FOLLIES to Play Kennedy Center in '10-'11; Eric Schaeffer to Direct

As announced by Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser, Follies, the Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman musical, will be included in their 2010-2011 season. The production will be directed by Eric Schaeffer, Artistic Director of The Signature Theatre, and choreographed by Warren Carlyle of Finian's Rainbow. Casting has not yet been announced, and additional production details are expected to be announced shortly.

Follies features music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman and has delivered many musical theater standards into the canon, including "Broadway Baby," "I'm Still Here," "Too Many Mornings," "Could I Leave You?" and "Losing My Mind." The original 1971 production was nominated for eleven Tonys and won seven.

Originally entitled The Girls Upstairs, Follies is set in a crumbling Broadway theatre scheduled for demolition, during a reunion for all the past members of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue (based on the Ziegfeld Follies) which played in that theatre between the World Wars. The musical focuses on two troubled couples, Buddy and Sally Durant Plummer and Ben and Phyllis Rogers Stone, who are attending the reunion. Buddy, a traveling salesman, is having an affair with a girl on the road; Sally is still as much in love with Ben as she was years ago; and Ben is so self-absorbed that Phyllis feels emotionally abandoned. Ben, in the meantime, has insecurities of his own.

The original Broadway production was directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, and with choreography by Bennett. The production, which ultimately lost money, ran for 522 performances and has been given many major revivals.

For more information on The Kennedy Center and it's programming, visit www.kennedy-center.org.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.