Follies continues at the National Theatre (Olivier Theatre), London until 11 May 2019.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
We are extremely happy to report that Follies, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s bitter-sweet, truly great 1971 musical, is alive and well and still living at the National.
Back less than 14 months after the final curtain fell on the award-winning 2017 revival, Follies 2019 picks up where Dominic Cooke’s dazzling production left off and is every bit as good and, if anything, even sharper.
Of the 16 cast changes, Imelda Staunton and Philip Quast as Sally Durant Plummer and Ben Stone are hard acts to follow but double Olivier Award-winner Joanna Riding quickly made Sally her own in a needy, moving interpretation. She has a wonderful purity of voice and her heartfelt ‘Losing My Mind’ is as good as it gets.
Replacing Quast’s vocal power and stage presence is never going to be easy but the suave Alexander Hanson is getting there.
It’s all change with the “ghosts” of the four principals. Christine Tucker moves up from Young Dee Dee to take over Young Phyllis while Gemma Sutton is a feisty new Young Sally, Harry Hepple is the new Young Buddy and Ian McIntosh the new Young Ben. All seamlessly hit the spot.
Gorgeous to look at, dazzlingly choreographed by Bill Deamer, on a superb Vicki Mortimer set dominated by a giant Follies sign already in the throes of being demolished, director Dominic Cooke’s sumptuous rebirth takes off from the moment the orchestra strikes up ‘Beautiful Girls’ and never lets up.
Cooke worked with the 1971 Broadway script (book by James Goldman), which ran for 1,500 performances yet lost every nickel of its $800,000 investment through its lavishness, not the 1987 West End version with its song changes.
The cast of 37 from Follies 2017 has been extended to 40, again with a 21-strong orchestra under music director Nigel Lilley. The score features so many of Sondheim’s greatest numbers and must be a joy to play. It’s a pleasure to listen to.
And while the vast Olivier stage is perfect in many ways for handling such a big cast, the intimate moments between the two sets of lead couples, Riding and Peter Forbes as Sally and Buddy on the one side, Janie Dee and Hanson as Phyllis and Ben on the other, are harder to achieve.
Dee’s acting and singing have always been top class but her dancing, a revelation when Follies launched in 2017, has even moved up a level. Her performance as the rich, bored, caustic Manhattan socialite spitting venom at her dissolute husband in ‘Could I Leave You?’ is unbeatable theatre. Is there nothing this lady cannot do? No time should be wasted in making her a Dame.
If Harriet Walter and Eileen Atkins are worthy, so too are Dee and Staunton. Their contribution to British theatre is beyond measure.
The story of Follies is pure Broadway: two showgirls and the stage-door johnnies who marry them grow further apart the older they get.
The unworldly Sally always had a crush on Ben, who went on to a big career in business, but had to make do with travelling salesman Buddy and life in the sticks in Phoenix.
The Weismann Follies’ reunion just before the now-outdated theatre is demolished to make way for a parking lot – we’re in 1971 now – is their chance to reflect on ‘The Road You Didn’t Take’ and marriages that don’t work.
The ageing showgirls arrive and are given sashes denoting the between-the-wars year they danced there when Ziegfeld-style revues were all the rage.
One classic composition follows another, from Ben’s pain-filled ‘Too Many Mornings’ and ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ to Sally’s infinitely haunting ‘In Buddy’s Eyes’ and ‘Losing My Mind’ and Phyllis’ dazzling turn with ‘The Story of Lucy and Jessie’. It’s one knockout hit after another.
‘The Right Girl’ is Forbes’ big moment as he realises what Sally means to him and his ‘The-God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues’, the high-speed vaudeville comedy number he performs for the Loveland sequence, is a real showstopper.
Tracie Bennett’s defiant ‘I’m Still Here’ movie star Carlotta is toned down a little from the original show and all the better for it, while Claire Moore, taking over Hattie Walker from Di Botcher, rips into ‘Broadway Baby’ with rare abandon.
It’s good to see the dynamic Dawn Hope as Stella Deems still there. She leads a brilliant team effort on ‘Who’s That Woman?’, surely one of the most thrilling song-and-dance ensemble numbers in musical theatre history.
Geraldine Fitzgerald’s lively Solange makes ‘Ah, Paris!’ electric and although I still think ‘One More Kiss’, pretty though it is, doesn’t really fit in, Josephine Barstow, standing in on opening night for fellow dame Felicity Lott who was unwell, does it proud along with her “ghost” Alison Langer. Barstow, the original Heidi, returns to the role at a later date.
Even though Follies lasts two-and-a-quarter hours, there is no interval which is what Sondheim wanted when he wrote it. This well-nigh faultless show has already been extended to 11 May. Lucky London!
Jeremy Chapman
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