Follies , a Modernist Wrinkle Musical Classic in Time By: David Barbour
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THEATRE Copyright Lighting &Sound America July 2011 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html Exploring the A dark mysteries of Follies , a modernist Wrinkle musical classic in Time By: David Barbour 44 • July 2011 • Lighting &Sound America he music begins, but is like no Broadway overture you’ve ever heard, the lead melody being an insistently melancholy waltz, with echoes of Ravel. A ragged, torn show curtain rises to reveal the empty stage of a dilapidated theatre. Well, not quite empty: Standing in a dim, cold beam Tof light is an absurdly tall, unnaturally pale showgirl, lost in contemplation. As the music continues, other such creatures appear until, in an epiphany that combines an emphatic musical chord with a sudden burst of light, we realize that the stage is filled with ghosts. For all its glories, the American theatre has rarely, if ever, given us anything as rich and strange as Follies . Both a fond tribute to and a ruthless deconstruction of golden-age Broadway musicals, it has divided audiences for four decades. Opening in 1971, a low point for Broadway Opposite: Katz uses different colors of light to distinguish between the characters as and recession-plagued New York, they are in 1971 and their younger selves. Above: Ben in Loveland, which consists of a Follies seemed to some to be a series of floral bowers. veritable death knell for the traditional song-and-dance show. In fact, it was Rogers. Ben married Phyllis and nected. The largely plotless action an open door, leading to a newer, made a pile of money, becoming an consists of snatches of overheard more adult form of musical theatre. important player in governmental conversations, usually focusing on It all stems from the show’s bizarre and philanthropic circles. Buddy the relentless passage of time. and original premise: It is 1971, and married Sally and moved to Without warning, characters burst we are in the Weissman Theatre, Arizona, where he became a into song, reliving the performances where, for more than two decades salesman in the oil industry. that made them briefly famous. between the wars, Dimitri Weissman Neither story has a happy ending. (Stephen Sondheim’s score is a (read: Florenz Ziegfeld) presented a Ben’s overweening ambitions have masterpiece of pastiche, drawing on series of lavish, showgirl-filled revues. destroyed his marriage, leaving him every composer and/or lyricist of the Now, the theatre is to be torn down and Phyllis in a frigidly polite era, from Harold Arlen to Vincent to make way for a parking lot, and deadlock. Sally, haunted by the affair Youmans.) And, as Buddy, Phyllis, r e Weissman has invited the surviving she had with Ben, lives inside a cycle Ben, and Sally discover, in Madeline g n i m Follies veterans back for a drink, a of depression and rage, with Buddy L’Engle’s famous phrase, there’s a m e H story or two, and a last look back. as her caretaker. Both marriages are wrinkle in time in the Weissman a c i r As it happens, that look proves in a state of paralysis, all four Theatre, in which their collective E ) t h g to be far more penetrating than partners held hostage by their past still exists, unfolding over and i r ( ; s anyone can bear, especially for the youthful dreams and expectations. over again. (“It’s like a film in my u c r a two married couples at the heart of From the first note, Follies follows head that plays and plays and M n a o the show. Thirty years earlier, its own surreal path. In James plays,” says Buddy.) J ) t f e Buddy Plummer and Ben Stone Goldman’s book, what begins as a As the recriminations and l ( : s o were best friends, chasing after simple reunion of showgirls turns confrontations reach a feverish t o h P showgirls Sally Durant and Phyllis increasingly strange and discon - height, the stage is transformed— www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • July 2011 • 45 THEATRE Sondheim has called it “a collective dark glamour, is surely as close to that covering the side walls of the theatre nervous breakdown”—and we enter original as it is possible to get. (It was with distressed, filthy-looking canvas— into a metaphorical Follies , known certainly good enough to set off a making it look as if the wrecking ball as Loveland, in which the four leads mass exodus of Follies fans to were due to arrive at any moment. The act out their fundamental emotional Washington, to check out a cast that ceiling area just above the proscenium conflicts in a series of variety turns. included the likes of Bernadette is also covered in similar fashion. As a Buddy explores his unsatisfying Peters, Jan