{"id":2943,"date":"2012-02-01T22:25:24","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T03:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2943"},"modified":"2012-11-04T21:50:58","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T02:50:58","slug":"revival-meetings-anything-goes-hair-and-follies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2943","title":{"rendered":"Revival Meetings: ANYTHING GOES, HAIR, and FOLLIES"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Theater Reviews Page<\/a> | Previous Theater Review<\/a> | Next Theater Review<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Revival Meetings: Anything Goes<\/em>, Hair<\/em>, and Follies<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

A slightly shorter version of this piece appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of The Hopkins Review (New Series 5.1)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Viewed as something of a genre unto itself, the Broadway stage, more than most art forms, persists through recycling, especially these days.\u00a0 On a recent August weekend, I set out to sample the purest form of this recycling with what is arguably the purest product of the American stage: revivals of great American musicals, in this instance from three decades: Anything Goes<\/em>, from the 1930s, Hair<\/em>, from the 1960s, and Follies<\/em>, from the 1970s.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Recycling Bin<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On that recent August weekend, there were 24 shows on Broadway, and of those, only three were neither revivals nor jukebox musicals based on existing pop songbooks nor adaptations from other genres.\u00a0 This represents a huge change from the way things used to be.\u00a0 Although August once was much more fallow than it is today on Broadway, it bears note in that same August weekend in 1934, the year of Anything Goes<\/em>, six of the seven Broadway shows playing were original productions.\u00a0 In the same weekend in 1968, the year Hair<\/em> came to Broadway, 8 of 16 shows were original.\u00a0 And in August 1971, the year of Follies<\/em>, 9 of 16 were original.\u00a0 Based on these four datapoints, it would seem that the tide of derivativeness has been generally rising for at least the last 80 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If Broadway is the pinnacle of American theater, and is a limited resource (40 stages), we are demonstrably devoting the bulk of our efforts at that pinnacle to works that started life in other genres and\/or bygone times, and that we are largely crowding out new ones conceived (as my three exemplars once were) directly for the stage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Issues for Revivals<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I come to anatomize this trend, not to praise it or dispraise it.\u00a0 And in particular I come to consider issues unique to the quintessential form of recycling, viz. revivals.\u00a0 They do, after all, pose a unique set of challenges to those who stage them, and a unique set of questions to be considered by a contemporary audience.\u00a0 How does a show from one era fare in front of the audiences from a later one?\u00a0 One has to assume that the work is viewed as having something to offer, or it would not be re-presented.\u00a0 Yet audience sensibilities inevitably will have changed.\u00a0 Does the contemporary production team tailor the work to those sensibilities, or does it count on the audience to make allowances and enjoy the work as more or less originally presented?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These are difficult questions.\u00a0 To confront the artifacts of another time can sometimes provoke shock and reflection, at others, ennui.\u00a0 In any event, total anachronism is unachievable.\u00a0 Even a producer who wishes to do so cannot actually provide the exact same experience an audience would have had 40, 50, or 70 years ago.\u00a0 The performers will be different, the technicalities of stagecraft are not the same, and the business structure of Broadway has markedly changed over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Seeing these three revivals as I did, one on top of the other, emphasized the workings of all these dynamics.\u00a0 Anything Goes<\/em> took a highly revisionist approach.\u00a0 The other two were far less willing to meddle.\u00a0 They exemplified the strengths and weaknesses of each line of attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anything Goes<\/em>: Unsinkable<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anything Goes<\/em> can only be described as having started life as a rewrite, and then to have become more so over the years.\u00a0 Songwriter Cole Porter began by collaborating with book-writers P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton to do a musical about a shipwrecked ocean liner; then, just before rehearsals, came the Morro Castle<\/em> disaster, leaving shipwreck no joking matter.\u00a0 Wodehouse and Bolton having become unavailable to do the required salvage, Porter turned to the director Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse to change the script to keep the ship afloat.