Sondheim 2008: Little "Company" on the Prairie

What can I say about Stephen Sondheim that hasn’t already been said? He was generous, he was brilliant, he did the lyrics of West Side Story in his 20s. I’ve been to plays, listened to the cast recordings, watched the documentaries. I recently saw tik tik . . . BOOM on Netflix, where he encouraged playwright Jonathan Larson, who went on to write Rent. 

And then a few days later, Sondheim died, productive and convivial to the end. 

When I think of Sondheim, my mind instantly goes to a special time in my life. That’s the autumn of 2008. Everything was in flux. The financial industry and the housing market were collapsing, a political campaign pitted Barack Obama against John McCain, and I was leaving a job as a writer with a New York law firm to return to the friendly confines of the accounting industry. A new relationship was moving in the right direction.

Between jobs in late October, I took a vacation in Texas. I planned to see relatives in Austin and San Antonio, then cruise the backroads of the state. A big attraction: To see my nephew Tyler Wallach perform the lead role of Robert in Sondheim’s "Company." I couldn’t wait to see Tyler take the stage in this production by the theater and dance department of Texas State University in San Marcos. I had last watched him perform in "Godspell" in 2001, which officially made me a groupie. The personal connection made Company all the more compelling. Coming at that moment of multiple transitions in life, Company struck me time and again, as with the lyrics of Being Alive:

Somebody crown me with love.

Somebody force me to care.

Somebody let me come through,

I'll always be there,

As frightened as you,

To help us survive,

Being alive.

Being alive.

Being alive!

I saw the play with Tyler’s parents at the outdoor Glade Theater. That night of Company mesmerized me. I thought, I knew that star when he was a baby! But he’d grown up and had the singing and acting chops to do Sondheim. Afterward we got together back stage for photos, then I rolled on up I-35 to Austin.

Backstage at the Glade.

My photos map the rest of the trip. After connecting with cousins, I headed up to Crawford, Texas, site President Bush’s ranch. In the days before the election, this was my chance to see the place before he left office. I picked up souvenirs in one of the shops in town, then meandered back. I paused to take photos of election signs along the way in whistlestop towns like McGregor. I also visited family cemeteries in San Antonio and Gonzales. Before I left for home in Connecticut, I gobbled down barbeque at the world-famous Kreuz Market in Lockhart with my late cousin Abbi Michelson.

Bush country, Crawford.

Along the way, Company stayed with me. Of all the Sondheim I’ve heard over the years, Company had the biggest impact. I'm thinking of Being Alive, The Little Things You Do Together, Have I Got a Girl For You, Marry Me a Little and the anthem Ladies Who Lunch. They’re great songs and never so entrancing as when I heard them at the Glade Theater.

That crisis vacation had to end. I flew from Austin to LaGuardia, and on to Stamford, Connecticut. I started the new job, I voted in the election, I watched my retirement savings tank, I saw the “for lease” signs spring up everywhere. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, two firms where I had had job interviews, collapsed. In 2009 I took a pay cut and went to a four-day work week as my employer scrambled to avoid layoffs in the Great Recession. The new relationship moved ahead. Tyler, meanwhile, moved to New York to pursue the acting life; before long I took my son and girlfriend to see him perform in “The Drowsy Chaperone” in Brooklyn.

Friday Night Lights in McGregor.

I always looked back fondly on that 2008 adventure of a trip. I like to think Stephen Sondheim was keeping me, well, “company”  as I barreled through the rolling hills a long, long way from Broadway. So thanks, Mr. Sondheim, for all the great theater, and thanks Company and Tyler for making the magic happen when I was on the road in Texas.

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, Prophet

 I recently read The Passenger, a book written immediately after Kristallnacht in 1938 by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. Drafted in only a few weeks, the book shows the terrible pressures on Jews as the Nazis racheted up their repression in the 1930s. Boschwitz managed to reach England, where he was deported to Australia as an enemy alien. In 1942 the ship returning him and 361 other passengers to England was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Atlantic. They all died. Boschwitz was 27 years old.

The book rings with passages that read like prophecy about the fate of the Jews, and also their tormentors. Boschwitz's gift allowed him to penetrate the near and far futures with unsettling accuracy. The main character, Otto Silbermann, is reduced to riding German trains as he frantically tries to recover money from his business, leave the country and avoid returning to his ransacked home. 

Boschwitz writes about what he imagines as the end result:

They'll slowly undress us first and then kill us, so our clothes won't get bloody and our banknotes won't get damaged. These days murder is performed economically.

In another passage, Boschwitz uncannily foresees the fate in store for many Germans:

Silbermann resumed his pacing. When he was twenty meters away from the SS man he again turned in his direction Am I really more anxious than other people? he asked himself. How would an SS man feel if he were forced to move about inside a Bolshevik state. And what if he had some additional marking, some feature that made him stick out like poor Fritz Stein?

These thoughts allowed him to feel his fear was justified. It was also comforting to imagine his enemies encountering their own day of dread, and Silbermann, who had always viewed the party of expropriation with disapproval and disgust, now found himself almost sympathizing with it, as his possible avenger. The idea was tremendously satisfying, and he clung to it for some time.

From a safe distance, Silbermann darted a glance at the unsuspecting man in uniform, as though to say: just wait, this is a long way from being over.

The Passenger is a short read with sharply drawn episodes. With this revised edition out, I can only mourn the loss of this great talent. Still, his book will live forever as a testament to a hinge point in history.