Wednesday, September 15, 2021
‘Sweating out the notes’: the stunning portrait of Sondheim’s Company by DA Pennebaker
Stephen Sondheim | The Guardian: After a six-week tryout in Boston and a week of previews, Stephen Sondheim’s Company opened on Broadway in April 1970. But after the nerves of opening night, another hurdle came the following weekend: the original cast recording of the musical. Rather than spend Sunday recuperating, the cast and musicians gathered for a tense 15-hour studio session to create the album.
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I happen to have watched this documentary not just on one occasion, but on multiple. It's one of my favorite bits of film, so it was really lovely to read this writeup of it. The documentary really is a wonderful behind-the-scenes peek at the process of recording a cast album, and does an excellent job at showing us a bit of all the colorful characters involved. It's great to hear it finally got a Bluray release, because the actual documentary is pretty hard to find outside of some clips on Youtube and a release on The Criterion Channel, although that's not a super big streaming service. For anyone interested in Sondheim, or Company, or musical theatre in general, this is a fantastic watch, so I'm glad it's becoming more accessible for wider audiences. There's also the Documentary Now! episode that parodies it, with John Mulaney taking the part of Sondheim himself, which is absolutely hilarious. Although I have to say, the idiosyncrasies of these musical theatre legends can often be even funnier to watch.
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