\u00a0 Their rewrite was in turn rewritten in two movies made of the show, with very different song lineups, characters given different names and different characteristics.\u00a0 And then there was a 1962 off-Broadway revival, which largely nailed down the new list of songs evolved through the movie process and reduced the action to a single set (the original had reportedly ended with a couple of scenes off shipboard).\u00a0 In 1987, Russel Crouse\u2019s son Timothy and John Weidman were brought in to do yet another major rewrite.\u00a0 Characters changed, the song lineup changed again, and songs were assigned to different characters once more.\u00a0 The current production is based on the 1987 one.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Given all this history, one can hardly grow indignant that we are not getting the \u201cpure\u201d 1934 production.\u00a0 1934 was of mongrel breed itself.\u00a0 Certainly it\u2019s hard to image that Cole Porter would have cared.\u00a0 He was given to doing the same thing when he enjoyed artistic control.\u00a0 From his perspective, and probably that of the audiences of his era and ours, the show, like all Cole Porter shows, is fundamentally a delivery vehicle for his songs.\u00a0 If they come across well, almost any flaw in the book, whether attributable to the revisers\u2019\u2019 hands or another\u2019s, will be forgiven.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We can add that the book was never flawed.\u00a0 The Timothy Crouse\/John Weidman adaptation is about as good a delivery vehicle as the Wodehouse\/Bolton\/Lindsay\/Russel Crouse one. \u00a0We know that the plot, whoever scripts it, is a tissue, less significant or serious even than the plots in Gilbert & Sullivan, a nonsensical pastiche involving mistaken identities, an unsuitable marriage to be prevented, and two suitable ones to be achieved, some slapstick and some farce.\u00a0 All that the script has to do is be funny.\u00a0 The first version I saw in 1962[1] was funny.\u00a0 The 1987-2011 one is funny.\u00a0 Case closed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tap-Dance Explosion<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For 2011, the show has been \u201copened up\u201d again, to use a phrase more associated with movies than the stage.\u00a0 It has about 20 more performers than 1987, and conforms to modern big-Broadway expectations, making the song-and-dance last longer, giving the stars (when I saw it, Joel Grey and Sutton Foster were headlining) more opportunities to show off for the audience, even to give the technical marvels in the sets a fuller workout.\u00a0 You can get a very clear illustration of the difference I\u2019m talking about by comparing the 1962 Eileen Rodgers or the 1935 Jeanne Aubert London cast rendition of the title song, ANYTHING GOES (downloadable on Amazon or iTunes), with the video of the Sutton Foster tap dance explosion crafted from the same song and captured at the 2011 Tonys show (viewable on YouTube).\u00a0 This seems to be about giving the theatergoer a thorough value for the $140 or so he or she will likely have plunked down for the experience.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This hypertrophy of razzmatazz does emphasize the original large scale of the show, but may detract from other Porter strengths.\u00a0 There is something powerfully simple at the heart of Porter\u2019s appeal.\u00a0 He has a very complex musical sensibility, a fiendish facility with words, but a very uncomplicated outlook for all that.\u00a0 Porter believes that sex is great fun, that love is a powerful, if not irresistible force, and that all else is humbug, including taking either sex or love too seriously. \u00a0For example, the character of Reno Sweeney, a revivalist\/nightclub singer based on Aimee Semple McPherson could have been done \u201cstraight,\u201d like the Salvation Army lass in Guys and Dolls<\/em>, or done as an expos\u00e9 (and by 1934 there was an air of scandal about McPherson).\u00a0 But in Porter\u2019s hands she comes across as neither seriously religious nor hypocritical.\u00a0 Her revival meeting in the ship\u2019s lounge is barely about good conduct, let alone religion, even though the religious trope of Gabriel blowing a horn of course is the title phrase in the song.\u00a0 It\u2019s simply a fun way of blowing off steam.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Notwithstanding the great artistry of his music and lyrics, then, Porter\u2019s songs deliberately cultivate an air of being trifles, facetious off-the-cuff improvisations sitting at a keyboard at a cocktail party. \u00a01962 emphasized the small scale pleasures.\u00a0 The economics of contemporary Broadway musicals dictate small orchestras but big singing and big dancing.\u00a0 So that will be the emphasis for the moment, even if it undercuts that cocktail party dynamic.\u00a0 If that\u2019s what it takes to see Cole walk in our midst again, it is worth it.<\/span><\/p>\n

