How Sondheim Can Change Your Life, by Richard Schoch

It provides insights and different perspectives on the themes, characters, and staging of many of Sondheim‘s works. I have had a quick look at the Company section in a bookstore, and it analyzes this, the most wistful of all Sondheim musical, beautifully. Starting with Elaine Stritch’s famous ‘Ladies who lunch’ recording sessions, it makes an insightful claim that Bobb(y/ie)’s WASPy friends – other than Joanne, who’s too drunk to care and finally opens the ‘stuck door’ – actually (consciously or unconsciously) want/need Bobb(y/ie) frozen in amber, in a state of stasis, in a weird, psychologically stunted relationship.