A rare and fascinating look at the process of recording an "original cast" album from a Sondheim musical: Company

For anyone with any curiosity about what goes into the making of a Broadway musical, DA Pennebaker's documentary, Original Cast Album: Company (1970) is a must-view. Pennebaker was invited to shoot the recording of the cast album for the Sondheim musical, which Pennebaker apparently thought would be a few hours of watching the cast do a few takes and wrap up the recording. The session - on the Sunday following opening week - ran for what seems to be about 16 hours, wrapping at 4 a.m. Monday, with some loose ends still to tie. As we watch his hour-long take on this process, we get a sense of the extreme difficulty of the work entailed - Sondheim's score was exceptionally challenging in and of itself - and we see w/ a growing wonder the attention to detail that accompanies every take - sometimes 8 or more takes for a given #. Between takes, Sondheim consults w/ the singers on what to an outsider seem like the tiniest of nuances - pronunciation of a particular word, a minor key shift, a single missed note - that one by one seem trivial but at the end we see how the need for and devotion to perfection lifts the recording up the highest level. The killer at the end is Elaine Strich's recording of Ladies Who Lunch, which seems to most viewers, I'm sure, a smash on the first take - but no, much more is in store, and the payoff is there at the end. All told, this doc is a rare look at the many aspects of the art of musical theater - recording, acting, singing, timing, writing, adapting - that has to bring to any viewer a new appreciation of the challenge of putting on a seemingly seamless show.