No More Hair<\/em>-y Guys<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In contrast, the reviser\u2019s hands lie lightly on the current revival of Hair<\/em>.\u00a0 So far as I could tell, the intent was to recreate the experience of the original production, in a world to which in a strange way it seems less relevant than does Anything Goes<\/em>.\u00a0 We still have Cole Porter\u2019s topics: love and sex, celebrity criminals and the thrill of travel, after all.\u00a0 We do not have hippies, their hair, their fashions, the Draft, or the Vietnam War.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Is This Trip Necessary?<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But let me ask a rude question: when the surrounding culture and politics have vanished, is it worthwhile to preserve and re-present Hair<\/em>, either to a new generation, or to anyone?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The short answer might be that there must be something worth preserving in a show whose every lyric and every tune was so familiar to almost everyone I knew growing up.\u00a0 If you weren\u2019t there, you may find it hard to grasp how profoundly the show struck a chord with young theatergoers (and record-buyers) when it came out.\u00a0 It was deliberately transgressive and provocative in its lyrics, which spoke of drugs in a completely positive way, put expletives in Broadway music in a then just-about-unheard-of way, and fiercely condemned the War and the Draft.\u00a0 It limned the Generation Gap.\u00a0 It glorified flowing locks on males, utterly anathema to the crew-cut generation of our parents who had won World War II.\u00a0 And it was positive about sex — any<\/em> sex.\u00a0 The lyrics to SODOMY, for instance:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, pederasty:<\/span><\/address>\n
Father, why do these words sound so nasty?<\/span><\/address>\n
Masturbation can be fun.<\/span><\/address>\n
Join the holy orgy Kama Sutra, everyone.<\/span><\/address>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, o-kay<\/em>.\u00a0 Today most of it lacks shock value. \u00a0But pederasty?\u00a0 The generation that embraced Sexual Liberation is also the generation that brought a far more serious appreciation to the ravages of child sexual abuse.\u00a0 It is not just another way of having fun, opposed only by fussy fools (as, arguably, are all the other things in the verse).\u00a0 And the revivalists bringing it back to us must have known that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In short, if there was any effort going on to prettify Hair<\/em>, I missed it.\u00a0 What was already pretty stays that way, of course, like the curtain call where the audience is welcomed to throng the stage and help sing LET THE SUN SHINE IN.\u00a0 The song is a deliberately uplifting and crowd-pleasing bit of power pop that would raise pulses anywhere.\u00a0 But I think it seems less dramatically justified than it once did by its context, the tragic moment that has just preceded it: a vision of Claude, the young protagonist, inducted against his will into the armed services and slain in action.\u00a0 One can interpret the song, whose lyrics are simply the phrase \u201clet the sun shine in\u201d repeated endlessly, as a prayer for the killing of the young Claudes of the nation to stop.\u00a0 But in 1968 there was very little reason to think it would stop anytime soon, or to wax uplifting about the hope that it might.\u00a0 The logic of the show gives us little to be upbeat about, even if we know that the Draft and the War both ultimately came to an end.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Still Works<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And this, it seems to me, exactly typifies what still works and what does not.\u00a0 The pop-iest songs, e.g. AQUARIUS, MANCHESTER, ENGLAND, HAIR, WHERE DO I GO, still pack a punch.\u00a0 The politics, the characters, the plot and much of the lyrics do not.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As to the politics, much of it seems now like an exercise in stating the obvious, and not very cogently.\u00a0 Our parents mostly want us to go to war, and we don\u2019t wanna; we\u2019re repelled and we\u2019re scared.\u00a0 Long hair feels cool.\u00a0 Why shouldn\u2019t we have sex with whomever we feel like?\u00a0 How are we (especially if we happen to be black) supposed to feel patriotic about a country that once held slaves?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t militarism just a form of insanity?\u00a0 And the like — all lessons mostly learned (or thoughtfully rejected) by now.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What\u2019s was ugly seems uglier.\u00a0 Hair<\/em> was perhaps unintentionally frank about the shortcomings of the characters.\u00a0 Progressive politics could coexist with sexism and personal cruelty; EASY TO BE HARD sums it up well: \u201cDo you only care about the bleeding crowd?\/ How about a needing friend?\u201d\u00a0 Sexual liberation leads to the impregnation of Sheila \u201cby some crazy speed freak\u201d with no prospect of providing parenthood for the child or love for Sheila, and Sheila barely has the tools to process or recognize the fix she and the child are in.\u00a0 And the \u201coff the grid\u201d quality of the Tribe\u2019s lives, without jobs or accountability, seems to modern eyes less liberated than parasitical.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Were We Thinking?<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It begs the question: What exactly are we supposed to like or admire about these kids? In 1967, we would probably have admired how free they were.