#company 2018

[starkiddreamcasting]

June 2022 Dreamcasts

A list for all of the Starkid dreamcasts I made in June 2022. It feels good to return to consistently making dreamcasts after my month-long hiatus, so please look at any dreamcasts you’d have missed and be sure to reblog with any comments to raise my serotonin levels

1. Starkid Head Over Heals

2. Starkid Company (2018)

3. Starkid La Cage aux Folles (revised)

4. Starkid Falsettos (revised)

5. Starkid Once Upon A Mattress

6. Starkid Diana the Musical

7. Starkid Six (revised)

8. Starkid Bridges of Madison County

9. Starkid Bare: A Pop Opera (revised)

10. Starkid Glory Days

11. Starkid Addams Family (revised)

12. Starkid As You Like It

13. Starkid How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying

14.  Starkid Catch Me if you Can

Make sure to leave any requests of future dreamcasts!

[sapphire-rose08]

Hey Bridgerton fan/theater nerds, how come I just learned the Jonathan Bailey (Anthony Bridgerton) was Jamie in 2018 West End revival.

We have literally a cast recording of it. I swear no one has said anything about it.

[thegeekyartist]

I finally saw the new genderbent version of Company and I have some thoughts... (the Let Bobbie Be a Lesbian essay)

I want to preface all of this by saying that I love this musical and there was so so much of it that I enjoyed (which I'll get to). I LOVE the move to make Bobby/ie a woman. I think that it opens the door to a lot of incredible interpretations of an already fairly open-ended text.

However, so much was lost because of the other changes made to the text to force it to work.

The new lyrics felt so clunky. ("Bobbie really ought to have a fella"???? Why not "husband"?? Just ugh.) There are also new nicknames for her in the Company motif that I still can't figure out. I also find it odd that they chose to have the husbands sing Poor Baby and the wives sing Have I Got a Guy for You. Not that I necessarily think it was bad, just that I didn't think it was necessary. The lyric changes in those were strange as well (for example, why can't the husbands be "the only tenderness she's ever known"? Why change that to "comfort"?). I can't remember all of them but there were plenty of moments like that that just felt disjointed with the change.

They also removed the implications that Peter was gay - which I totally forgot about until my partner reminded me. If memory serves there's a little bit of flirting with Bobby in the original (?), but they could have mostly kept those lines and implied that he and Susan had divorced to form a more queerplatonic union, a look into a different type of lifestyle for Bobbie to consider - which leads me to my main point.

So much of this clunkiness could have been avoided if they just let Bobbie be interested in women. Assuming that this version of the musical is set in the present, Bobbie is a late millenial who grew up in a time when casual homophobia was *everywhere* and being out and proud was still very taboo, with possibly the only exposure to queer living being some very imperfect queer representation in media. She watched gay marriage become legalized. It's still NEW. She has so much internalized homophobia to work through, and I think that could play a lot into her avoidance of committing to someone and settling down.

This also brings life back into the girl/boyfriends, and how each of them gives Bobbie a different look into what her life could be. Look at Martha/P.J! Martha would be an excellent bit of lesbian representation -- a way for Bobbie to experience a world in which she's allowed to be loudly queer and part of the pulse of the city. Kathy is an example of a queer woman happily falling into a traditional lifestyle, one who just wants to act like and be treated like people in heterosexual couples. April is a little tricky (I actually loved turning her into a self-aware himbo vs. ditzy and naive woman). But! Given April's wounded butterfly story, she could be interpreted as another baby gay trying to accept who she is and heal from previous relationships that didn't treat her the way she deserved. She's someone who already decided she wants something more, someone who IS ready to dive in, which is why she's so clingy at the end of their scene (Barcelona).

I also HATED that Joanne's come-on to Bobbie at the end of the play was changed to her offering up Larry instead. If Bobbie has spent the whole play struggling to come to terms with her sexuality as well as a desire for more than just physical intimacy ("Who will I take care of?") I think this makes Joanne's "I just did someone a huge favor" line even more poignant. Bobbie has fully accepted not only herself, but that she wants love and companionship for real.

So why not just make Bobbie bisexual? Keep some of the changes but allow for some of the original text to return? I appreciate the forethought to avoid Bobbie falling into the indecisive bisexual stereotype, however! I think a major part of Bobbie's character is that she is terrified of making the wrong decision, and what those decisions mean for the life she's currently living and (mostly) content with. There's such a huge level of biphobia in our society (yes, including lgbtqia spaces) that we insist that if a bisexual woman marries a woman, she's actually just a lesbian. And if a bisexual woman marries a man, well then obviously she's just straight and saying she's bi for the attention. This could be a huge barrier for Bobbie to settle down, that fear that an entire part of her identity will disappear with it. While I don't necessarily think this is a better reading than a fully lesbian Bobbie, I do think there could be interesting changes to explore there, as well.

