Prince, Harold

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares199 Views

    ‘How to Dance in Ohio’: A Story About Autism and Connection

    by

    In a first for Broadway, openly autistic actors are playing the autistic characters in this new musical about a doctor helping neurodiverse clients.To get to Amigo Family Counseling, I walked down beige hallways on the first floor of a building in a ho-hum Columbus, Ohio, office park a short walk from a Bob Evans restaurant.The center’s clinical director, Dr. Emilio Amigo, waved at me once I got inside. Behind a closed door I heard the voices of his clients — autistic young adults from mostly working- and middle-class central Ohio families — boisterously chatting about their Friday night plans.I was there to talk about “How to Dance in Ohio,” a new Broadway musical that features Dr. Amigo and seven of his autistic clients as characters. The show — pop in score and sensibility — is based on Alexandra Shiva’s 2015 documentary, which follows Dr. Amigo and many more of his clients as they navigate life and eagerly, but anxiously, prepare for a spring formal. (The musical is in previews at the Belasco Theater in Manhattan, where it is scheduled to open on Dec. 10. The documentary is on Max.)In a room filled with board games and framed illustrations of rainbow-bright robots, I met Tommy Van Atta. I asked him to tell me what it was like to be in the documentary and now be a character in a musical adaptation. Van Atta, 28, who has the frame of a linebacker, paused for a few seconds, then spoke softly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

    More stories

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Joanna Merlin, Known for Her Work Both Onstage and Off, Dies at 92