\u00a0 Now we tend to ask what that freedom is in aid of.\u00a0 The explanation provided: \u201cIn this dive we rediscover sensation.\u201d\u00a0 I suspect that that rediscovery is no longer so highly prized, and would not have made Hair<\/em> a hit today, had it not been one already.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The plot and the songs contain much incoherence, even for a show that is more a revue than a musical drama.\u00a0 About those songs, it\u2019s been commented that they often seem not to end so much as peter out.\u00a0 INITIALS, for instance, consists in its entirety of playing around with the acronyms LBJ, IRT, CIA and LSD.\u00a0 It\u2019s mildly transgressive to juxtapose authority figures President Johnson and the Central Intelligence Agency with LSD, but pointless.\u00a0 The Claude\u2019s Nightmare sequence which takes up a good deal of Act Two is similarly incoherent.\u00a0 To choose one example from many, it may be a piquant image to show a passel of Catholic nuns strangling Buddhist monks with rosaries, but so what?\u00a0 What does it tell us other than that Claude is stoned?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In short, Hair<\/em> works now, to the extent it does, mostly because it worked once.\u00a0 The songs are firmly lodged in the musical memory of everyone of a certain age.\u00a0 But without updating, the show may leave many of that age wondering what we were all thinking.\u00a0 And its original audience will not be around forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

An Archival Follies<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The problem is far less pronounced with Follies<\/em>, which is nearly as old.\u00a0 Arguably Stephen Sondheim\u2019s most ambitious work, it is to some degree inoculated against aging by taking as its central preoccupation the passing of time, and the verdict rendered on youth by age (and perhaps vice versa).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As the world knows, Follies<\/em> takes place in 1971 in an old theater about to be demolished, where during the Depression, a series of Ziegfeld-like follies were presented.\u00a0 The occasion is a reunion of people associated with those productions, principally female dancers and their beaux and husbands.\u00a0 The principal characters are shadowed by the ghosts of their younger selves.\u00a0 So through a kind of mirror play we watch the men and women they have become describing the past (that description tellingly characterized as \u201cly[ing] about ourselves \u2013 a little\u201d), and then, through the interplay of the ghosts, seeing what the truth was, and thence, by a roundabout path, getting to the truth of the present.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The show is also a chance for actors and actresses of a certain age to show that they still have the stuff, and the audience will be \u201cpulling for them\u201d in the present, 2011, quite irrespective of how it would otherwise feel about the characters they portray either in 1971 or 1931 for that matter.\u00a0 A show that demands consideration of the same story from so many temporal viewpoints is likely to draw audiences immune to what C.S. Lewis called \u201cchronological snobbery,\u201d i.e. the sense that because something no longer suits modern tastes, it must be unworthy of regard.\u00a0 That being the case, the kinds of issues we have been considering that revivals provoke should be largely mooted out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Indeed, this is an audience likely to be approaching the piece with the anticipation of finally seeing it done at all.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that they necessarily either quarreled with or exalted the 1971 production (which only ran for 522 ill-attended performances) \u2013 I suspect that most of us sitting there, like me, hadn\u2019t seen it before.\u00a0 Worse, by common consent the original cast album was a butchered abomination, so, having missed the show itself, we had never were able to use the album as a chance to catch up.\u00a0 The show is far too expensive for casual staging, unlike Company<\/em>, its companion-piece from the previous year, so it is just not so well-known.\u00a0 There was a great concert staging in 1985, which was recorded.\u00a0 But that still does not add up to audience familiarity.\u00a0 There was also a stripped-down Broadway revival in 2001.\u00a0 Through the process of regional and West End revivals, the James Goldman script was quite significantly altered, and three songs dropped out and were replaced by three others.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This production, which premiered at the Kennedy Center before moving to a limited Broadway run, is ponderous and visibly expensive (reportedly the most costly production ever premiered at Kennedy Center).\u00a0 From a synopsis of the original and a synopsis of the changes Goldman later made, this seems to be the original script.\u00a0 And the earlier song substitutions have been reversed. The word archival has been used to describe this production, and that seems right.<\/span><\/p>\n

