Hats off鈥攈ere they come, those beautiful girls! Today in 1971 at the Winter Garden Theatre, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's Follies celebrated opening night. Along with introducing such future showtune favorites as "Broadway Baby," "I'm Still Here," and "Losing My Mind," the show would run for 522 performances and near sweep the 1972 Tony Awards, winning in seven categories. That is except for, famously, Best Musical, and thus birthing many a spirited conversation over so-called Tony "mistakes."
Follies is one of those shows that's easy to obsess over, especially for a lover of theatre. The musical is set in a decaying theatre that used to host the Ziegfeld Follies-like (but fictional) Weismann Follies. Weismann (based on famed producer Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.) has assembled alumni for one last night of glory before the theatre is to be torn down to make way for a parking lot. The show centers on former chorus girls Sally (played by Dorothy Collins) and Phyllis (Alexis Smith). They attend the reunion with their husbands, Buddy (Gene Nelson) and Ben (John McMartin). After reminiscing over a few too many glasses of champagne, each pair is forced to confront some ghosts from their past, as well as some old resentments.
It's a brilliant conceit, because it gave Sondheim the opportunity to write some showstoppers for the former Follies performers to sing, each a pastiche of the types of songs you would have really heard at the Ziegfeld Follies. These songs are among the most tuneful in Sondheim's catalogue, many sounding like they fell out of the Great American Songbook of standards. But then, there's a whole other set of songs that aren't performances, giving Sondheim the chance to birth some of the most devastating material he ever wrote. His characters are looking back at unfulfilled dreams, torturing themselves with what might have been, which becomes a platform to write masterpieces like "The Road You Didn't Take," "In Buddy's Eyes," and "Could I Leave You."
And Sondheim isn't the only musical theatre legend who helped create the show. Follies was the second Sondheim musical to be directed and produced by Harold Prince, a follow-up to their 1970 landmark musical Company which had premiered just the season before. Also back from that creative team was choreographer Michael Bennett, who was promoted to co-director alongside Prince this time around (the future A Chorus Line creator's first Broadway directing credit). The two also earned Tony Awards for directing the show, with Bennett also earning a second Tony for his choreography.
While not strictly a concept musical like Company, Follies was daring and experimental in its own way. Goldman's book is written almost as if somebody wandered through a party with a tape recorder, a segment of one conversation here bleeding into a fragment of another conversation there. Most of the action straightforwardly takes place at the reunion, but when tensions reach a boiling point, things get metaphysical as the four leads suddenly find themselves in a group mental breakdown that plays out as a fully staged and costumed Follies starring the foursome.
At the risk of being a bit reductive, the really incendiary element of Follies is how deeply sad it gets. None of its characters are easy protagonists, with some critics going so far as to say they're all unlikable. Add in a famously opulent original production filled to the brim with costume parades and a cast full of stage and screen legends, and you have all the trappings of a true cult hit for musical theatre fans.
Ask someone who saw that original production, and you're liable to hear about how it was the greatest thing they ever saw, that it featured inimitable performances, and the kind of visual opulence we're not likely to ever see again on Broadway (Follies' first Broadway outing ran for over a year and still reportedly lost nearly its entire investment). Ask another audience member, and you'll get a rant about how the whole thing is too depressing, that it never really worked. Sondheim and Goldman added fuel to the fire, too, by continuing to tinker with the score and book in later productions, giving even the musical's passionate supporters a chance to debate over which version is the best. Never forget: the true apex of musical theatre obsession isn't communal love for a show, but rather a never-ending debate over the merits of a work that got mixed reviews.
Try not to roll your eyes too hard when you have to sit through someone's "brilliant" idea for "fixing" a troubled but beloved musical.
The biggest of those tinkerings was for a 1987 London premiere, which had a number of major changes made at the request of producer Cameron Mackintosh, mostly to give the musical more of a narrative arc and a less bleak ending. The production got a heavily revised book and four new songs (plus an intermission), but Sondheim and Goldman were reportedly unhappy with this version of the show鈥攊t has not resurfaced since. Broadway revivals in 2001 and 2011 featured different, less drastic book revisions, both still with that new intermission. A 2017 revival at London's National, while not using exactly the original book, came the closest to returning to Goldman's original work, including its one-act structure.
Follies is a musical that was made for star casting. Many of the characters are supposed to be huge stars of the stage, most with just one single signature number to sing during the performance. Low commitment, big spotlight roles like that make Follies primed for a company full of A-listers, particularly when staging a one-night-only concert. Stars of past revivals and concert mountings have included Barbara Cook, Mandy Patinkin, Carol Burnett, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Elaine Stritch, Kaye Ballard, Ann Miller, Donna McKechnie, Blythe Danner, Treat Williams, Marge Champion, Marni Nixon, Carole Cook, Christine Baranski, Elaine Paige, Bernadette Peters, Victoria Clark, and Jan Maxwell.
Take a look back at the legendary original Broadway production of Follies in the gallery below.
