Company the Musical - PLOT SYNOPSIS

2018 London Cast Recording
Company the Musical - PLOT SYNOPSIS


Act I

Bobby 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 Jamie. It is Bobby's 35th birthday and the couples have gathered to throw him a surprise party. When Bobby 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 Bobby during a visit with one of the couples or alone with a girlfriend. The first of these features Bobby 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 Bobby'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.

Bobby is next with Peter and Susan, on their apartment terrace. Peter is Ivy League, and Susan is a southern belle; the two seem to be a perfect couple, yet they surprise Bobby with the news of their upcoming divorce. At the home of the uptight Jenny and chic David, Bobby has brought along some marijuana that they share. The couple turns to grilling Bobby on why he has not yet gotten married. Bobby claims he is not against the notion, but three women he is currently fooling around with—Theo, PJ, and Andy—appear and proceed, Andrews Sisters-style, to chastise Bobby for his reluctance to being committed ("You Could Drive a Person Crazy"). David tries to tell Bobby privately that Jenny didn't like the marijuana, after she asks for another joint. "I married a square," he reminds his wife, demanding she bring him food.

All of Bobby's male friends are deeply envious about his commitment-free status, and each has found someone they find perfect for Bobby ("Have I Got a Girl For You"), but Bobby is waiting for someone who merges the best features of all his married female friends ("Someone is Waiting"). Bobby meets his three girlfriends in a small park on three separate occasions as PJ sings of the city: crowded, dirty, uncaring, yet somehow wonderful ("Another Hundred People"). Bobby first gets to know Andy, a slow-witted airline flight attendant. Bobby then spends time with Theo; they had dated previously and both admit that they had each secretly considered marrying the other. They laugh at this coincidence before Booby suddenly considers the idea seriously; however Theo reveals that she is leaving for Cape Cod with a new fiancé. Finally, Bobby meets with PJ; she loves New York, and babbles on about topics as diverse as true sophistication, the difference between uptown and downtown New York, and how you can always tell a New Yorker by his or her ass. Bobby is left stunned.

The scene turns to the day of Jamie and Paul's wedding; they have lived together for years, but are only now getting married. Jamie is in an overwhelming state of panic and, as the upbeat Paul harmonizes rapturously, Jamie patters an impressive list of reasons why she is not "Getting Married Today." Bobby, the best man, and Paul watch as she complains and self-destructs over every petty thing she can possibly think of and finally just calls off the wedding explicitly. Paul dejectedly storms out into the rain and Robert tries to comfort Jamie, but emotionally winds up offering an impromptu proposal to her himself. His words jolt Jamie back into reality, and with the parting words "you need to marry some body, not just some body," she runs out after Paul, at last ready to marry him. The setting returns to the scene of the birthday party, where Bobby is given his cake and tries to blow out the candles again. He wishes for something this time, someone to "Marry Me a Little."



Act II

The birthday party scene is reset, and Boddy goes to blow out his candles. This time, he gets them about half out, and the rest have to help him. The couples share their views on Bobby with each other, comments which range from complimentary to unflattering, as Bobby reflects on being the third wheel ("Side By Side By Side"), soon followed by the up-tempo paean to Bobby's role as the perfect friend. In a dance break in the middle of the number, each man in turn does a dance step, answered by his wife. Then Bobby likewise does a step, but he has no partner to answer it.

Bobby brings Andy to his apartment for a nightcap after a date. She marvels ad nauseam at how homey his place is, and he casually leads her to the bed, sitting next to her on it and working on getting her into it. She earnestly tells him of an experience from her past, involving the death of a butterfly; he counters with a bizarre remembrance of his own, obviously fabricated, and designed to put her in the mood to succumb to seduction. Meanwhile, the married women worry about Bobby's single and lonesome status (as they see it), and particularly about the unsuitable qualities they find in the women he does date, asking, "Isn't she a little bit, well--Dumb? Tacky? Vulgar? Old? Tall? Aggressive? Where is she from?...She's tall enough to be your mother...." ("Poor Baby"). When the inevitable sex happens, we hear Bobby's and Andy's thoughts, interspersed with music that expresses and mirrors their increasing excitement. This music often accompanies a solo dance by Kathy, conveying the emotions and dynamics of making love; it has also been staged as a pas de deux, a group number, or been cut altogether in various productions ("Tick-Tock"). The next morning, Andy rises early, to report for duty aboard a flight to "Barcelona." Bobby tries to get her to stay, at first wholeheartedly, parrying her apologetic protestations that she can't, with playful begging and insistence. As Andy continues to reluctantly resist his entreaties, and sleepiness retakes him, Bobby seems to lose conviction, agreeing that she should go; that change apparently gets to her, and she joyfully declares that she will stay, after all. This takes Bobby by surprise, and his astonished, plaintive "Oh, God!" is suffused not with triumph, nor even ambivalence, but with evident fear and regret.

