Wavelength
Wavelength is broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm, on Fridays at 2:30pm and repeats on Mondays at 5am.Company
DJ Hybridist aka Sandra Cross presents the second of a series around Stephen Sondheim, this week focussing on the play Company. First seen on TV with the screening of the Donmar’s 1995 production directed by Sam Mendes and starring Adrian Lester as the lead character, Bobby, DJ was captivated by the final scene in which Lester dances like Gene Kelly and sings the life-affirming, ‘Being Alive’. This led back to the original 1970 Broadway cast recording and the film of this by the documentarian D.A. Pennebaker in which the iconic Elaine Stritch sings ‘Ladies who Lunch’ with biting scorn and contempt. This is set against the discovery of Pamela Myers who delivers a coruscating ‘Another 100 People’ a song describing the near impossibility of finding a mate in the metropolis. In his book ‘Finishing the Hat’ Sondheim describes how he came across this quote by Chekhov: ‘If you’re afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.’ ‘Luckily’, says Sondheim, ‘I didn’t come across that quote ’til long after Company had been produced. Chekhov said in seven words what it took George (Furth, the writer of the book Company) and me two years and two and a half hours to say less profoundly. If I’d read that sentence, I’m not sure we would have dared to write the show, and we might have been denied the exhilarating experience of what he said, for ourselves.’