Thanks for FOLLIES

Applause broke out in Atlanta last week for a performance of the musical Follies in London last month.  The actors in the National Theatre's production, being mere high-definition shadows on a screen, could not hear us. But Follies is all about dialogue with shadows of the past, so, why not express our gratitude?

[Photo collage (clockwise from top left):  Peter Forbes (Buddy); Tracie Bennett (Carlotta); "Prologue"; Imelda Staunton (Sally); Janie Dee (Phyllis); Di Botcher (Hattie); the characters confront their younger selves including Zizi Strallen (Young Phyllis, second from left); Philip Quast (Ben); Alex Young (Young Sally) and Adam Rhys-Charles (Young Ben)]

Thank you, Imelda Staunton, for "Sally." You give her a volatile perkiness, and ferocity in defense of her deluded devotion to "Ben." When you perform the great torch song "Losing My Mind," staged to be stagey -- glam wig and gown, color-coordinated vanity -- the "real" Sally shows through. We can pinpoint the moment Sally recognizes that Ben never loved her.  Your final word on stage, when you realize that it's "tomorrow" and you face the rest of your life without your fantasy, your breakdown is hard to watch.  Thank you for your energy and vulnerability.  Also, I appreciate the expressive musicality you bring to your "book" songs, especially on that tough last note of "In Buddy's Eyes."

Thank you, Janie Dee, for "Phyllis."  Striding onto a stage busy with actors, you instantly commanded our attention as American royalty.  I hadn't noticed in others' portrayals how many of Phyllis's lines are rapid-fire questions.  Maybe you're the first to appear to be truly seeking answers. Even during your "folly" number, always a show-stopper for the actress in your role, you showed vulnerability, interacting with "Young Phyllis," the"Lucy" to your "Jessie."  Earlier, when you sing, "Could I Leave You?" -- more questions! --  you build your rage step by ironic step to an explosion of bitterness.   We're with you!

Thank you,  Peter Forbes, for "Buddy."  You recreate a dinosaur that roamed the USA in my childhood, the Positive-Thinking-Rotarian-traveling salesman, hard drinking and aggressively ingratiating. The unstable past-and-present world of Follies forces you to acknowledge your worst fear, that you've given your life for a woman you cannot live with.  Sondheim gives you two big numbers to dissect your character's situation. In "Buddy's Folly," you do the Eddie Cantor shtick  and, true to type, play the situation for laughs, but it's a forced merriment; and in "The Right Girl," you dance with the ghost of "Young Buddy" (Fred Haig), building to an angry, despairing breakdown.  I believed every moment.

Thank you, Philip Quast, for "Ben."  Cool, charming, your "Ben" loses control during the magnificent duet "Too Many Mornings."  While "Sally" sings to you, you sing largely to a ghost, "Young Sally."  The song closes on a heart-stopping phrase in harmony, imagining a tender embrace, "with your head against my head," and a solo violin echoing the promise you just sang: "It was always real, and I've always loved you this much."  Ben is wrapped, and rapt, in the moment; but seconds later, when Sally believes you'll marry her, you panic.  Later, Ben begs"Carlotta" to "just talk" to him. You make this man's disintegration painful and credible.

Thank you, Tracie Bennett, for "Carlotta Campion."  The website tells us you've played Judy Garland, and it's no wonder: you sing "I'm Still Here," Sondheim's homage to Harold Arlen, composer of Garland's bluesy signature song "The Man That Got Away" (and that other one about a rainbow).  Like Garland, you have the quality of singing witty lyrics as if expressing thoughts just occurring to you in the moment, and you belt as if you're putting all you've got into the notes.  Your "Carlotta" is so funny in her candid self-deprecating way, and the song begins as an extension of that manner, just anecdotes to adoring party guests.  When you step apart downstage to sing to us, we feel that we're seeing a woman at the moment she accepts herself.

Thank you,  Dominic Cooke, directing the show, for so many thoughtful choices in design and staging.  The "Follies" facade of crumbling brick, able to rotate at the center of the set, kept action fluid as scenes shifted in time and location; the lighting was eerie, especially at the end when rays of the morning sun cut through a tear in the brick wall.  The pastiche numbers, performed in revues as stand-alones, tempt a performer to grandstand; but your actors sing with intensity as if they might not live to sing these songs again -- which, of course, is exactly the situation for the elderly "Whitmans," "Hattie," "Solange," and, especially the faltering soprano "Heidi."  Most of all, I appreciate how you make those ghosts a part of the action, silent witnesses to the party, participants in songs where I've not seen them perform -- most notably in "The Right Girl" and "Lucy and Jessie."  In a related move, you turned the young couples' double-duet into semi-staged scenes with props and little revue-style sets. Your choices all aimed to help your actors to make their characters' inner lives visible.  And thank you for allowing the show to develop as its creators intended, without intermission .

Thanks to Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman for writing the show, and to the original director Harold Prince who encouraged you to go with your risky impulse to abandon plot and to write the ghosts into the action. In a pre-show interview, Sondheim explained how readings of drafts one through seven were lively and fascinating so long as characters were getting re-acquainted at the party, but became "mechanical" once the plot started.  The audience laughed when Sondheim said that they decided to write their show with no plot.  Instead, Sondheim and Goldman structured the show in waves of ever-increasing tension, building to the surreal break where past and present meet in the "Follies."(Thanks again, Mr. Cook:  I've seen the show three other times, always with an intermission that weakened the show's momentum.)

My Earlier Posts about Follies

For a detailed overview of the show, with more specifics about story and songs, read my review of the 2010 revival in D.C., "Kennedy Centers Follies: Haunting and Haunted."

"Sondheim's FOLLIES Encore"  is my response to rapturous reviews in 2007 of the "Encores!" FOLLIES, so different from responses to the first incarnation of the show.

Ted Chapin was a gofer for director Harold Prince during rehearsals for the premiere production, and later wrote a memoir of that time, Everything Was Possible.  Craig Zadan interviewed actors, writers, and production staff for his book Sondheim and Company, published a couple years after the show closed.  I reflect on both books in "Every Minor Detail's a Major Decision." Learning from Harold Prince: A Director's Journey focuses on the book by Carol Ilson about the show's first producer-director, Sondheim's friend and collaborator.

Follies figures prominently in my essay on "Sondheim's Religious Vision."

For much more on Sondheim, his influences, his craft, and his other shows, see my Sondheim Page.