In the following scene, Bobby takes PJ to visit Peter and Susan, on their terrace. Apparently, Peter flew to Mexico to get the divorce, but he phoned Susan and she joined him there for a vacation. Bizarrely, they are still living together, claiming they have too many responsibilities to actually leave each other's lives, and that their relationship has actually been strengthened by the divorce. Susan takes PJ inside to make lunch, and Peter asks Bobby if he has ever had a homosexual experience. They both admit they have, and Peter hints at the possibility that he and Bobby could have such an encounter, but Bobby uncomfortably laughs the conversation off as a joke just as the women return.

Joanne and Larry take Bobby out to a nightclub, where Larry dances, and Joanne and Bobby sit watching, getting thoroughly drunk. She blames Bobby for always being an outsider, only watching life rather than living it, and also persists in berating Larry. She raises her glass in a mocking toast to "The Ladies Who Lunch", passing judgment on various types of rich, middle-aged women wasting their lives away with mostly meaningless activities. Her harshest criticism is reserved for those, like herself, who "just watch," and she concludes with the observation that all these ladies are bound together by a terror that comes with the knowledge that "everybody dies." Larry returns from the dance floor, taking Joanne's drunken rant without complaint and explains to Bobby that he still loves her dearly. When Larry leaves to pay the check, Joanne bluntly invites Bobby to begin an affair with her, assuring him that she will "take care of him." The reply this elicits from him, "But who will I take care of?" seems to surprise him, and to strike Joanne as a profound breakthrough on his part, "...a door opening that's been stuck for a long time." Bobby insists it's not, that he's studied and been open to marriages and commitment, but questions "What do you get?" Upon Larry's return, Bobby asks again, angrily, "What do you get?" Joanne declares, with some satisfaction, "I just did someone a big favor." She and Larry go home, leaving Bobby lost in frustrated contemplation.

The couples' recurrent musical motif begins yet again, with all of them focused anew on their "Bobby Bubbi," "Bobby darling," "Bobby baby," and again inviting him to "Drop by anytime...." Rather than the cheery, indulgent tone he'd responded with in earlier scenes, Bobby suddenly, desperately, shouts "STOP!" In their stunned silence, he challenges them with quiet intensity: "What do you get?" The music to "Being Alive" begins, and he sings, openly enumerating the many traps and dangers he perceives in marriage; speaking their disagreements, his friends counter his ideas, one by one, encouraging him to dare to try for love and commitment. Finally, Bobby's words change, expressing a desire, increasing in urgency, for loving intimacy, even with all its problems, and the wish to meet someone with whom to face the challenge of ("Being Alive.") The opening party resets a final time; Bobby's friends have waited two hours, with still no sign of him. At last, they all prepare to leave, expressing a new hopefulness about their absent friend's chances for loving fulfillment, and wishing him a happy birthday, wherever he may be, as they leave. Bobby then appears alone, smiles, and blows out his candles.


Songs from Musical: Company the Musical Lyrics 2018
Synopsis to Company the Musical 2018 Plot


Company the Musical Lyrics

SYNOPSIS
Company
The Little Things You Do Together
Sorry-Grateful
You Could Drive a Person Crazy
Have I Got a Guy for You
Someone Is Waiting
Another Hundred People
Getting Married Today
Marry Me a Little
Side by Side by Side
Poor Baby
Barcelona
The Ladies Who Lunch
Being Alive