Show Synopsis:
The perpetual bachelor Bobby is turning 30, and his coupled friends are throwing him a party. Through conversations and songs, they explore the ins and outs of love, sex, and marriage and what it means to be single. Bobby attempts to figure out where things have gone wrong in his love life and what it is he wants out of being around another person.	

Character:
Bobby, an about-to-turn-30-year-old man who is everybody's best friend but no one's one man, and he is struggling to figure out how he is supposed to be part of a couple.

Song Context:
Bobby looks at his birthday cake and tries wishing for something, and decides to wish for a happy marriage, though he is not quite sure what makes up a happy marriage.	

Fun Facts:
1. There are two "original" recordings of this song. Dean Jones, who played the role out-of-town and in the Broadway previews, sings the role of Bobby on the recording, but actually left the show very soon after opening. Larry Kert, his understudy, took over the role, was allowed to record his own tracks for the recording when the show transferred to London, and was approved to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. Today, his "Being Alive" is often released alongside Jones'. 
2. This song was originally cut from the musical and was not performed during the original Broadway run, but was added back in for later productions/versions. Stephen Sondheim abandoned it halfway through, believing that if Robert could say these things in the first act, he would have nowhere to go for the rest of the musical. In later versions, it became "an internal monologue of despair and self-deceptive determination." 
3. Raul Esparza played Bobby in the 2007 Broadway revival of Company and in a New York Times interview, he said "I think the real thing that Bobby is going through is that he?s trying to grow up, and that means accepting things you can?t change, and it also means that in spite of all the messiness and failure you make a choice to love someone and live your life in the way that?s right for you. It?s messier than the pretty picture you painted for yourself. I had a romantic idea of what it means to be an adult: all husbands and wives who love each other get to stay together forever, love is enough."