{"id":1673,"date":"2018-10-22T12:59:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T11:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1673"},"modified":"2018-10-22T12:59:10","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T11:59:10","slug":"propwatch-the-balloons-in-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2018\/10\/propwatch-the-balloons-in-company.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the balloons in Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When your life is a perplexity \u2013 because your friends are needy-bossy, your cute boys aren\u2019t quite right, your choices are urgent but confused \u2013 the last thing you need is balloons. Specifically, huge silver balloons bumping along behind you and reminding you how old you are.<\/p>\n

Bobbie (Rosalie Craig), heroine of Marianne Elliott\u2019s gloriously rethought version of Sondheim\u2019s Company<\/a>,<\/em> hoists herself into her New York apartment on her 35th birthday, a bottle of Jack Daniel\u2019s in her bag and a too-big 35 trailing behind in balloon form. She considers parking the balloon outside, but why announce your first midlife crisis, so she grouchily ushers it in to bob around. Later, she\u2019ll wedge it under the table, where it sulks disconsolate and upside down. Later still, as her long red night of the soul becomes a disorienting dream out of Alice in Wonderland<\/em>, it\u2019ll swell and separate to squish against the apartment walls or shrink to a miniature. Only towards the very end of the evening will Bobbie exact long-delayed and satisfyingly stabby vengeance.<\/p>\n

Why are the balloons hideous? Because hideous they are, however classily their silver foil sheen works with Bunny Christie\u2019s<\/a> design palette of clean white and ice-blue neon, of red-haired, crimson-frocked Bobbie lost in a swirl of indigo smoke. As Sondheim\u2019s score insistently tick-tocks, as the wheels of Bobbie\u2019s social life spin on the spot, the balloons are an inflated mockery. 35: such an adult age. So why doesn\u2019t Bobbie (a male character in the 1970 original; making her female in this production brings everything into focus) feel like a grown-up? Is this the life she wants to lead? If not \u2013 what is<\/em> that life?<\/p>\n

Not talking about work<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where did Bobbie get her balloons? Didn\u2019t buy them herself, obviously. And if there\u2019s a gang of single friends who\u2019d play this kind of jape, we don\u2019t meet them. Must be work then. It\u2019s the kind of things bantersome colleagues would do.<\/p>\n

If so, it plays into Company<\/em>\u2019s weird reticence about the working world. In 1970, the guys seemed white collar, the women stayed home. I imagine Sondheim\u2019s original male Bobby on Madison Avenue, series 7 of Mad Men<\/em>, during the dog days of the three-martini lunch. Not talking about work because he didn\u2019t talk about much.<\/p>\n

But what does modern Bobbie actually do? And why doesn\u2019t she discuss it (beyond muttering about unspecified things she hoped to accomplish)? People talk work and money more than they talk love, especially if they\u2019re in living in a big city where everyone clings on by their fingertips. Sondheim is often good on the compulsion of work \u2013 showbiz graft in Follies,<\/em> baking and barbering in Sweeney Todd<\/em> \u2013 so if Bobbie doesn\u2019t expand on her middle-management, possibly corporate vibe, it suggests that her job is one more thing that doesn\u2019t call on her commitment or deliver satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Mid-decade is mid-puzzle<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your 35th. More of a pivot than a rite of passage, unlike the landmark zero-stopped birthdays. Mid-decade is mid-puzzle. You\u2019re not quite the person you were as you stepped into the decade. Or maybe you are, and you\u2019re not sure how to change.<\/p>\n

Like anyone acquainted with singlehood, I\u2019ve been a Bobbie. I didn\u2019t climb the corporate ladder or date hot air stewards, but did spend evenings playing third wheel on the tricycle of coupled friends. It\u2019s an odd position \u2013 are you there to reflect their contentment, or to bring relief from a less settled world? Are you audience or entertainment? Bobbie does both: shares bourbon and stories from the nights before, then watches as her crazy married friends bicker, break or tie themselves in knots. As she says after each cosy encounter, always with a different aghast intonation: \u2018Wow.\u2019<\/p>\n

Now I worry that I\u2019ve become part of one of these variously terrible couples. Please god not the pair who are sneakily competitive about diets and cut each other\u2019s stories off at the knees. Or the ones who patronise each other, or who infuriate each other with their jitters and calm. Honestly, there are no attractive couple models in Company.<\/em><\/p>\n

Patti LuPone\u2019s Joanne, laden with jokes and security, thinks of herself as a role model. She treats this female Bobbie as a trainee, a glitter-hearted snark monster in waiting. It\u2019s an appealing, if fearsome, dynamic. For years, my best friend was a Bobbie \u2013 smart and engaged, warmly worldly, partial to a drop of Jack D. And then, somehow, she became Joanne. Suddenly, the jokes were judgements, the smarts were smarting. It hurt to be with her. Perhaps it hurt to be her. That\u2019s the brilliantly sharp trajectory of Elliott\u2019s Company,<\/em> and it\u2019s why I wrote about LuPone\u2019s scathingly still, terrifyingly personal version of Ladies Who Lunch in my Sunday Times<\/em><\/a> review of the show \u2013 \u2018what began as gleeful complicity ends in a warning, as if LuPone were urging: it\u2019s too late for me, but save yourself.\u2019<\/p>\n

So, yeah, balloons. Hide them, hurl them out the door, stab them with whatever pointy object comes to hand. They\u2019re less a party favour than a portent, and sooner or later you\u2019ll have to deal with them.<\/p>\n

Photo by\u00a0Brinkhoff\/Moegenburg<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When your life is a perplexity \u2013 because your friends are needy-bossy, your cute boys aren\u2019t quite right, your choices are urgent but confused \u2013 the last thing you need is balloons. Specifically, huge silver balloons bumping along behind you and reminding you how old you are. Bobbie (Rosalie Craig), heroine of Marianne Elliott\u2019s gloriously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[569,542,322,321,46,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-marianne-elliott","9":"tag-musical","10":"tag-props","11":"tag-propwatch","12":"tag-sondheim","13":"tag-theatre","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions\/1675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}