ing the first London production of Companyin 1972, Hobson
wrote: “It is extraordinary that a musical, the most trivial of
theatrical forms, should be able to plunge as Companydoes
with perfect congruity into the profound depths of human per-
plexity and misery.”^12 The remark about “the most trivial of
theatrical forms” sounds like the New Critics of the 1940s and
1950s, but the Hobson of the 1970s is caught off guard by triv-
iality that plunges into the depths of human distress. “Con-
gruity” is the word by which he retains his balance, but the
more one thinks about Company, with its revue format on the
theme of “should Bobby get married?” and its deftness at set-
ting matrimonial anxiety into show tunes, the more the right
word would have to be incongruity. How can the most trivial of
theatrical forms plunge so deep as to throw a good critic off
balance? One wonders if a good musical penetrates human
perplexity and misery because what seems to be triviality be-
comes a complex opening of private matters into the gaiety of
the numbers.
In Sondheim’s Assassins, there is a vaudeville soft-shoe num-
ber at the beginning and end of the show, “Everybody’s Got
the Right to Be Happy.” That it builds to an ensemble number
sung by those who have killed or have tried to kill American
presidents is part of its iconoclastic brilliance. The other part is
that the tune turns out to be a standard format, the AABA for-
mat, the most common in American popular song, the one we
have followed in earlier chapters. One doesn’t know it will turn
out to be AABA until the end of the song. At the beginning the
A and B sections are kept apart, interspersed with other ele-
ments.^13 At the end, the structure is finally intact, AABA, with
the entire company singing. Part of the drama is the achieving
of the AABA format.
WHAT KIND OF DRAMA IS THIS? 197
(^12) Quoted in Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, p. 195.
(^13) To be exact, B is sung when John Wilkes Booth has a solo turn with the
number, and it centers an ABA pattern. But the complete AABA structure is
for the entire group of assassins, at the end of the show. Swagne, How Sondheim
Found His Sound, pp. 47–124, shows the extent to which Sondheim extends or
revises standard song formats. My point is that one also recognizes the formats
that are being extended or revised.