      by

      Soon after appearing in the original Broadway production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” she began a new career as a prominent casting director.Joanna Merlin, who, after originating the role of Tzeitel, the eldest daughter, in the hit Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” became a renowned casting director, notably for Stephen Sondheim musicals including “Into the Woods” and “Follies,” died on Oct. 15 at her younger daughter’s home in Los Angeles. She was 92.Her older daughter, Rachel Dretzin, said the cause was complications of myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow disease.The idea of becoming a casting director came from Hal Prince, the powerful producer of “Fiddler,” after she had left “Fiddler” to raise her two young daughters. He had interviewed several candidates and told Ms. Merlin that most of them “just didn’t like actors,” she told Backstage magazine.“He felt that since I was an actor and a mother, that I might be a good choice,” she added. “He understood that I was raising children and told me that he didn’t care what hours I put in, just as long as I got the work done.”She set to work in 1970, casting replacement actors in “Fiddler” during its last two years on Broadway. For the next two decades, she cast six musicals that were composed by Sondheim and produced (and usually directed) by Mr. Prince on Broadway: “Company,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “Pacific Overtures,” “Side by Side by Sondheim” and “Merrily We Roll Along.”From left, Ms. Merlin, the composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim, the director Harold Prince and the playwright George Furth during a casting session for the 1981 Broadway musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”Martha Swope/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsHer casting credits also include two other Sondheim musicals, “Sweeney Todd” and “Into the Woods”; Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “Evita”; and “On the Twentieth Century,” by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Cy Coleman. All those shows except “Into the Woods” were directed by Mr. Prince.“What I found so interesting with Joanna,” James Lapine, who directed “Into the Woods” and wrote its book, based on the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, said in a phone interview, “was her determination to pursue nontraditional casting in the theater, which for me, at a young age, was something I hadn’t thought much about.”Ms. Merlin’s pursuit of diverse casting led Mr. Lapine to choose a Black actress, Terry Burrell, to replace the white one who had played one of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, and Phylicia Rashad, who is Black, as a replacement for Bernadette Peters in the leading role of the Witch.In 1986, Ms. Merlin was a founder of the Non-Traditional Casting Project (now the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts), which seeks more opportunities for actors of color and actors with disabilities.Ms. Merlin, noting that there were many talented, nonwhite actors, told The Record of Hackensack, N.J., in 1990. “The reason they should be cast is because they’re good,”Ms. Merlin also cast six films, including Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” (1987), for which she won the Casting Society of America’s Artios Award. She also won an Artios for “Into the Woods.”Ms. Merlin, far right, with Zero Mostel, center, and three other “Fiddler on the Roof” cast members (from left, Maria Karnilova, Tanya Everett and Julia Migenes) backstage after the show’s opening night in 1964. Associated PressJo Ann Dolores Ratner was born on July 15, 1931, in Chicago. Her parents were Russian immigrants: Her father, Harry, owned a grocery store, and her mother, Toni (Merlin) Ratner, helped in the store and became a sculptor in her 60s.She moved to Los Angeles with her parents and her sister when she was 15.She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, for a year in the early 1950s and, after acting in plays in the Los Angeles area in the early and mid-1950s, appeared in her first movie role, a small part in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” (1956).After some more screen work and roles in Off and Off Off Broadway plays, Ms. Merlin made her Broadway debut in 1961 in Jean Anouilh’s “Becket,” as Gwendolen, the mistress of Thomas Becket, one of Britain’s most powerful figures in the 12th century, who was played by Laurence Olivier. Later that year, she returned to Broadway to portray Sigmund Freud’s wife in Henry Denker’s “A Far Country.”After four unsuccessful auditions for a role in Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children,” which was staged by Jerome Robbins, she auditioned eight times for Mr. Robbins when he was casting “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened in 1964. Although she lacked a strong singing voice, she was cast as Tzeitel, the oldest daughter of Tevye the milkman, the show’s principal character.The syndicated columnist Leonard Lyons wrote that when Ms. Merlin was pregnant in 1965 with her daughter Rachel, Zero Mostel, who played Tevye, told the stage manager: “Joanna’s baby just kicked. Send baby a note — not to kick.”She left the show in 1965 after Rachel was born, returned as Tzeitel a year later, and departed again in 1967 when she was replaced by her understudy, Bette Midler (who was also Rachel’s babysitter). After Julie’s birth in 1968, Mr. Prince made his offer.She continued to act, mostly in films and on television. Her roles included the dance teacher in “Fame” (1980), Julia Roberts’s mother in “Mystic Pizza” (1988) and an old Jewish woman in a short film, “Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn” (2008), which she and Ragnar Freidank adapted from a one-woman play by Ellen Cassedy.TV viewers might be most familiar with Ms. Merlin’s recurring role in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” She played Judge Lena Petrovsky 43 times from 2000 to 2011. No other actor has played a jurist more often in the “Law & Order” franchise. She also appeared, as two different defense lawyers, in five episodes of “Law & Order.”Ms. Merlin as a lawyer in a 1994 episode of “Law & Order.” She also played a judge in 43 episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” setting a record for the franchise.Jessica Burstein/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesHer career as an acting teacher began in 1998 at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a year later she began holding workshops dedicated to the acting technique of her teacher, Michael Chekhov.In the foreword to her book, “Auditioning: An Actor-Friendly Guide” (2001), Mr. Prince wrote: “Her taste is impeccable. In no instance can I remember her recommending anyone less than interesting for a role.”In addition to her daughter Rachel, a documentary filmmaker, and her daughter Julie Dretzin, an actress, Ms. Merlin is survived by five grandchildren. Her first marriage, to Marty Lubner, ended in divorce. Her marriage to David Dretzin ended with his death in 2006 after a car accident in which he suffered a traumatic brain injury. Her sister, Harriet Glickman, died in 2020.For “Pacific Overtures,” which takes place in Japan after Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s visit in 1853 and which had an all-Asian cast, Ms. Merlin engaged in “what may be one of the most poignant talent searches undertaken for a Broadway show,” according to a 1976 article in The New York Times.Racism and economics often forced Asian actors out of the profession at the time. So when she had no luck finding actors in New York, she worked with Asian community and theater groups, Asian newspapers and the State Department to fill the roles. A third of those ultimately signed for the production were nonprofessionals.Among them was the actor Gedde Watanabe, who was a young street singer in San Francisco when she approached him and invited him to audition.“I didn’t believe her,” Mr. Watanabe said. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      With Cheers and Tears, ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Ends Record Broadway Run

