Review Roundup: FOLLIES at the Kennedy Center - UPDATED!

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' production of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's FOLLIES officially opened on May 21, 2011. The reviews for the show are still coming in and we've got a roundup of all the reviews below!

The cast features two-time Tony winner Bernadette Peters as Sally Durant Plummer, four-time Tony nominee Jan Maxwell as Phyllis Rogers Stone, two-time Tony nominee Danny Burstein as Buddy Plummer, Ron Raines as Benjamin Stone and Olivier Award winner Elaine Paige as Carlotta Campion. 

The production also stars Terrence Currier as Theodore Whitman, Christian Delcroix as Young Buddy, Rosalind Elias as Heidi Schiller, Colleen Fitzpatrick as Dee Dee West, Lora LeeGayer as Young Sally, Michael Hayes as Roscoe, Florence Laceyas Sandra Crane, Linda Lavin as Hattie Walker, Régine as Solange LaFitte, David Sabin as Dimitri Weismann, Kirsten Scott as Young Phyllis, Frederick Strother as Max Deems, Nick Verina as Young Ben, Susan Watson as Emily Whitman and Terri White as Stella Deems.

Follies will run through June 19, 2011 in the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater. The production features a book by James Goldman and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and is directed by Eric Schaeffer with choreography by Warren Carlyle. James Moore serves as music director and will conduct the 28-piece Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra.

Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal: One of the signal achievements of this "Follies" is that it succeeds in untangling each and every strand of the show's knotty plot. Most of the credit belongs to Eric Schaeffer, the director, whose Signature Theatre has produced more Sondheim revivals than any other regional theater company in America. Mr. Schaeffer is clearly unafraid of the darkness of "Follies," so much so that the first act is bitter enough to sting. Yet he and Warren Carlyle, the choreographer, just as clearly revel in the richness of the knowing pastiche songs with which Mr. Sondheim evokes the popular music of the prerock era. It helps that they were given a budget big enough to produce "Follies" on a grand scale-and to hire a top-flight set designer, Broadway's Derek McLane, with enough imagination to make the most of the materials at hand.

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: "It wasn't until the second act that I fell in love all over again with "Follies," a show that had broken my heart many times in the past. Up to that point of the Kennedy Center revival of James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim's brave and beautiful musical from 1971, I'd been feeling as if I had hooked up with an old flame I'd been longing to see, only to find a snuffed candle.

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