Too Much Superstructure?<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So what stands out?\u00a0 There are a number of images out there in the publicity for this production of the ghostly showgirls with monstrous headpieces; that seems an apt icon for the musical.\u00a0 The four intertwined personal stories at the heart of the enterprise have to support a similar superstructure: ghosts, a humungous three-level set, a 41-person cast, a full orchestra, and a ton of portentousness.\u00a0 Critics have differed as to whether the burden crushes the stories or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think in part the answer one gravitates to depends on whether one buys Sondheim\u2019s visions of marriage and of success.\u00a0 There is a persistent theme in a number of his musicals, persistent enough so one must discount the hypothesis that it comes concurrently and independently from the various book authors with whom Sondheim has collaborated, the theme of marriage as at best a funhouse, at worst a house of horrors, from which, astonishingly, almost no resident actually chooses to escape.\u00a0 Think of the married couples in Company<\/em> (<\/span>1970).\u00a0 And he entertains a parallel vision of success as of something relatively easy to achieve, but very difficult to enjoy.\u00a0 Consider quasi-autobiographical protagonist Franklin Shepard in Merrily We Roll Along<\/em> (1981). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In short, Sondheim depicts people whose restlessness never gives them the ability to say of a career or a marriage: this is enough.\u00a0 They may, and usually do, stay with the job and the marriage.\u00a0 But this can only occur at the cost of constant wondering what might have been had those shackles never been laid on, and by dint of inflicting pain on those around them as they wonder.\u00a0 Perhaps the reason Sondheim\u2019s A Little Night Music<\/em> (1973) seems such a dramatic success is that Ingmar Bergman\u2019s Smiles of a Summer Night<\/em>, Sondheim\u2019s source, gave the unhappy characters an out: the miserable marriage actually ends and a presumably happy one ensues.\u00a0 Where Bergman led, Sondheim had to follow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sondheim on Marriage<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So back to the two couples: Ben and Phyllis, and Buddy and Sally.\u00a0 Their relationship goes back to the years of the Follies, when Ben and Buddy were young men at the bottom of the fire escape waiting to take showgirls Phyllis and Sally out on dates.\u00a0 Ben has become a man of affairs, Buddy a salesman, and their two wives terminally bored and frustrated.\u00a0 Sally, self-deluded, comes to the reunion believing she has a chance to rekindle a relationship with Ben.\u00a0 Ben, Phyllis, and maybe Buddy have had affairs, and Sally has been fixated on memories of Ben.\u00a0 So their marriages are hellish, as outlined in a couple of coruscating songs: COULD I LEAVE YOU? and BUDDY\u2019S FOLLY, and especially Sally\u2019s LOSING MY MIND (and it is a treat to hear Bernadette Peters\u2019 treatment of this in the current version).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ben\u2019s infidelity and coldness just seem to be givens, necessary to embody the Sondheim outlook on wedlock.\u00a0 Phyllis\u2019 coldness seems to be a response to Ben\u2019s rebuffs.\u00a0 And after the show-stopping COULD I LEAVE YOU? in which Phyllis tells off Ben, a volcanic eruption of hatred in which for three minutes she says unforgiveable, marriage-ending things, in response to him very emphatically asking for a divorce, the conclusion, which sees them still a couple, just does not follow.\u00a0 The fight is over but not in any way walked back from.\u00a0 Buddy, meanwhile, ought to be able to find a more desirable life companion than the sloppy, preoccupied Sally, and yet he is so conflicted that his staying with Sally is a foregone conclusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The unveiling of this unhappiness proceeds concurrently with the reunion.\u00a0 And despite the genuine piquancy of the notion of time\u2019s passage at a gathering of superannuated showgirls and the men who surround them, it does not resemble the horror show of the two failed marriages.\u00a0 Mostly the reunion is fun for the characters, the audience, and, presumably the cast.\u00a0 This edition includes not only Bernadette Peters but Jan Maxwell and the grande dame<\/em> of the British musical, Elaine Page.\u00a0 They remain luminous and physically fit and it is a happy thing to see them.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Gap Not Closed<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Apart from the four protagonists, the showgirls have had good lives, they are happy to see each other, and they retain the qualities that made them stars.\u00a0 Even with notes of ruefulness injected, the song by Carlotta (Elaine Page), I\u2019M STILL HERE, is about a kind of fulfillment and a great degree of honest, not to say triumphant insight. Is this depiction of private misery amidst rejoicing really a good fit?\u00a0 It might be if the one compelled the other dramatically.\u00a0 But the only causation I can see is that the reunion gives Sally a chance to find Ben and make a desperate attempt to win him back.\u00a0 Everything else in their predicaments predates their arrival at the theater.