Company premiered on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on April 26, 1970, with book by George Furth and direction by Harold Prince. The published text appeared from Random House. Bobby is a thirty-five-year-old bachelor in Manhattan whose circle of married friends celebrate his birthday while individually revealing the compromises, disappointments, and surprising comforts of their marriages.
The show has no linear plot — it is structured as a series of vignettes, each exploring a different couple’s relationship, with Bobby as observer and occasional participant. The innovation was structural: no other musical had abandoned narrative entirely in favor of thematic organization. Prince and Sondheim called it a “concept musical” — a term that entered the theatrical vocabulary permanently.
Sondheim’s score matches the structure: songs that function as character studies (“The Ladies Who Lunch,” a devastating portrait of an alcoholic society wife), philosophical arguments (“Being Alive,” Bobby’s final acceptance that commitment is worth its pain), and comic set-pieces (“Getting Married Today,” a bride’s escalating panic). The 2022 gender-swapped London revival (with Bobby becoming Bobbie) demonstrated the material’s flexibility.
Collecting Company
First edition (Random House, New York, 1970): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Original cast recording (Columbia, 1970): LP.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $60–$150
- Original cast LP, sealed: $30–$80
- Signed by Sondheim: $200–$500