Side by Side by Side: The Last Fun Thing

Seeing “Company” with my best friend Juan

When I talk about Company, which I am wont to do, I have a spiel, a semi-lucid reverie that, at this point, I know by heart. I make sure to mention its highly industrialized, mechanized New York world; its pleasantly conceptual presentation, making Bobby more of an idea of a person than a person; its abstraction of marriage and monogamy and relationships, giving it an outsider looking in feeling; that its queerness comes down to that abstraction of heteronormativity. But the one part of my reading of Company which is most important to me, which perhaps resonates most deeply with me and seduced me in the first place, is its understanding and interrogation of the space that exists between people: physically, temporally, emotionally.

In Company, everyone is always together, and Bobby seldom gets a moment alone. At his birthday party, in the various apartments of his friends, on his dates with his girlfriends. And yet, even compared to the parts of the musical where he is on stage with no one else around him, he seems alone all the same, isolated with everyone else so close, yet so far away. He reactive and reactionary, but one can’t help but wonder if it’s barely a thread that’s keeping him from receding beyond sight. He’s thankful for his friends including him in their thoughts…