You Could Drive A Person Crazy - Company revival

[@SuperPoisonoak]

I feel the instruments work perfectly, the girls have wonderful characterisation and use it like a second limb. It maintains it's tune and simply adds.

[@joshy_696]

2:20 I just love how when the blonde girl in the middle says ‘wasn’t good in bed’ looks so accusatory, and then when she plays her sax note she blows really hard. Idk why but it absolutely sends me every time x

[@solarprogeny6736]

That's why this version is my fave, every detail shows the three girls' frustration and the resulting annoyance

[@JennaQuiet]

1:01 love their tones as they're insulting him.

[@hibiscus_garlands]

Still the best version of this song's ad-lib insults

[@reubenfuchs2747]

So true^^

[@pruneauxyz]

I do like too the use of the instruments in this version . I agree they wonderfully translate Bobby's feelings as he remembers what we watch... Don't know about the rest of you, but each times i comment about Sondheim's work, i just can't find enough superlatives !!!

[@IamtheUke]

They don't use gay in anyform of insult. It actually sounds much better then the other lyrics. And makes much more sense if you are doing a modern take on the musical. Which is exactely what they are doing here.

[@solarprogeny6736]

I like this way more than the 2011 version.

[@CrazyDreemz]

i just met Kelly yesterday in LA @ Phantom. she is so sweet

[@keepthemusicplaying0]

Hahaha, great song!! Thanks for posting :-)

[@bluerisk]

If I could have seen it live...

[@robertmerker6117]

I did - it was!

[@MRxWONDERland]

its not negative to gays...its all about why he doesn't connect with them, and they're saying they'd understand if he was gay, but he's not so they don't him.

[@Trixblitzen]

Why is it that I feel pretty much exactly how these women describe Bobby...?

[@jorgesoto646]

wow!!!

[@sacredlunatic]

@tayneshia I disagree, about the instruments. This show is already designed to be presented as a slightly surreal trip through Bobby's mind and memory. The added surrealism of the instruments is easy to accept. In Sweeney Todd what I really want is to be totally caught up in the world that is being created and the instruments did nothing to further that. If anything they served to take me Out of the imagined world and make me more aware that I was in a theatre watching a play.

[@ggfanjase]

it's snappy and cute, I prefer it to the OBC TBH.

[@madmaxim3965]

The saxophone is a tough instrument and can turn against you if you aren't precise , while I'm not certain , I would guess that the girls were cast based on looks\voices and either had very little or no prior sax experience the director thinking "the basically only need to learn one song.." but throw in singing, some dancing and it puts slot of stress onto their saxophone playing. While this performance did give way to a fabulous rendition of "being alive" where bobby who hasn't played a instrument (cept a kazoo jokingly) gets his chance when he plays the piano for the final song. A moment that tied the whole instrument thing together and made a good metaphor as well. But in service of that final payoff some other numbers did suffer

[@mzdebbee]

Art................to Create.............I wonder if that person above would tell the creator of the Universe to create balls........for him to play with instead of typing negative comments...such a waste of energy... much love to anyone that darezzzzzzz to bee ... as Shakez pear.....Sayzzzzzzz Lovzzzzzzzzzzzzz The bEEEE and BEE Crazy the BEST of THE better are!!!!

[@solarprogeny6736]

How did you manage to sneak in a phone in the nursing home?

[@nycruise]

"Not a person's bag" may be totally irrelevant today - but then again, so is this whole musical. Like that other '70s work of Sondheim, "Follies", in trying to be "hip" for its time, this musical is hopelessly ground in its era. The business with couple smoking pot for the first time, the fact that the couples are all hopelessly hetero, the fact that Bobby is chasing 3 women, one of whom is a "stewardess". And hey "fag" was offensive back then too - that's what made this musical "edgy".

[@solarprogeny6736]

Believe it or not flight attendants are not an extinct species

[@MrMrMrprofessor]

This comment did not age well at all. Also, flight attendants are...still around today. So I'm not sure how April's profession dates the show.

[@carriewhite410]

They've done the whole instruments-controlled-by-actors things in two Sondheim revivals....I mean, with Sweeney Todd it seemed to work, but this is a little different...

[@oliverdelica2289]

Huh it's the opposite to me

[@MrMrMrprofessor]

I think it works WAY better with Company than Sweeney. Company is a much more intimate show than Sweeney Todd, so the smaller size of the "orchestra" works well with the material without sacrificing the sound of the music (the Company cast is also larger than that of the Sweeney revival, with 14 Actor/Musicians (though Bobby only plays at the end) as opposed to just 10 in Sweeney). Company's more contemporary score sounds good, even with a small amount of musicians. Sweeney's score, meanwhile, is supposed to be grand, operatic, and played by a full orchestra. When you only have a handful of musicians playing those songs, it sounds very thin and watered down when a section written for an orchestra is being played by like...anywhere from 3 to 8 people, depending on the song. The concept worked very well in Company. The use of the saxophones in Drive a Person Crazy is funny and effective, and replacing the dance duos in Side by Side by Side with musical duets was a genius idea. They also use it to further Robby's character, having him avoid playing any real instruments (save for a kazoo) until his epiphany in Being Alive, where he finally joins in by playing the piano. The concept and the style effectively bolster the story and thematic elements. I'm not quite sure, thematically, how having the actors play instruments ties into Sweeney at all. At the very least, it's not done with the same care and thoughtfulness that was used with the Company revival. This is not to say the Sweeney revival is terrible, it's just the actors as musicians concept worked very well thematically with Company and felt more or less like a gimmick for Sweeney. As a director, John Doyle works best when he can meld his small scale concepts with the material. It worked very well for Company, a show with a small narrative. It does NOT work as well for shows like Sweeney Todd or Pacific Overtures, shows with large scale, sweeping narratives with huge casts. Not to say it can't work, but Doyle often seems like he's trying to force the shows to work with his concept, rather than the other way around. The concept should be there to serve the material. If you try to force the material to work with a pre-determined concept, no matter how ill-fitting, it's going to create some problems.

[@ManfredDeJesus]

I don't like the idea of the saxophones, the girls seem shackled to them, they kinda get in the way of the number. Flat performance too

[@wgfinley]

I tend to agree, at first I thought the instruments are clever but this song in particular suffers from it. There's a few others as well that just sound plain amateurish. While I love this cast and the performances I think the instruments were a gimmick I could do without, give me the professional musicians and this cast and I'm in heaven.

[@ShuffleboardJerk]

Sounds bad

[@Dan_G.R.S.]

I despise this revival, every single number is the worst it could possibly have been. This one hurts even more because the girls are great at singing, if only they didn't have a terrible director, a useless gimmick with the instruments and a non existent choreography

[@nycruise]

Ugh! I appreciate creativity and new ways of interpreting things - but UGH! Some may like the sax instead of vocal "doos" - OK - but the changing of lyrics to be PC when Sondheim himself is unabashedly GAY is INSULTING (to US GAYS!).

[@solarprogeny6736]

Just because Sondheim is gay doesn't mean a female character can use a slur. She's not gay. She's not Sondheim. Ridiculous argumentation.