Something that still lingers with me days after reading the text for the first week of the second module is the argument against assimilationism in the chapter reading. It, and especially the first module, which brought up the concept of and criticism from queer authors against assimilationism, has made me consider my own opinion on the concept and how it has changed through interacting with these texts. In this chapter especially, Paula Ettelbrickβs argument stuck with me, especially as a lesbianβand though I could not originally place why it felt like the topic had lingered with me for so long, it took me as many days to realize why.
My dad made me a musical theatre nerd when I was a kid as well as accidentally someone who enjoys video games a βnormalβ amount these days, and those two interests converged last year when I found out about a musical a voice actor from a video game had been in. That actor happened to be Johnathan Bailey when he performed in the musical revival for Company in 2018. There are three main points here, besides that he was filming for Bridgerton when the show moved to Broadway, so after he declined to move, someone else took his role:
- The role that he played was initially a female role, and the role, but only that role, had been βgender-swappedβ for his portrayal;
- Company is a musical that was written by Stephen Sondheim, who was also gay;
- Johnathan Bailey and Matt Doyle, the principal actor who replaced Bailey, are both openly out as gay.
Company is not that popular of a musical and not one of Sondheimβs more popular works, so I realize some context might be lost here. But, the reason that all of these points are important is because Company is a musical about the woes of marriage, romance, and sexual relationships in oneβs mid-thirties and above; Company is a musical in which its protagonistβs closest friends are all married or engaged, where the protagonist is a bachelor desperately seeking the answer to their crisis of societal loneliness, and was originally about several pairs of heterosexual relationships. All three of those points are important because when only Baileyβs role was gender-swapped, Companyβand all subsequent main productions, as far as Wikipedia statesβnow had four heterosexual couples and one male homosexual couple.
I was honestly really happy about it a year ago when I found out. My girlfriend is a massive fan of the character in that video game that Bailey acts for, and he knows that I love both that game and musicals, so we got to talk about it for a while. I got to listen to the musical as well, and I thought it was okay. I also got to listen to why that specific role-swap was so important: Bailey was acting as a groom who was getting cold feet just before their wedding, and the coupleβs principal song is famous for having been one of the fastest songs on Broadway before Hamilton. But, thatβs the kind of achievement that gets someone in love with theatre and singing to try to cover it, and that was what I tried doing, with one difference of my own: I asked what the song might sound like for a non-male homosexual couple, thinking especially about my own relationship in relation to two lesbians, and I used that to cover it based on that. For the 2018 production onwards, the directors made lyrical changes to reference the difference in sex, and I did the same.
Again, I was really content with myself when I succeeded in covering it, and I thought that it made sense. The song keeps some of many lines identical between both versions commenting on the societal role of marriage and how βdatedβ the act and ceremony is:
Listen, everybody, look, I donβt know what youβre waiting for, a wedding, whatβs a wedding, itβs a prehistoric ritual where everybody promises fidelity forever, which is maybe the most horrifying word I ever heard of [β¦] it isnβt only Paul who may be ruining his life, you know weβll both of us be losing our identities [β¦]
And when I read it, I thought it still worked if it was adapted to a lesbian couple. But now that I revisit this issue, and now that I need to expect to revisit similar topics, such as family, relationships, and law, I wonder if that was misguided. If one ties this with the concept of intersectionality, one recognizes that in a lesbian relationship, both partners face the issue of marriage under the pressure of a society that is both heteronormative and patriarchal. Both partners face the issue of marriage under the pressure to be married and to be married to someone who you can contribute to society with; underlying that notion of contribution tends to be that of reproductive contribution. So: is that actually βrightβ, in the sense that the song would work if it was adapted to a lesbian couple? Maybe, but maybe not for the reasons the original message regarding a heterosexual couple or even the revised message regarding a male homosexual couple might have intended. In an article about his portrayal, Doyle saw the acted couple as representative of gay urban couples who have to adapt to the conservative, traditionalist logic of marriage, something also addressed in the court rulings that canonified homosexual marriage (Kacala, 2022). In another article, Sondheim mentioned he had rejected an all-male edition of Company before 2018 because scenes related to charactersβ marriage and transformed under that casting seemed forced and unusable (Paulson, 2021). So maybe a lesbian couple reenacting the song can work; but after this brief, I donβt know if it would give the same message as either of the previous portrayals. As Ettelbrick said so long ago, before I realized this tangent, marriage is a βpatriarchal institutionβ that insists on societal assimilation and conformity, not liberationβand as those who sing the song and act in Company say, both within and out of the musical, the situation in which the two characters have been placed in is anything but respective of the ideals of queer theory and queer liberation.