MARRIAGE," a friend once said, "is nothing more than having someone to go down the drain with." Obviously, not everyone will subscribe to this view, but the statement indicates the paranoid feelings almost everyone does have about that important--and hopefully permanent--linkage. The prospects are particularly frightening to baby-boom era children; at least one out of three marriages we have seen are no longer extant, and over 40 per cent of new marriages are doomed to failure. Yet people still fall in love and decide to wed. The rest of your life is a hard thing to face alone, so security becomes a reason to marry. Love and lust, of course, play their parts, but, except for the luckiest couples, their roles decline about the same time as the wedding gifts begin to rust, tarnish, yellow or malfunction. And you don't have to be married to feel the strain of that imposing bond; our lives are filled with couples who hang on to each other, bored but afraid to see what else is out there, trading happiness for security. For everyone who has ever contemplated the pros and cons of connubial bliss, Stephen Sondheim has a musical for you.

Musicals, of course, are not generally noted for their deep messages or weighty topics. Ever since Rodgers and Hammerstein hit upon the modern musical format with Oklahoma! in 1943, various artists have made rare, usually unsuccessful, attempts to transcend its fluffy nature. Company, however, is an exception, and even though it opts for a conventional pro-marriage outlook, it is refreshing to see a musical dealing with an adult theme.

The current Loeb production of Company features a generally strong cast, some imaginative staging and choreography and, like almost all Mainstage shows, some annoying deficiencies. But this show has much more going for it from the start than most, for it features a superb brace of songs by Stephen Sondheim, arguably the premier songwriter of his generation. The cast cannot perform all of the numbers as well as one would like--the score, as in all Sondheim shows, has some difficult harmonies and is perhaps a bit too tough for an amateur cast--but this production is strong enough to be amusing and even marginally poignant.

Everything of importance in Company emanates from the score, a barrage of acid gripes, ironic laments and anxious yearnings set to and in between the noisy rattles of urban chaos. Sondheim can pack a stanza with so much cynicism that beyond the wit and polish of the lyrics it becomes almost a cry of pain:

It's the concerts you enjoy together

Neighbors you annoy together

Children you destroy together

That makes marriage a joy.

THE RATHER SKIMPY BOOK by George Furth focuses on the travails of Bobby, a single man in his mid-30s surrounded by "those good, crazy people, my married friends." He drifts from one of the five supporting couples to another, watching them bicker and age together, wondering when and if he, too, will succumb to the marital trap.

The action takes place, of course, in New York, the ultimate hangout for unmarried swingers and upwardly mobile young couples. When Company first hit Broadway almost ten years ago, it had a very chic, cosmopolitan air; that sophistication seems a little dated, but the theme of marital give-and-take versus a less threatening but lonelier single life remains relevant. In the first act, Bobby wanders among his married friends, acting as a straight-man, bringing out their annoying traits and seemingly set patterns. In the second act, he begins to feel increasingly isolated, and this leads to the obligatory epiphany in song, the realization that "being alive" is not being alone.

Most musicals, particularly those in which the score towers over the book, tend to direct themselves, given a competent cast, so it is difficult to assess what Paris Barclay has done in his Mainstage directorial debut. Many of the dialogue scenes fall flat--partly because of easily anticipated jokes and a few wooden characterizations--and by the second act the audience waits only for the next number to start. Several fine performances, though, keep this production of Company from being a skein of loosely-woven songs, the foremost among them Bonnie Lander's funny and beautifully-timed Joanne, the bitch-queen, older-and-wiser friend. Landers dominates every scene she is in but never hams it up, the only disappointment in her performance being her rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch," a biting blast about bored wives that is quite possibly the best song in the show. Landers lacks the sheer vocal power required to bring it off, and she was drowned out by the massive and over-amplified 37-piece orchestra behind the scrim. This exasperating fate befell several other members of the cast.

Chuck Cermele brings a certain vitality to his performance as Bobby that outweighs his seemingly limited acting range, and he has a sweet, clear voice that strengthens as the show proceeds. Jean Budney churns out one marvelous scene as Amy, the incredibly jittery bride-to-be, and does justice to "Getting Married Today," a difficult and funny number that caps the first act. Finally, Maggie-Meg Reed is appropriately dumb and affecting as April, the stewardess who becomes yet another of Bobby's erstwhile lovers. The only real weakness in the cast is Bonnie DeLorme, who dreadfully overacts as Marta, the neurotic victim of single life in New York.

The rest of the cast does the job with style, helped along by Clarissa Bushman's effective choreography in the big numbers like "Company" and "Side by Side by Side," and by David Moore's split-level set, complete with one area for each couple. Everything--the costumes, the set, the backdrop--is done in early-'70s eclectic, but it works, save for a few stylized, overly cute New-York-skyline flats.

One notable thing about this production is that many of the leads are played by non-Harvard students, all of whom are perfectly capable, but whose place in a Harvard undergraduate production is, at best, questionable. But Company is worth seeing; in a world full of light, trashy musicals, even this problematic production successfully displays an attempt to grapple with both the complexities of human relationships and the stagnant format of the American musical.