Keeping in mind that he was well aware of the presence of the camera—as was everyone during the cast recording session for the Broadway hit Company—lyricist-composer Stephen Sondheim comes off as the kindest, gentlest genius you can imagine in Original Cast Album: Company. Whether it’s softly negotiating the proper pronunciation of “bubbi” in “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” or kindly sympathizing with Elaine Stritch’s exhaustion while she’s trying to knock out a late-late-late-night delivery of “The Ladies Who Lunch,” you get the sense that Sondheim actually cares about the performers first and the performance second. The trick, of course, is that’s how he gets 110-percent commitment to the material. Directed by legendary documentarian D.A. Pennebaker, whose prowling camera is constantly swerving and zooming in search of the perfect, unguarded moment—no easy task in a room full of people who are very much “on.”
(2/3/2022)
