COMPANY: A Musical Comedy
Working script for the original Harold Prince-directed Broadway mounting of Sondheim's innovative classic of musical theater.
Very good plus.
Price: $7,500.00
COMPANY: A Musical Comedy
"COMPANY offered a groundbreaking way of looking at its subject, less through a microscope than a kaleidoscope. Sarcasm warming into insight was the hallmark of the style, which borrowed the nonrepresentational techniques of midcentury drama and wed it to a psychological acuity rarely before seen in American musicals. The result was a new method of storytelling." — Jesse Green
COMPANY was the work that almost single-handedly established Sondheim's reputation as a true theatrical innovator. While Sondheim's Broadway career as both composer and lyricist began a decade earlier with more traditional works such as A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, COMPANY marked the beginning of his collaboration with director Harold Prince, a relationship that, according to noted theater critic Howard Kissel, set "Broadway's highest standards" during the decade of their work together.
A series of loosely related vignettes, COMPANY has been remounted and reinterpreted a number of times, most recently in the 2021 Broadway gender-swapped revival. The original Broadway production — starring Dean Jones, Donna McKechnie, Susan Browning, George Coe, Pamela Myers, Barbara Barrie, Charles Kimbrough, Merle Louise, Beth Howland, and Elaine Stritch — remains perhaps the best known due in no small part to D. A. Pennebaker's classic documentary about the recording of the cast album.
An important document from one of the most influential works of postwar American musical theater. Scripts from the original production are rare.
Read more: Jesse Green, "Review: In a Gender-Flipped Revival, 'Company' Loves Misery," The New York Times.
The Object
First edition. New York: Harold Prince, [circa 1970]. 11'' x 8.5''. Original brad-bound orange titled production wrappers from Studio Duplicating Service. Mimeographed throughout. Numbered 22 on first page. Covers a little worn at yapp edges. Some rubbing. Internally clean, sound.
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