Original Cast Album - Company
by D.A. Pennebaker
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Beth Howland, Charles Braswell, George Coe, George Furth, Thomas Z. ShepherdDirector: D.A. Pennebaker
Brand: New Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 58 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-01-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Video Group
Movie Reviews of Original Cast Album - Company
Movie Review: A Must-Have for Musical Theatre Fans!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an amazing film documenting the making of the original cast album for Company -- a marathon recording session ending with the incomparable Elaine Stritch striving for the definitive take on "The Ladies Who Lunch." If you're a musical theatre fan, you'll love to see the working relationship among the actors, Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince and others. And if you every wondered how much hard work and dedication goes into this kind of performance...!
Summary of Original Cast Album - Company
Called a "monumental achievement" by the Los Angeles Times, Company is the extraordinary documentary capturing the explosive recording session for Stephen Sondheim's landmark musical. On May 3, 1970, just a few days after its triumphant Broadway opening,While a proposed series of original cast recording sessions for documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker (Don't Look Back) never materialized, Original Cast Album: Company survives as the first and only entry, and it was fortuitous that its subject was the 1970 musical Company. Groundbreaking in its use of a series of vignettes rather than a conventional plot, it was also one of the earliest major works for composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, the most important figure in musical theater over the last quarter-century. Unlike films, theater productions rarely have a permanent record, so a musical is preserved for posterity by the cast recording. This puts all the pressure on the recording session, as cast member Susan Browning explains during the recording of "You Could Drive a Person Crazy": a live performance can be imperfect, but "this is different. This is the definitive, it's the end-all and the be-all of this song, and... God, that could drive a person crazy!"
For this film, Pennebaker and his crew took three hand-held cameras into the studio and filmed the singers, the orchestra, and the control booth, then condensed the 18.5-hour recording session into a fast-moving 60 minutes. You can see the intensity and sheer enjoyment on the faces of the cast, and record producer Thomas Z. Shepard, show producer-director Harold Prince (both frequent Sondheim collaborators), and Sondheim (a notorious perfectionist) become alternately exhilarated and exasperated as they listen and try to solve various problems. Other interesting moments include an emphasis on the orchestra rather than the lead vocal in "Another Hundred People," and Elaine Stritch's exhausting take after take of "The Ladies Who Lunch." This is a rare look at an important moment in Broadway history, and obviously, it's highly recommended for Broadway fans. --David Horiuchi
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