Do Bobby Need to Be Openly Gay Stephen Sondheim’s Revised ‘Company’?

Contents:

• DO BOBBY NEED TO BE OPENLY GAY STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S REVISED ‘COMPANY’?
• 'BIGGT LOSER' TRAER BOB HARPER REVEALS HE'S GAY
• ‘X-MEN’ CHARACTER ICEMAN OUTED AS GAY

DO BOBBY NEED TO BE OPENLY GAY STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S REVISED ‘COMPANY’?

Has anyone ever thought Bobby might be secretly gay?

I was thkg about Bobby today and realized that a lot of his characteristics make sense for a young gay guy the closet. Yterday afternoon was revealed that Stephen Sondheim (along wh director John Tiffany) has reworked his classic mil edy, Company, wh a major plot twist: Bobby, the central, sgle character, who spends the urse of the show alg wh his own abily to m, is gay.

'BIGGT LOSER' TRAER BOB HARPER REVEALS HE'S GAY

” It’s an tertg revisn, as crics have long argued that Bobby was a closeted homosexual the first place. There’s not much the text that suggts Bobby is gay, although people have certaly wonred: why else uldn’t a handsome sgle man settle down? “We don’t al wh gay marriage as such, but this versn lets explore the issu of mment a h way.

”Perhaps that’s why Sondheim is on board wh this openly gay productn — which will see a readg at Roundabout Theater Company this week, featurg Daniel Evans, Bobby Steggert, Michael Urie, and Alan Cummg, who will liver Joanne’s famo 11 o’clock number.

It’s promisg that this Company will be actually reworked to ment, possibly, on the gay experience; while marriage is an optn, ’s not the only optn, and generatns of men who were told was not a possibily have surely seen their social and romantic sensibili affected by what mastream society saw as the norm. To be homosexual surely meant somethg different 1970 than do today, too, which cric Jam Jorn poted out when he reviewed the New York Philharmonic’s all-star stagg of the mil 2011 (Neil Patrick Harris starred as Bobby) for Capal New York. When discsg a major lyril change the song “You Can Drive a Person Crazy, ” sung by Bobby’s three jilted lovers — “I uld unrstand a person if a person was a fag” turned to “I uld unrstand a person if he happened to be gay” when Roundabout revived the show 1995 — Jorn suggts that Bobby, who very well might be homosexual, wouldn’t be seen as such bee of the many layers of stigma attached to beg queer:Back the 1960s, the nventnal wisdom was that some men had sex wh other men ocsnally, and other men maybe fantasized om time to time about same-sex actn, but none of the guys were what you would ll homosexual.

‘X-MEN’ CHARACTER ICEMAN OUTED AS GAY

A homosexual, on the other hand, was seen as a pletely different breed, a “boy the band” hairdrser or an terr signer or an opera queen wh some sort of twisted secret sire to be a woman, or at least to be treated like a woman by some big, butch (preferably workg-class) straight du. That kd of homosexual was a “fag, ” a mp joke, and a woman chasg after such a creature was obvly ridiculo, bee, the words of an early Sondheim lyric, “his troers [are] vern…. But the revisn “happened to be gay” isn’t really a joke bee ’s non-judgmental.

The ia here is, y, some guys who don’t appear effemate do turn out to be gay sometim, not that there’s anythg wrong wh that. A quarter century of enlightenment reveals that gay sexualy is somewhat more plex than we first place Company a more morn ntext, then, wh openly gay characters alg wh their mment issu, seems to take away om what mak the show so nuanced and plited: now we have a new reason for Bobby’s fear of mment, and prov that the heterosexual mols for uplg no longer shape his view of marriage. After all, Bobby’s possible queerns never turned gay dienc away om the show before.

Mary Griffh, who lost her gay son, Bobby, to suici and subsequently beme an advote for LGBTQ rights, has died at the age of story of Griffh and her son was told Leroy Aarons's 1989 book Prayers for Bobby: A Mother's Comg to Terms Wh the Suici of Her Gay Son.