\u00a0 The setting does give the ghosts of their youthful selves a place to show how the two couples evolved out of a circle of friends, and perhaps how the seeds of their unhappiness were sown at the beginning.\u00a0 And the Loveland sequence, a follies-style pastiche that degenerates into emotional grand guignol, which takes up much of the second act (the same way Claude\u2019s nightmare does the second act of Hair<\/em>, come to think of it), basically suspends depiction of the reunion.\u00a0 It\u2019s still got nothing to do with the reunion as a plot device.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I would submit that Sondheim and his book author never quite closed this gap.\u00a0 Follies<\/em> remains more like two shows than one.\u00a0 For comparison, think of how the happy romance and the tragic romance interplayed in South Pacific<\/em> \u2013 a musical whose book was, incidentally, co-written by Oscar Hammerstein, well-known to have served as Sondheim\u2019s mentor.\u00a0 Because these romances were depicted in the same dramatic frame, and each had to do with cross-cultural romance, they cross-fertilized each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 James Goldman, the author of the book, kept tinkering with it up till his death in 1996.\u00a0 But to my mind the show cannot be rewritten or updated to solve the problem<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That said, of course, Follies<\/em> remains great art, slightly failed, but still richly deserving of this sumptuous re-creation.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t deterred from seeing revivals of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cproblem comedies\u201d because they are imperfect; there\u2019s far too much greatness there.\u00a0 So it is with Follies<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Will We Be Reviving In 2111?<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Looking forward, I would propose the following rules for predicting which shows will still be revived in 2111.\u00a0 Great shows get invited back: Anything Goes<\/em> will still be around \u2013 with, undoubtedly, fresh revisions. Great but flawed shows get invited back too: Follies<\/em> will be back, and controversial then as now, with, probably, few revisions.\u00a0 Shows that, taken out of their historical moment, are mediocre will probably disappear: Hair<\/em>, I suspect, will suffer that fate, though some of the songs might persist.\u00a0 And, whether my principles or my predictions based on them be right or wrong, I am confident about this: audiences a century hence will still be attending revivals.<\/span><\/p>\n

___________<\/span><\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0 I’ve written about that revival elsewhere in this blog<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/span><\/p>\n

Theater Reviews Page<\/a> | Previous Theater Review<\/a> | Next Theater Review<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revivals pose a unique set of challenges to those who stage them, and a unique set of questions to be considered by a contemporary audience. But great shows get invited back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3098],"tags":[3238,3241,3254,3239,3248,2689,3240,2733,3283,3258,3255,1715,3269,3288,2629,3285,1209,3263,3276,1707,3277,3284,2779,3272,1708,3290,3274,1270,3259,3261,3275,3243,1247,3236,3262,3246,3282,3273,3256,3278,3260,3289,3253,3251,3250,3279,3268,3286,3291,3270,3280,3244,3292,3242,3266,3293,1723,3237,3247,3267,3245,3287,3281,3265,1245,1235,3252,1023,3264,3249,109,3271,979,3257],"class_list":["post-2943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theater-reviews-and-commentary","tag-1930s","tag-3241","tag-3254","tag-1960s","tag-3248","tag-2689","tag-1970s","tag-2733","tag-a-little-night-music","tag-aimee-semple-mcpherson","tag-amazon","tag-anything-goes","tag-aquarius","tag-bernadette-peters","tag-broadway","tag-buddys-folly","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-celebrity-criminals","tag-chronological-snobbery","tag-cole-porter","tag-company","tag-could-i-leave-you","tag-draft","tag-easy-to-be-hard","tag-eileen-rodgers","tag-elain-page","tag-florenz-ziegfeld","tag-follies","tag-gabriel-blow-your-horn","tag-gerome-ragni","tag-ghosts","tag-guy-bolton","tag-guys-and-dolls","tag-hair","tag-hippies","tag-howard-lindsay","tag-ingmar-bergman","tag-initials","tag-itunes","tag-james-goldman","tag-james-rado","tag-jan-maxwell","tag-jeanne-aubert","tag-joel-grey","tag-john-weidman","tag-kennedy-center","tag-let-the-sun-shine-in","tag-losing-my-mind","tag-loveland","tag-manchester-england","tag-merrily-we-roll-along","tag-morro-castle-disaster","tag-oscar-hammerstein-ii","tag-p-g-wodehouse","tag-pederasty","tag-problem-comedies","tag-reno-sweeney","tag-revivals","tag-russel-crouse","tag-sexual-liberation","tag-shipwreck","tag-showgirls","tag-smiles-of-a-summer-night","tag-sodomy","tag-south-pacific","tag-stephen-sondheim","tag-sutton-foster","tag-the-draft","tag-thrill-of-travel","tag-timothy-crouse","tag-vietnam-war","tag-where-do-i-go","tag-william-shakespeare","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2943"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3473,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2943\/revisions\/3473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}