      by

      The show’s record-breaking 35-year Broadway run came to an end on Sunday night. Its famous chandelier got a bow, and its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, spoke after its emotional final performance.“The Phantom of the Opera” concluded the longest run in Broadway history Sunday night with a glittery final performance at which even the production’s signature chandelier, which had just crashed onto the stage of the Majestic Theater for the 13,981st time, got its own curtain call.The invitation-only crowd was filled with Broadway lovers, including actors who had performed in the show over its 35-year run, as well as numerous other artists (including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Glenn Close) and fans who won a special ticket lottery. Some dressed in Phantom regalia; one man came dressed in the character’s sumptuous Red Death costume.The final performance, which ran from 5:22 to 7:56 p.m., was interrupted repeatedly by applause, not only for the main actors, but also for beloved props, including a monkey music box, and scenic elements such as a gondola being rowed through a candelabra-adorned underground lake. After the final curtain, the stagehands who made the show’s elaborate spectacle happen night after night, were invited onstage for a resounding round of applause.“It’s just amazing, really, what has happened,” the composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote the show’s soaring score, said after the final curtain, as he dedicated the performance to his son Nicholas, who died three weeks ago.Lloyd Webber spoke alongside his longtime collaborator and the show’s lead producer, Cameron Mackintosh. They invited alumni of the original Broadway production to join them onstage, and projected onto the theater’s back wall pictures of deceased members of the original creative team, including its director, Hal Prince, as well as every actor who played the two lead roles (the Phantom as well as Christine, the young soprano who is his obsession).Andrew Lloyd Webber, center left, with Cameron Mackintosh during the curtain speech at the Majestic Theater after the final performance of the musical “Phantom of the Opera.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesToward the end of the evening, Mackintosh acknowledged the one-ton chandelier, which was lowered from the ceiling to a round of applause, and the crowd was showered with gold and silver metallic confetti, some of which dangled in ribbons from the chandelier.Hours before the curtain, fans gathered across the street, waving and taking pictures and hoping somehow to score a spare ticket. Among them was Lexie Luhrs, 25, of Washington, in a Phantom get-up: black cape, homemade mask, plus fedora, vest and bow tie, as well as mask earrings and a mask necklace. “I’m here to celebrate the show that means so much to us,” Luhrs said.On Broadway “Phantom” was, obviously, enormously successful, playing to 20 million people and grossing $1.36 billion since its opening in January 1988. And the show has become an international phenomenon, playing in 17 languages in 45 countries and grossing more than $6 billion globally. But the Broadway run ultimately succumbed to the twin effects of inflation and dwindled tourism following the coronavirus pandemic shutdown.Carlton Moe, obscured, hugs Raquel Suarez Groen before they go on the red carpet. They are both cast members in the musicalSara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt closed on an unexpectedly high note — and not just the high E that Christine sings in the title song. As soon as the closing was announced last September, sales spiked, as those who already loved the musical flocked to see it, and procrastinators realized it could be their last chance; the original February closing date was delayed by two months to accommodate demand, and the show has once again become the highest-grossing on Broadway, playing to exuberant audiences, enjoying a burnished reputation, and bringing in more than $3 million a week.“For a show to go out this triumphantly is almost unheard-of,” said Mackintosh.Jaime Samson at the theater in a Red Death costume he made himself.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAfter the final performance, the show’s company and its alumni gathered for an invitation-only celebration at the Metropolitan Club, with the show’s iconic mask projected onto a wall next to a marble staircase.The show, with music by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Charles Hart, is still running in London, where the orchestra size was cut and the set was altered during the pandemic shutdown to reduce running costs, and it is also currently running in the Czech Republic, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. New productions are scheduled to open in China next month, in Italy in July and in Spain in October.And will it ever return to New York? “Of course, at some point,” Mackintosh said in an interview. “But it is time for the show to have a rest.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      ‘The Phantom of the Opera’: Thinking of a Spectacle Fondly

