Theater: The Kennedy Center / 2700 F St. NW, Washington, DC, 20566
Synopsis:
The Kennedy Center will mount a major revival production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. Winner of seven Tony Awards® for its original 1971 Broadway production, Follies features music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim with a book by James Goldman. Directed by Eric Schaeffer with choreography by Warren Carlyle, this new Kennedy Center production follows the emotional journeys of two middle-aged couples attending a reunion for former members of the musical revue "Weismannn's Follies." Popular songs include "Broadway Baby," "I'm Still Here," "Too Many Mornings," "Could I Leave You?" and "Losing My Mind."
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May 22, 2011: It wasn’t until the second act that I fell in love all over again with “Follies,” a show that had broken my heart many times in the past. Up to that point of the Kennedy Center revival of James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s brave and beautiful musical from 1971, I’d been feeling as if I had hooked up with an old flame I’d been longing to see, only to find a snuffed candle.
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May 22, 2011: The Kennedy Center’s grim and glittery new revival of “Follies” takes an audience halfway to paradise. As itineraries go in the musical theater, that’s no insignificant distance.
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May 22, 2011: Nine years after impressing the theater world with its six-production festival of musicals by Stephen Sondheim, the Kennedy Center is back with the exclamation point -- the colossal 1971 Sondheim-James Goldman tuner "Follies." The lavish and entirely satisfying production includes a full orchestra, eye-popping designs and a 40-person cast headed by Bernadette Peters.
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May 23, 2011: "Follies" is the Holy Grail of the American musical theater. Those who saw Harold Prince and Michael Bennett's legendary original 1971 Broadway production (I am not one) generally insist that nothing will ever equal it. Of course, that doesn't stop people from trying. I've seen no fewer than eight attempts. It is always a pleasure to encounter James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim's woundingly beautiful, vibrantly theatrical meditation on mortality, examining two unhappy marriages in the context of a performers' reunion. But though the Kennedy Center is to be commended for lavishing the necessary funds to present this expansive work properly, director Eric Schaeffer's wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am approach too often keeps complexity at bay. This is a "Follies" functioning at only a fraction of its power.
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May 23, 2011: As the curtain rises, it is apparent that the derelict theater is haunted by the eternally young ghosts of showgirls, who will now be joined by their older selves. Sally (Peters), who married salesman Buddy (Burstein) and became a depressed housewife, still harbors long-held feelings for her former beau Ben (Raines), who picked Sally’s sarcastic gal pal Phyllis (Maxwell) as his wife and has since become a rich, emotionally distant diplomat. While the other guests drink, mingle and swap life stories, these four individuals are forced to confront the lies and regrets on which they have built their adult lives.
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