Follies: Alright, Now You Know

With all due respect to William Shakespeare and Noel Coward, Broadway's never had a ghost story that mixes terror, wit and theatrical thrills quite like Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's Follies, now receiving an Encores! concert staging so loaded with achingly good moments they could loan a few of them out to some of Broadway's current tenants without losing a bit of its sheen. 

Considering the limited rehearsal time unions allow for these staged readings, director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw draws an impressive amount of interesting character work from his leads in a production that glides on class and panache.  Hearing a thirty-piece orchestra under guest music director Eric Stern's baton playing Jonathan Tunick's original orchestrations is a most heavenly sensation. 

Set in 1971 at an onstage reunion party for former cast members of the glamorous Weismann Follies, a fictitious Ziegfeld-like extravaganza that dazzled audiences annually in the years between the world wars, Follies contrasts the carefree elegance of traditional musical theatre entertainment with the merciless realities of the lives of a handful of those who embodied that optimistic spirit eight times a week.  Haunting the crumbling marriages of former chorines Sally and Phyllis (Victoria Clark and Donna Murphy) and their respective husbands, former stage-door johnnies Buddy and Ben (Michael McGrath and Victor Garber), are young ghosts of their past reenacting what went wrong in the early days of their tangled relationships.  In The Weismann Follies you meet the perfect mate, fall in love and get married.  In Follies you get married, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with love, bear with it when your spouse cheats on you, and try and figure out if the relationship is worth saving.  Premiering at a time when nostalgic revivals of No, No, Nanette! and Irene aimed for the heart, Follies opted for the jugular. 

The two leading ladies give positively knockout performances that complement each other beautifully.  As suburbanite Sally, Clark lights up the stage with sunny girlishness as she optimistically enters the party hoping to reconnect with her lost love Ben.  As the details of her unhappy marriage leak out, she holds herself together with gracious middle-class elegance, lying about the state of her union so touchingly with "In Buddy's Eyes."  William Ivey Long and Gregg Barnes pour her into a gown that can only be described as "torch song white" for an exquisitely still "Losing My Mind."  

Murphy gives Phyllis the expected icy sex appeal, but details her performance with hints of the pain that keeps cracking through the surface.  When faced with the option of divorcing her cheating husband, she explodes into a ferocious "Can I Leave You?" that is equal parts wit and disgust.  Her 11 o'clocker, "The Story of Lucy and Jessie" is all legs and red-hot sass. 

Though his name doesn't carry the same star clout as the other leads, Michael McGrath is one of those reliable New York stage performers that has been continually delivering solid performances in comic supporting roles.  Finally getting a chance to play a fully developed flesh and blood person, McGrath's Buddy, though unfaithful in marriage, is a sympathetic nice guy, but no pushover.  He fills "The Right Girl" with vocal muscle, athletic footwork and genuine empathy.  Though the staging for "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues" is a little too busy, McGrath's vaudevillian skills are still grandly entertaining. 

Although his singing voice is lovely as ever, Victor Garber's Ben did not seem to be a fully focused character at Friday night's performance.  His world-weariness was a tad too weary. 

In between the lies and disillusionments, Follies has its share of friendly ghosts, as the older performers take turns belting out their signature tunes one last time while dim visions of their former triumphs serve as glorious memories.  This is where Follies gets a little tricky because, alongside the four main characters and their ghostly counterparts, the show is packed with big solo turns and duets for supporting players who have just a smattering of lines, making us think more of "the girl who replaced Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl" when Mimi Hines belts out "Broadway Baby" or "that crazy lady from Laugh-In" when Joanne Worley clowns through "Who's That Woman?" than the careers of their characters, Hattie Walker and Stella Deems. 

(Hines and Worley, by the way, both deliver the kind of rousing musical comedy performances that make you wonder why they didn't have more substantial Broadway careers.  At Friday night's performance, Hines lost her place early into "Broadway Baby" and after unsuccessfully trying to get to the right lyric began singing "I messed up the words / I'd like to go back" before turning around and asking conductor Stern for another crack at it.  He complied, of course, and they started the number over.  The crowd feasted on it.) 

Star turns abound, beginning with Arthur Rubin's iron-lunged anthem of "Beautiful Girls", followed soon by Yvonne Constant's truly world-weary "Ah, Paris!" and the thrilling duet of legendary opera star Lucine Amara and her younger self played by recent Julliard grad Leena Chopra performing "One More Kiss."  Eccentric dancers Anne Rogers and Robert E. Fitch twirl with giddy abandon while executing the tricky vocals of "Rain on the Roof."  Later, in one of the evening's most effective visuals, they playfully recreate their "Bolero d'Amour" as their ghosts (Denise Payne and Barrett Martin) passionately dance the more difficult version of the routine their characters performed in their younger days. 

The most daring and unconventional performance of the evening came from Christine Baranski as Carlotta Campion, the former stage and big screen star who finds herself now working in television, a definite step down in those days.  With her character heavily drinking from the moment she steps on stage, Baranski's performance of "I'm Still Here", a song generally regarded as a proud declaration of personal survival, is more of – to use a phrase that's been bandied about Broadway a lot these days – an internal monologue snarled ferociously through an alcoholic haze.  The repeated words "I'm here" seem expressed as disappointment with her career's current state, though gradually accepting her place as a culmination of everything she's been through.  It's an interpretation that can only work within the context of the character and the show, and although Baranski's voice is no match for the belty climax, her acting is gripping throughout. 

Follies is also gripping throughout, and this Encores! concert continually teases us with the promise of what a spectacular production this collection of artists might provide in a fully realized Broadway revival. 

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top:  Donna Murphy

Center:  Katie Klaus, Colin Donnell, Victoria Clark, Victor Garber

Bottom:  Kristen Beth Williams, Michael McGrath, Emily Fletcher