Ubiquitous character actor and occasional playwright George Furth has died at the age of 75.
As an actor, he found great success. Not stardom, but he had small and large parts in everything from Love, American Style and Honey West to Blazing Saddles and Shampoo, and improbably became a member of Hal Needham's repertory company. (Hope he was paid well for lending his considerable comic talent to Megaforce.) Clearly, casting directors loved him.
As a writer, his work is more problematic. Despite well-intentioned (but mostly and, frankly, justifiably forgotten) efforts like Twigs and Precious Sons, he'll forever be known as the guy who wrote the book to Stephen Sondheim's Company, and the fact that it is known by Sondheim's name tells you everything you need to know about Furth's contribution.
My ex-wife and I attempted to direct a community theater production of Company many years ago, and one of my main memories of settling down to the task was grappling with how deeply uninteresting Furth's script was. True, it's a play about fundamentally shallow people, but must the writing be shallow as well? The book sections are just kind of there, blatantly serving as cues for Sondheim's wonderful score. Yeah, that's true of many musicals, but Company aspires to something more. Clearly intended as Serious Art, it can never be a perfectly integrated whole; as long as it remains tied to Furth's script, it will always remain a flawed near-masterpiece.
Here's an excerpt from the 2006 revival of Company, Sondheim's mordant lyrics and melancholy music perfectly capturing the ambiguities of human relationships in a way Furth's book never does.
