It’s downright ironic to see a staging of “Follies” during Valentine’s Day week, for most of the love portrayed in Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s 1971 Broadway musical has gone sour.
The show is Sondheim’s solemn nudge-wink toward the show-biz world, and it’s a sure bet he sees that world as hollow and superficial, capable of yielding only bitterness, sadness and regret – qualities imbued in his characters.
Those qualities come out in full force in One More Productions’ staging of the show’s “concert” version, directed by Damien Lorton with a sharp and knowing eye toward the follies and foibles of the story’s characters.
The women who comprised the “Weismann Follies” circa 1941 reunite in 1971, gathering inside the soon-to-be demolished Weismann Theater, where ghosts of their younger selves appear at key moments in the action – and occasionally confront their current, older selves.
Though Sondheim and Goldman introduce us to a long list of characters, two married couples with emotionally and psychologically entangled romantic histories are the focus: The Plummers, Buddy (Lorton) and Sally (Adriana Sanchez), and the Stones, Ben (Tom Patrick) and Phyllis (Claire Perry).
The reunion of the quartet stirs unsettling memories of their youthful affairs – interactions and reactions that play out again in the present.
Lorton’s staging potently communicates the show’s themes: chiefly, the tenuous, fragile nature of love and the fleeting nature of life. OMP’s Gem Theater staging reflects the double meaning of the show’s title, and by putting the folly and foolishness of the “Follies” characters on full display, it creates something almost wrenchingly painful to witness.
“Follies” puts any cast through its paces, requiring pitch-perfect acting, vocals and dancing – and Lorton’s entire cast is more than up to the task. Lorton, Sanchez, Patrick and Perry and their younger counterparts (Nicole Cassesso as Sally, Colby Hamann as Buddy, Bodrero as Ben and Ashley Montgomery as Phyllis) serve up the intended angst.
Notable among a bevy of outstanding supporting performances are Beth Hansen’s resilient Carlotta, whose tour-de-force solo in the anthemic “I’m Still Here” expresses the character’s cynicism, savvy, and sense of self-preservation, and Shannon Page, whose bold charisma as Hattie is best seen in the jazzy, bluesy ’30s-style number “Broadway Baby.”
The songs provide audiences some of Sondheim’s most ingenious, innovative and resourceful lyrics, and conductor Kevin Homma and the onstage 20-piece band expertly handle the variegated musical genres of Sondheim’s challenging score.
The musical number “Who’s That Woman?” (the so-called “mirror number”) is among the production’s most stunning, as the current Weismann Girls and their younger selves execute choreographer Shauna Bradford and Heather Holt-Smith’s rigorous dance routines.
The second half of Act Two, from the gaudy “Loveland” number through to the finale, projects a series of scathing, savage looks at the principal quartet, past and present, as the chief folly of each is mercilessly revealed in a succession of brilliantly staged, superbly sung musical numbers.
Visually, elegance and formality are the watchwords: Larry Watts’ incredibly opulent costumes draw from a palette of black, white and silver, fixing the story in the movie industry’s Golden Age, while set designer Wally Huntoon’s partial spiral staircases, which anchor both ends of the stage, seem to recede into the past, serving as portals that allow the story’s youthful ghosts access to the present.
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