It’s the Company That Counts

Would you believe a successful morality play on Broadway? It’s well concealed, but somewhere deep down inside, that’s what Company is. Company is the Harold Prince musical that opened in May just when everyone had about given up on the 1969-1970 season and it startled the critics so that their usually crotchety typewriters took off in unaccustomed paeans of praise. It’s fast, sophisticated, racy, daring, tough, glib, tinselly, but also tender, warm loving and incisive.

There’s nothing new in the plot. Robert (Bobbie, Rob, Robbie, Bobby baby) is 35, the gay bachelor around town, the best friend of every couple he knows. Their problem is to get Bobby baby settled in life. Not that easy because, as we observe, they have far from ideal marriages themselves. (“It’s not so hard to be married,” says the deliciously over-the-hill Elaine Stritch, “I’ve done it three or four times”).

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Priscilla L. Buckley

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Would you believe a successful morality play on Broadway? It’s well concealed, but somewhere deep down inside, that’s what Company is. Company is the Harold Prince musical that opened in May just when everyone had about given up on the 1969-1970 season and it startled the critics so that their usually crotchety typewriters took off in unaccustomed paeans of praise. It’s fast, sophisticated, racy, daring, tough, glib, tinselly, but also tender, warm loving and incisive.

There’s nothing new in the plot. Robert (Bobbie, Rob, Robbie, Bobby baby) is 35, the gay bachelor around town, the best friend of every couple he knows. Their problem is to get Bobby baby settled in life. Not that easy because, as we observe, they have far from ideal marriages themselves. (“It’s not so hard to be married,” says the deliciously over-the-hill Elaine Stritch, “I’ve done it three or four times”).