Review: D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: Company on Criterion Blu-ray

As the lyric from a later Stephen Sondheim musical put it, “Art isn’t easy.” And in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary Original Cast Album: Company, in which the cast of Sondheim’s 1970 musical are put through their paces committing that show’s roster of songs to tape, the effort is on full, glorious display.

Company heralded a major breakthrough for Sondheim, who up to that point was recognized more for his lyrical contributions to West Side Story and his lukewarmly received compositions for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. His first production for director Harold Prince, a collaboration that would carry both through the rest of the ensuing decade, Company presented the plight of aging playboy Robert in a daring, oblique manner. Namely, through stolen moments of enlightenment or chance encounters Robert shares with members of his social circles as they progress through marriage, divorce, and in all other sense the adulthood being actively avoided by Robert (frequently referred to as “Bobby” in mocking chorus).

But mostly marriage. If Company’s depiction of a single man in his mid-30s as some sort of freak of nature hasn’t really stood the test of time, the copious negative space built into its very form have given it remarkable staying power as the times change around it. The show’s forthcoming Broadway transfer of the 2018 West End revival will play around liberally with the book’s assigned gender roles, and though Sondheim is on the record denying that Robert could be a latent homosexual (shades of Edward Albee vehemently affirming George and Martha’s hetero bona fides), the gay subtext is just barely below the surface.

Company’s relative lack of focus on a linear story made it a perfect show for Pennebaker to focus his lens on shooting what was meant to be a pilot for a series of behind-the-scenes looks at cast recording sessions. (The mind reels at the missed opportunity, with shows like Grease, Pippin, and Sondheim’s own Follies and A Little Night Music just around the corner in the handful of years following Company’s debut.) Headlined primarily by Dean Jones, the Disney-famous actor who portrayed Robert for a very brief period before being replaced by Larry Kert, and Elaine Stritch, whose recording travails give the film its main source of conflict, Original Cast Album: Company presents almost at random its fly-on-the-wall snapshot of the performers, orchestra, and recording engineers all working in concert.

Or thereabouts. A number of Sondheim’s soon-to-be signatures—densely stacked chords, surprising resolutions, and insistently difficult, staccato vocal lines—were already in full form here, and Pennebaker catches performers sweating their way through such tornadic ditties as “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” and “Getting Married Today,” stretching their luck through multiple takes of soaring anthems like “Being Alive,” and in the sequence most responsible for the documentary’s legendary cult status, running smack up against their limit.

Stritch, already a volatile personality on her best days, is shown already irritable and self-defeating even before take one, and Sondheim adds insult to injury by insisting that they take the song down a half-step in order for her to be able to reach the song’s high notes, even at the same time as he unsupportively points out, “This is a permanent recording.” Her every attempt is deemed “just flaccid” and, ultimately, following a few screaming matches with herself, she retreats from the early-morning session so the orchestra can lay down the track without her.

Throughout, Pennebaker’s camera moves in as close as it can to capture every moment of doubt, disappointment and rage in Stritch’s face. That even still viewers debate whether Stritch was playing up the drama of the moment for the cameras only underlines how deftly Pennebaker’s brief and unassuming film resides at the heart of the interplay between work, art, and performance. All working against the clock’s insistent tick-tock.

Image/Sound

You want film grain? Well, you’ve got it in abundance here. Sourced from a 4K restoration, Original Cast Album: Company is as tactile as a topographical map. Shot on 16mm, such things as color range, contrast, and focus go out the window as signifiers of quality, and despite the many efforts to clean up the artifacts of the original work, there’s still plenty of splice marks, scratches, and even a stray hair or two in the ligature. Which is to say, it looks exactly as it should. The sound is even more hampered by the slapdash nature of the film’s production, sounding frequently as flat as a cassette tape. And, depending on the sequence, “dialogue” tends to drop in and out during key moments.

Extras

The Criterion Collection has compiled what is probably the most theater queen-friendly release imaginable. D.A. Pennebaker, Elaine Stritch, and Harold Prince already recorded an illuminating commentary two decades ago, which is worth the price of admission for Stritch unpacking what was going through her head behind the flop sweat. (She says she actually wanted to go last, after everyone left, so that no one would be around to watch her biff it.) But Criterion adds a brand new track with Stephen Sondheim, who more than fills out the space and, for his part, somewhat atones for his role in the Stritch train wreck.

Additionally, there’s a pair of new interview segments featuring Sondheim and orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, probably the most valuable for filling in the details of what was going on in both their careers prior to Company. But the true blue coup here is the inclusion of the Documentary Now! episode parodying the Pennebaker film, itself something of a cult item (as indicated by the inclusion of a half-hour discussion with the parody’s cast and crew). Incisively written by John Mulaney and Seth Meyers, both clearly endeared to the history of musical theater, “Original Cast Album: Co-Op” features Mulaney, Alex Brightman, Richard Kind, Paula Pell, and Renée Elise Goldsberry as the stars of a parallel-universe Company. Only in this version, their exhausted efforts are in service of a show killed instantly by bad reviews. Finally, a booklet with note-perfect observations by Mark Harris rounds out the set.

Overall

With Broadway returning after almost two years in dry dock, there’s no better time to enjoy the fruits of the Great White Way’s yesteryear labors than Original Cast Album: Company.