Maxwell, Linda Lavin, and result, anyone sitting in the front half of relationships with Sally and his Elaine Paige.) Thanks to the critical the Eisenhower feels wrapped inside mistress, Margie, in “The God-Why- acclaim and robust box office, the the Weissman Theatre. Don’t-You-Love-Me-Oh-You-Did-I’ll production will transfer for New York’s The next element is a deeply See-You Later Blues,” a raucous Marquis Theatre later this summer. distressed proscenium, featuring Doric vaudeville routine. Phyllis explores Talking to the designers of the columns at right and left, huge the split in her personality in “The Kennedy Center production, it would sections of which are chipped away. Story of Lucy and Jessie,” which appear that designing Follies is both a Even in this ruined state, the features a sassy dance routine. Sally simple and daunting task. All you have proscenium is beautifully detailed, all but unravels while delivering the to do is 1) get the original production with paintings of glamorous creatures ballad, “Losing My Mind.” Ben, still out of your head and 2) dream as big as in the upper left and right corners. As cut off from his true self, tries to your imagination, and budget, will allow. mentioned earlier, the show curtain is present himself as a carefree soul in a thing of rags and tatters. “Live, Laugh, Love,” with devas - On stage at the The stage, when revealed, is a vivid tating consequences. Weissman Theatre image of a Broadway house in a tragic Opening in 1971, when the great This has been a season of musical state of disrepair. It’s a place of brick American postwar cultural consensus revivals for Derek McLane, the scenic walls, radiators, and unflattering house was breaking up into a series of designer of Follies . On Broadway, he light, devoid of warmth or light. A pile armed camps (Nixon’s Silent Majority has earned acclaim and awards for of junk resides in the upstage right vs. the counterculture) Follies thrilled his work on new productions of How corner. Clearly, it hasn’t been used as some audiences and terrified others. to Succeed in Business Without a legitimate theatre for decades. At In its portrayal of time’s ruthlessness, Really Trying and Anything Goes . But, the same time, McLane made sure the impermanence of passion, and the he frankly admits, neither project that the space would meet the show’s dangers of living in their past, it has caused him the anxiety of competing peculiar needs. There are two gallery been described as a Proustian with the memory of Aronson’s design levels on the upstage wall where musical. To those who love it, it is an for Follies. ghosts can promenade, pausing to endlessly fascinating object of In Aronson’s conception, the consider the action on the stage contemplation, one that yields new Weissman Theatre was already falling below. A two-story staircase at stage riches at each stage of one’s life. down. And his version of the climactic right is used in the stunning first That is, if they can see it. To be “Loveland” sequence, when the four number, “Beautiful Girls.” As Roscoe, effective, Follies must be done on a lead characters act out their own Weissman’s house tenor, sings his grand scale, making it a daunting Follies, had the outsized glamour of traditional tribute to feminine youth proposition for revival. (The original the work of Joseph Urban, Ziegfeld’s and beauty (“Faced with these production ran for more than 500 house designer. “I had to begin by Loreleis/What man can moralize?”), performances and still lost money.) clearing my mind of Boris Aronson’s we see the former Weissman girls, One obstacle faced by anyone staging work, to create something that would now between the ages of 50 and 80, Follies is that the memory of the fit the Kennedy Center,” McLane says. descending the stairs one last time. original production, staged by Harold And yet, the first challenge was the The set feels enormous, as it Prince and choreographed by Michael Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre, should, what with a cast of 40. Bennett, lives on. (That production, a very contemporary-looking space—it However, McLane notes, “It’s smaller with scenery by Boris Aronson, opened in 1969—made even more so than the Eisenhower stage itself. I costumes by Florence Klotz, and by a recent renovation. The sleek, moved the back wall downstage, to lighting by Tharon Musser, is on modern-looking interior is inimical to give it a greater sense of intimacy.” everybody’s list of great Broadway the spirit of Follies , which must unfold Other scenic touches include the use designs.) This summer, however, the in an atmosphere of disrepair and of rain curtain in the number “Who’s Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, decay.