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I saw the production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (originally directed by Harold Prince) with Bernadette Peters last night. While it's a show I've always had some issues with- too many pastiche songs; the ending always felt a bit pat- it's also an absolute high water mark of American musical theater on Broadway. Graced with many of Sondheim's best songs (that is, some of the best songs in American musical theater), it's a memento of a time when people like Sondheim and Prince could take what was already becoming a behemoth of a form, and use it to express their own artistic concerns.
The new production itself has its share of artistic issues: the staging is often imprecise to the point that at times, I had to visually search the stage during group scenes to figure out who was talking; too, I don't know that during, say, "That Woman is Me!" that the audience would understand that the girls are actually dancing the number with their younger selves; it simply looks as though they're being matched by younger dancers in black and white costumes. (This is a major flaw, since the commingling of past and present is the main point of the show.) (More trivially, as issues go, the actor cast as young Ben looks so much like Matt Rippy, the actor who plays Captain Jack Harkness in the 1941 Torchwood episode, it was distracting.)
The production definitely has its gifts, as well: Bernadette Peters is solid as Sally, if never quite matching the pathos one heard from Dorothy Collins on the cast album; Jam Maxwell is the bomb; the segue into the Loveland sequence was brilliant, and made me wonder how they treated that moment on Broadway. If anything, I came away with the usual concern I have when watching a Sondheim show (cubed when I hear his songs performed at piano bar): the director and performers tend to turn the show- and especially, the songs- into numbers, whereas when I hear/read Sondheim lyrics, I always imagine something a bit more lacerating, and emotionally honest. I don't know how well my version of Sondheim's songs could ever play on Broadway: as Hal Prince once said of his original vision for A Little Night Music, it's whipped cream filled with knives.
(A particularly nice note about this production: Terri White, a member of the ensemble, is someone I know somewhat from the old Rose's Turn days. She had a rough patch professionally; gorgeous and lovely and right to see her back on the Broadway stage.)
The new production itself has its share of artistic issues: the staging is often imprecise to the point that at times, I had to visually search the stage during group scenes to figure out who was talking; too, I don't know that during, say, "That Woman is Me!" that the audience would understand that the girls are actually dancing the number with their younger selves; it simply looks as though they're being matched by younger dancers in black and white costumes. (This is a major flaw, since the commingling of past and present is the main point of the show.) (More trivially, as issues go, the actor cast as young Ben looks so much like Matt Rippy, the actor who plays Captain Jack Harkness in the 1941 Torchwood episode, it was distracting.)
The production definitely has its gifts, as well: Bernadette Peters is solid as Sally, if never quite matching the pathos one heard from Dorothy Collins on the cast album; Jam Maxwell is the bomb; the segue into the Loveland sequence was brilliant, and made me wonder how they treated that moment on Broadway. If anything, I came away with the usual concern I have when watching a Sondheim show (cubed when I hear his songs performed at piano bar): the director and performers tend to turn the show- and especially, the songs- into numbers, whereas when I hear/read Sondheim lyrics, I always imagine something a bit more lacerating, and emotionally honest. I don't know how well my version of Sondheim's songs could ever play on Broadway: as Hal Prince once said of his original vision for A Little Night Music, it's whipped cream filled with knives.
(A particularly nice note about this production: Terri White, a member of the ensemble, is someone I know somewhat from the old Rose's Turn days. She had a rough patch professionally; gorgeous and lovely and right to see her back on the Broadway stage.)
