I've always wanted to like The Company because it deals with many things I've often thought about life and marriage. The lyrics are clever and the music is arranged well, but it has always left a bad taste in my mouth. I never realized why until I saw Kurt Hummel sing "Being Alive" on Glee.
My immediate reaction was to praise it. Not the performance necessarily, but the idea.
Glee is an over-indulgent, self-gratifying masturbatory fantasy for anyone -- gays, nerds, the handicapped, etc. -- who have ever felt stepped on and mistreated by society. It is very juvenile in this regard (what used to be called "bourgeois"), but the show makes no bones about that. It says "Yeah this is infantile, but so what?"
We know in real life there's very little chance that even one, let alone two, kids from the same midwestern high school are getting into Nyada, or that Kurt would increase his chances of getting in after being rejected by reapplying without demonstrating any evidence of or interest in improvement.
The fantasy becomes even more absurd when we are expected to believe the strictest of college deans would suddenly change her mind and let him not only try again, but do so in front of attendees to what is presumably one of the school's most prestigious showcases of the year. But this mandala of gyro-scoping absurdity is the show's genius, and is the secret to its success.
So when Chris Colfer sings "Being Alive," it's less important why his character picked it and more important that the show is continuing to emphasize absurdity over reality while also making a mockery (however unintentional) of folks like Sondheim who take themselves far too seriously. The emptiness of Sondheim's original story is upstaged by a dreamy-eyed gay teen singing about why marriage is important. Imagine that.
The fact that the song has more significance when sung by a gay teenager on a melodramatic, farsical primetime network television show serves to summarize -- again, probably unintentionally -- Sondheim's play in a word: trite.
If, like Glee, The Company didn't take itself too seriously, that might make up for a story about urban socialites whining, as the Glee-sters often do, about trivial nonsense. The play should really be called, First World Problems: The Musical.
It's not that Sondheim isn't good at what he does, it's that he has nothing profound to say (at least on the basis of this musical). And for someone who is considered a God on Broadway, he is very touchy about criticism.
He's something of a spoiled child, and if you DO think he has something meaningful to say, then I challenge you to ask the girl who made your blouse in a Malaysian sweatshop what "being
alive" means to her. She will probably say "clean drinking water and
mosquito nets."
If you show me a man who is well-fed, well-educated, who is safe, employed and loved by his friends and family, then I'll show you a man who's pretty Goddam alive already. If he is unhappy, then his place is not in a serious Broadway play, but in the fantasy of a little boy.