What I will say!!!!!!! Is that there were plenty of things that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I think changing "Tick-Tock" from a ballet while Bobbie and April/Andy have sex into a fun nightmare of Bobbies speed-running a traditional marriage while our Bobbie was forced to watch was *awesome*. I almost wanted even more Bobbies running around to make her feel even more suffocated.

I also loved swapping Jenny and David's lines, making David the doting, nervous husband while Jenny is this woman who has lost her individuality to being nothing but wife/mother. Watching him get stoned and climb over the set and struggle to say "bitch" was hilarious.

AND ABOUT THAT SET!

One of my favorite things about Company is that it's a concept musical -- there's no set timeline, the plot is entirely comprised of unrelated vignettes. I think they could have played WAY more into this using the set, but let me start by saying I LOVED the grayscale. I loved that it gave everything this manufactured, fake feeling. And seeing Bobbie's bright red outfit in contrast was so nice and striking. Plus, seeing how small and crowded Bobbie's apartment was on such a large stage was an incredible visual (when the whole cast squeezed in for the first "Company"?? awesome)

I was GAGGED in the very beginning when Bobbie was pulling on all the doors of her apartment and couldn't escape, only for the set to shift and move so that when she could finally open a door, it led right into Harry and Sarah's apartment. Why didn't they do more of that??? I wanted so badly for them to always have Bobbie in this forced unreality of "how did I get here? Have I always been here?". Then each time she does finally escape a scene she'd find herself stuck in another one. I feel like that tension could have built beautifully throughout until the final "Company" motif when she finally breaks and interrupts them (Being Alive). It's not like they *didn't* do this (for example, the Peter and Susan's balcony lowers on her in a way that shows she wasn't expecting it), but it could have been a much, much bigger part of the overall theme had they really pushed it.

I did also really like the repeating 35's in the background of all the scenes, like it was a constant reminder for Bobbie that she couldn't escape. I wish there was even more of that, too (the balloons getting bigger was a vv nice touch, for example).

I also appreciated that in the scenes where the songs are sung as asides (Poor Baby, The Little Things You Do Together), Bobbie gets to interact with the singers while the rest of the cast is frozen. That's a great change, and once again plays into that idea that Bobbie feels stuck and is trying to escape/work through all these issues in her head throughout the play.

*************************

I know this got long, I guess my point is that with all the fun, incredible changes they made (The Amy/Jaime scene was hilarious. And I didn't even TALK ABOUT all the hidden passages in that set!!), they fell short of making the choices that would have really caused this interpretation to shine. An issue I always have with Company is that I never *really* root for Bobby. Every time he makes a poor decision it's like "well, there he goes again". I think keeping a lot of the changes, changing Bobby into Bobbie, and allowing her to be a lesbian trying to come to grips with her sexuality while also giving herself permission to open up her heart to what a serious relationship could be, would make this a perfect re-imagining of the original text.

[figurecollection]

Miku Hatsune (Snow ver.) 1/7 Scale by Good Smile Company, of Vocaloid

[theartsofrust]

[escapismthroughfilm]

⋆˚｡⋆ ⋆˚｡⋆⋆˚｡Suspiria (2018) dir. Luca Guadagnino⋆˚｡⋆ ⋆˚｡⋆⋆˚

[chipistrate]

Yknow if they just didn't add dates to the tapes I don't think the lore of the roblox game would be as bad

[argisthebulwark]

cannot stop thinking about that guy who said the TES6 announcement was forced by rabid fans with 'pitchforks and torches'. brother as far as i'm aware skyrim fans were still fixated on skyrim. methinks you were just trying to divert attention from the shitstorm that was the 76 launch.

[jbaileyfansite]

“To see people really REALLY respond well to the fact that me and Alex were on stage representing, felt really emotional, I was really proud.”

Jonathan Bailey interviewed by WhatsonStageAwards at the Opening Night for Company [x]

[yutaslaugh]

I SUBMITTED A JOB APPLICATION IM SO PROUD OF ME 😭😭😭

[bunnyb34r]

Why do people pound on the door so aggressively 😭 like you owe them money

And then you open it and it's like a girl scout aggsgsgdgdgd

[luigisvampirebae]

Your daily reminder that Nelson Peltz is (allegedly) only trying to get a seat on the Disney board just so he can make sure his daughter, Nicola, gets a lead role in one of their films (his eyes are set on Marvel even though Nicola had a very brief one-off role in an episode of the Inhumans TV series).

[theartsofrust]

[bomnun]

thinking abt how I first heard a bit of æspa spicy I kinda enjoyed it, then I saw a mutual saying it sounds like 2018 paper company bad and…1. they’re right 2. that’s why I like it

[leftpanty]

Big things on the way (trying to singlehandedly convince crunchyroll and fathom events to put on a pmmm marathon event to promote the new movie like they did with yuri on ice back when adolescence was still supposed to happen)