A day after seeing An American in Paris at the Dominion, I went to Dominic Cooke’s production of Follies at the National. An American in Paris is an exercise in nostalgia, with its predictable love story and Gershwin tunes. We go to bask in the make believe that Broadway perfected in the first half of the 20th century. Follies is no such comfort food. To paraphrase George Elliot’s assessment of Middlemarch, Follies may be the American musical written for grownups.
Sondheim deconstructs the nostalgia of the old musical and brings us to very dark places in this show. For all the darkness, though, I never feel that he rejects the sweet innocence of the older American musical. The music in this show is a remarkable combination of Sondheim’s contemporary worldly sophistication along with loving homages to the old Broadway masters.
The result is a show that lays out our youthful dreams for examination, and leads us, not always gently, through the mess we’ve made of those dreams. This examination hardly leads to a joyous conclusion but neither is it entirely bleak. I felt quite exalted by the way the show led me to see how present our past continues to be, how hard we struggle with ourselves and those we love to find what we want, and how to make peace with what we have.
Follies, for those who don’t know the show, is set in 1971 (the time of its composition) in an old theater where a fictionalized version of Ziegfield’s Follies used to perform. “Ziegfield” has invited all of his old “girls” for a final reunion, and the show takes place over the course of that party.
What makes this a true memory play is that young actresses in the shadows represent the past versions of all the old performers who have come back for the party. We see them in their feathered costumes in all their youthful beauty, and they sometimes interact with their older selves. Quite movingly, the 78-year-old opera singer, Dame Josephine Barstow sings her grand number (One More Kiss) in the spotlight, and then is joined by her younger self as they complete the song in unison, their two voices combining the experience and frailty of age and the bright promise of youth.
Most importantly, we see how the lives of the four principal characters were formed and doomed to disappointment by the sometimes willful misunderstandings of their younger selves. And the interactions: it’s not just that the characters look ruefully back at their younger selves: at a few climactic moments, their younger selves see with appalling clarity what they will become.
I realize, too, that another layer of memory comes to mind in seeing this show now in 2018. When Sondheim wrote the show in 1971, he and his audience were closer in time to the shows of the 1930s than we are now to 1971. The set in this production presented the old theater as a crumbling edifice, already well on its way to its demolition. I imagine that the original Broadway performances were staged in an old theater, whereas I saw the show here in London at the National Theater, a concrete brutalist pile. Wonderful things can be done with the huge Olivier stage, but there’s a twinge of sadness, too, in seeing the show in this setting.
Thinking about this show always causes recall of a Time cover from the initial run—-Alexis Smith in high kick (really high). She’d had a long contract at Warners, with some good roles opposite Flynn, Grant, Gable. But she was often the gal who didn’t get the guy (the Ralph Bellamy problem in reverse). And a few nifty, gritty noirs, with Bogart. But Follies got her back to dancing, and newly to singing. And a Tony. Her version of “Could I Leave You?” is on YouTube.