. Does anybody still wear a hat? I am wearing a hat. After winter I’ll marry. I’m entitled to that. I’m moving back up to cape cod to get married. It’s the scores that go unanswered and unsatisfied. he always looks like he's keeping score. who's winning, robert? Marvin needs love. Bobby ought to have a woman. [Sung by Women at the opening] Marvin, Marvin, Marvin, Mar...vin. [Sung by Women at the opening] Bobby, Bobby Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba Bobby (Bobby), Bobby (Bobby) I need my sleep. five times a night he’ll request it. Someone to ruin my sleep. With red hair a broad shoulders like my mother. She’s tall enough to be your mother! I’m feeling alive-er Than I’ve ever felt in my life before. But alone is alone, not alive. Make me alive.

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i am not being hyperbolic when i say this rewired my brain like something literally shifted for me

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Jonathan Bailey as Jamie

Company (2018-2019) (photos courtesy of jbaileydaily)

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this is my Roman empire. I fear I'll never be able to live again without this in my mind. And the fact that they WERE drunk here

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I need to leave an article about the definition of aromanticism open on his computer

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evil company like: being dead

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i listened to raúl esparzas version of being alive again.

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2 IS IMPOSSIBLE 2 IS GLOOMY GIVE ANOTHER NUMBER TO ME!!!!!!!