How Sondheim Can Change Your Life
An exclusive preview
The Sondheim Hub is proud to present an exclusive preview of Richard Schoch’s new book How Sondheim Can Change Your Life, which is published on November 19. If you haven’t read our recent interview with Richard, you can do so by clicking here. It’s a fascinating conversation, and—as you will see below—his book is a wonderful read.
An exclusive excerpt from How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch:
The question that hangs over the last moments of Company—and especially Bobby’s solo “Being Alive”—is whether he can continue to be himself. Not the psychoanalyst on the cheap for his married friends. Not the maladjusted zombie that drives his three girlfriends crazy. And certainly not the Bobby baby, Bobby bubi, Bobby darling, or any other infantilizing diminutive that his friends bestow upon Robert (as Sondheim always called him) to deny this thirty-five-year-old man any semblance of adult integrity.
Most often, “Being Alive” is performed as Bobby’s breakthrough. Finally, and at the last minute, he stops playing emotional games and gets serious about settling down. Urged on by the voices (in his mind?) of his married friends, Bobby starts, though, by scorning the spousal bond: “What do you get?” He worries that if someone holds him too close they are bound to hurt him too deep. He fears drowning in the dark tangle of someone else’s life. But in the final refrain, he reverses course: “Somebody crowd me with love.” What he once feared, he now embraces. What he long spurned, he now pursues. It’s a petition—a prayer—a demand. In its closing lines, the song pivots one last time. Instead of seeking it, Bobby now offers love: “Somebody let me come through, / I’ll always be there.” He ends the song, and the show, as the kiddo who isn’t a kid anymore.
So state the lyrics. The music, however, demurs. The images in “Being Alive” convey openness—lowering your guard, letting someone in, needing too much—but their sound is closed and tight. Even when the melody climbs in crescendo, it reaches the top reluctantly, hauling itself up the scale, note by hard-won note. The final ascent to the high G, unusual in a Sondheim song, can be painful to the ear. When Bobby moves from an embittered to a hallowed point of view, the music—by design—refuses to follow him. The too-predictable key change adds the expected intensity; still, it’s the same old tune.
Each year, I caution my students not to make “Being Alive” sound too polished. And each year, they ignore me. There is value, I tell them, in giving the song a wrenching sound, because it’s true, and unapologetically true, to the hard work of intimacy. After all, what Bobby is calling for is not anything pleasant. Not at all. When he cries out for someone to sit in his chair—to be as close to him as he is to himself—it’s not to ease his burdens, but to make them bearable. It’s not to shelter from the world’s harshness, but to endure it together. Love isn’t there to make our lives less frightening and more agreeable. It’s there, if we can find it, and then hold on to it, to give us more life: “To help us survive / Being alive.”
The wisdom of Bobby’s words is undoubted. What’s doubtful is whether he actually believes them. “Being Alive” could certainly be a liberating moment of triumph—that, indeed, is the standard view of the song. But it could likewise be another instance of Bobby trapped in pathetic self-delusion: he thinks that he’s learned his lesson, but he hasn’t. More cynically still, Bobby might only be performing his readiness for love (remember, “Barcelona” showed us how gifted an actor he is), delivering his aria of falsehood so convincingly that his married friends stop badgering him about getting married.
Who can say? Bobby’s hardly been a reliable source of his own biography. So why, at the last minute, should we trust him on this crucial matter? “Being Alive” was not Sondheim’s first, or even second, choice for the show’s final song. He thought it was a dramatic “cop-out,” a change of heart so abrupt that no audience would find it credible. Cop-out or not, it’s there to be sung. And everyone who sings “Being Alive” must decide for themselves whether it’s the most heartfelt, the most deluded, or the most fraudulent moment in Company.
But I’m not sure that we must decide. By this, I don’t mean that we shouldn’t be involved in his song. We absolutely should be—that’s why we’re there. Our involvement, though, might not require us to discern Bobby’s motives. Nor does it depend upon our feeling any heightened compassion for him. Michael Bennett recalled that Dean Jones, the original Bobby, was effective in the role, although he played it for only a few weeks, precisely because he never bid for the audience’s sympathy. He stood, rather, at a cool remove. His Bobby didn’t have time to deal with our feelings because he was too busy dealing with his own.
In this voyeuristic way, Bobby becomes the archetypal lonely New Yorker, a figure glimpsed through his apartment window but never really known. He’s less a person than a parable. Like a parable, he teaches through his story. Indeed, he exists solely so that we may learn from his story. What we learn is to be alive in the time of our life. Here’s how: Need someone too much. Know someone too well. Crowd them with love. Force them to care. And always, even though you’re frightened, come through.
Perhaps, then, the worthiest response we can bring to Company is neither to admire it nor to solve its riddles, but rather to let it work on us. Let it have its way with us. It may well be that the story unfolds in a flash in Bobby’s mind; but in our minds, it can unfold at leisure. So instead of hoping that Bobby will make himself whole, let us hope it for ourselves. Instead of wanting loneliness to be banished from his life, let us resolve to banish it from ours. Above all, let us do what Bobby never does: make a wish, and not just at birthday parties, on our own behalf.
Find out more about How Sondheim Can Change Your Life—and pre-order/order—by clicking here, or by clicking here if you’re in the UK.
Richard has also kindly shared the book’s table of contents exclusively with Sondheim Hub readers—another tantalizing glimpse of what’s to come:
