On Disc: Original Cast Album: Company

The Criterion Collection about the making of one of Stephen Sondheim's earlier musicals is a worthwhile look back on the legacy of Broadway's leading songsmith.

It's all in the timing.

Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim died on November 26 at the age of 91. At a time we are in the midst of a surge in Sondheim appreciation, which is always good.

He is a character in the new musical film “tick...tick...Boom!,” played by Bradley Whitford (including a scene with the Sondheim character leaving a voicemail, voiced by Sondheim himself). Dec. 10 will be the release of Steven Spielberg's film version of the musical “West Side Story,” of which Sondheim did the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's music and also his second career credit.

In September filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles died one week before the Criterion Collection of four of his films (reviewed on Film Yap). While not that close in timing with Sondheim's death, but in August Criterion released the D.A. Pennebaker documentary “Original Cast Album: Company” from 1970.

Pennebaker had already wowed film audiences with his fly-on-the-wall (in some cases, flies in your face) camerawork in the Bob Dylan documentary “Don't Look Back” and the “Monterey Pop” concert film. He would bring you into the world of how a cast recording of a Broadway recording is done. It was supposed to be a series, but the film opens with a scroll that tells the tale better.

“Company” is a musical comedy about thirtysomething Bobby, his three girlfriends and the five married couples that are a part of his universe. The show tackles several themes about relationships and marriage without a traditional narrative. The musical won six Tony awards including Best Musical.

Clocking in at under an hour, “Original Cast Album: Company” shows a lot of hurry and wait for the singers and the live orchestra. There are men in the recording booth smoking, listening, whispering to one another. There's a man in the booth telling the singers they sound great and do it again. To perform in front of an audience for one performance is one thing. The recording is forever.

Meanwhile, Sondheim is there, turtleneck and all saying very little but seeing and hearing everything. His conversation with a singer about the pronunciation of one word is the original "rushing or dragging" moment from the film “Whiplash.” My wife, the best singer I know, would verbally respond to the number of takes one singer had to do.

Not quite Stanley Kubrick, but even a dozen takes does a toll on the voice.

This documentary also features a slew of actors that I recognized from my earlier years of films and television and not knowing they had musical chops. There was no IMDB to look such things up and I did not have a library card catalog at home.

Familiar faces include Dean Jones as Bobby (all those Disney films of the 1970s and you can see his dental work in this film while singing “Being Alive”), Barbara Barrie (“Breaking Away”), Charles Kimbrough (“Murphy Brown”), Beth Howland (the sitcom “Alice”) and Pamela Myers (“The Sha Na Na” variety show, my mom was a fan).

George Furth, the man credited with the book Woodcock in the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Then there's the Company member who you would want to have your back in a bar fight, Elaine Stritch, who I knew from Woody Allen's “September” and “Cocoon: The Return.”

Hey, it happens. We all have these pop culture blind sides.

Speaking of Stritch, the documentary ends with the studio drama of recording Stritch's "The Ladies Who Lunch." It's way past midnight and she's verbally and physically exhausted and the men in the booth don't quite hear the sound. Not going to give away the end of a 51-year-old documentary about a cast recording, but suffice to say, the outcome is a sigh of relief and Stritch doesn't knock anybody out.

I know folks of the stage have been paying tribute to Sondheim in numerous ways from revisiting his work to gathering in Times Square to sing the song “Sunday.”

“Original Cast Recording: Company” is a fascinating, insightful and at times tense way of seeing the process of the show recording that will help change musical theatre forever. The Criterion disc contains a recent commentary track from Sondheim, another from Pennebaker, Stritch and director Harold Prince. Plus it has the hysterical and accurate documentary parody “Co-Op” from the excellent series “Documentary Now!”

My wife and I watched “Original Cast Album: Company” and Co-Op as our tribute to Stephen Sondheim. Everybody rise!

Matthew Socey is host of Film Soceyology for WFYI 90.1 FM in Indianapolis.