Stephen Sondheim Nixed a Gay 'Company'

When Stephen Sondheim died last November at the age of 91, he was on the cusp of a busy period: A gender-bending production of "Company" was to open on Broadway in a London transfer. It was in previews in March 2019 when the pandemic hit and it was forced to close. Also pandemic-delayed was a new film version of "West Side Story," directed by Steven Spielberg with script by Tony Kushner, which was set for a holiday release. (Last week the critically lauded film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Picture and Director, but it sadly underperformed at the box office).

And it was announced that the long-delayed, and thought abandoned musical Sondheim had been working on with playwright David Ives for the past decade was going to come to Broadway next year. It is an adaptation of two films by Spanish director Luis Buñuel ("The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and "The Exterminating Angel").

He spoke enthusiastically of the three projects when on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in September.

"Company" is the work of British director Marianne Elliott, which opened in London in 2018 with Patti LuPone playing the acerbic Joanne and singing "The Ladies Who Lunch." It was set to open in April 2019 with Tony-winner Katrina Lenk as the renamed Bobbi, but closed due to the pandemic. It returned in December.

In the interview, Sondheim says Elliot "may be the most brilliant director alive." And explains how she convinced him of the idea of turning the relationship-averse Bobby into a woman named Bobbi, as well as sexually reversing his relationships, which made the trio of women Bobby dates into men that Bobbi dates.

Sondheim had planned on a series of interviews with New Yorker with journalist D.T. Max for a profile that would be published close to the show's opening. Max, as it turns out, conducted two interviews: One five years ago at Sondheim's house in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan, and the second in 2017 at his Connecticut farm, where he was to die on November 26 last year.

In the lengthy interviews, Sondheim opened up on his parents (including his fascinating mother, whom he disliked enormously); his progress on the Buñuel; opera vs. musical theater; his creative process; and observations about his shows, including the long-floated idea of a gay "Company."

The idea that Bobby may be gay has long been a subtext of the musical, which premiered in 1970 to huge acclaim and Tony Awards for Sondheim (score) and George Furth (book). But the idea of Bobby being out of the closet was a different matter entirely for Sondheim. So much so that he told Max how he turned down a proposed gay production.

"Well, John Tiffany, who directed 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' – a really good director – wanted to do a gay male version of 'Company.' So we had a reading of that about a year and a half ago, and I thought it didn't work at all, and I said no."

Asked to explain why, he said: "It just felt forced. The only scene, curious enough, that seemed to work was Bobby and three girls on the park bench as Bobby and three�guys�on the park bench. The rest of it seemed – it just wasn't written for it. As a friend of mine said, George Furth is really J. D. Salinger. His ear for the way people talk – and, because he was an actor, he�really�understands character instinctively. He's one of those playwrights who write two lines, and you know who to cast. If you saw people audition, you'd say, 'That's the guy that George wrote.' Because his writing is�so�character-specific. And that includes gender."

How, then, could they gender-flip Bobby?

"Well, Bobby is another matter, because Bobby is a cipher," Sondheim explained. "At least Marianne's point is that the problems the Bobbys of the nineteen-seventies faced are similar to the problems women today face."

He continued to explain why Bobby is a cipher: "Everyone else is a character, and Bobby is the vacuum in the middle. And there's a reason he's a vacuum. He's somebody who soaks up and bottles up, and theoretically what he does at the end of the show is grow up and become somebody. That's the idea. The show either works or not, but that's the notion: That he learns from his friends to be a person. In fact, it's really like he's graduating at the end. When I came in to help direct a production down in Washington, in 2002, that was my metaphor to the cast. I said, 'You are helping this boy grow up. Think of it that way throughout the show – that is what you're doing. And at the end, when you say, "Happy birthday, Bobby," it really means congratulations.' And that's what I think the show is."

//gayinfluence.blogspot.com/2012/03/stephen-sondheim.htmlIn his personal life, Sondheim did not come out as a gay man until he was 40 and did not live with a partner (dramatist Peter Jones) until he was 61. In 2017 Sondheim married Broadway singer/actor Jeffrey Romley, who survives him. Romley (b. 1980) is 50 years younger than Sondheim.

His long discussion with The New Yorker's Max ended with the journalist noting how Sondheim was likely the first lyricist to drop a profanity – the word "shit" – in a musical. It is in the song "The Barber and his Wife" from "Sweeney Todd," from 1978.

"I deliberately did that," Sondheim responded. "I always wanted to be the first person to use a four-letter word on the musical stage. That's why [in 'West Side Story'] I wrote, 'Gee, Officer Krupke, fuck you!' And one of the co-producers practically fainted when she heard me play it."