      by

      As the longest-running musical in Broadway history closes, Times critics with a lasting affection for the show take stock of its legacy.With “The Phantom of the Opera” set to play its final performance on Sunday — yes, it’s actually happening — Broadway’s longest-running show, a spectacle in residence at the Majestic Theater since 1988, still resonates with fans. The closing date was delayed by eight weeks after a surge in ticket sales.Joshua Barone, the assistant classical music and dance editor and a contributing classical music critic, was joined by the critics Alexis Soloski and Elisabeth Vincentelli in a discussion about the show’s legacy. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.ALEXIS SOLOSKI I first saw “Phantom” in Los Angeles, at the Ahmanson Theater, sometime in the late ’80s during its first North American tour. My friends and I were obsessed. We wore the T-shirts, we wore out the cassettes, we watched every Michael Crawford movie. (He also did the “Phantom” tour.) When you’re a preteen girl just on the cusp of sexuality and sexuality seems a little scary, the idea of being in thrall to some powerful man is awfully compelling. That this genius is also a murderer with some very strong incel vibes didn’t occur to me till a lot later. It remains a foundational text for me — as a critic, as a woman — but one I’m wildly ambivalent about. I love it. I love the big feelings. I can sing (badly) every tortured line. But it’s rape apology with a fog machine.ELISABETH VINCENTELLI The first and only time I saw the show was on Broadway in May 2011. I had not paid much attention to it before but loved it so much that I seriously questioned my entire life before that: Why had it taken me so long, considering that the show checks a lot of my taste boxes — bombast, over-the-top melodrama, histrionics? What’s especially surprising about my late discovery is that I had actually read the 1910 novel it’s based on, by the French pulp-fiction auteur Gaston Leroux.JOSHUA BARONE I didn’t see “Phantom” until a high school trip to New York in the mid-2000s. By then, I had read the Leroux novel, heard the cast albums and seen the 2004 Joel Schumacher film adaptation. Unfortunately, I fell asleep at the show; I was tired from a long day of sightseeing. The spectacle didn’t quite reach me at the rear mezzanine, and I was asleep by the end of “The Music of the Night.” But I’ve since gone several times — with, for better or worse, increasing affection for it.SOLOSKI That’s the thing, right? It’s in terrible taste — histrionics all the way down — but it works.The chandelier in “Phantom” is emblematic of the mega-musicals that emerged in the same period, our critic writes: the “Miss Saigon” helicopter, the “Les Miz” revolve, the absolute commitment to spectacle.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times BARONE It works, I’d say, better than most shows of terrible taste and histrionics from its time. There is, for all its historical specificity — those synths! — timelessness in its subject matter and score. It’s solidly middlebrow, and that’s a large part of its appeal. Your best bet, should you find yourself in the audience, is to just sit back and surrender to it.SOLOSKI But that’s what the Phantom wants, Josh! Fight it!VINCENTELLI I was headbanging in my seat when I saw it. I distinctly remember cackling at the insanity of it all. I love when art throws any regard for logic, taste, story to the window and goes for broke. I was also stunned by the way the score integrates rock and electronics in a way that still feels bracing. The rock energy is indisputable.SOLOSKI It does have an undeniable pull. When I hear that synthesizer launch into that descending scale, I still get literal chills.VINCENTELLI Roger Waters of Pink Floyd thought Lloyd Webber had stolen from the 1971 Pink Floyd song “Echoes” and then dissed him in “It’s a Miracle”: “We cower in our shelters with our hands over our ears/Lloyd-Webber’s awful stuff runs for years and years and years.” I live for feuds like this.SOLOSKI That’s where the music lives, right? In some unholy space between prog rock and grand opera.BARONE That’s one of the reasons we get chills. “Phantom” is often derided as a product of the big-hair, Neo-Gilded Age days of Cameron Mackintosh’s Broadway, but I think it’s just as much an artifact of 1980s postmodernism. You hear Puccini’s lush orchestration and lyricism — literally, in the case of “The Music of the Night” quoting “La Fanciulla del West” — but also rock-pop, 18th-century opera buffa and what is clearly stylized melodrama.SOLOSKI And some really dumb ballads. “Think of Me.” Ugh.VINCENTELLI Lloyd Webber had approached Tom Stoppard and Jim Steinman as potential collaborators for “Phantom.” That says a lot. (I still want to see that show!)BARONE And don’t forget that Alan Jay Lerner, before he died, was on as the lyricist! Imagine that show — perhaps one in which the ballads wouldn’t have been as banal (“Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,” yikes) as they are as written by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe.In the foreground, from left: the Broadway producer Cameron Mackintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber and the director Hal Prince at the end of a 2006 performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSOLOSKI For me, the most perverse element is that Lloyd Webber began this show “because I was trying to write a major romantic story, and I had been trying to do that ever since I started my career. Then with the Phantom, it was there!” Let’s be clear: This. Is. Not. Romance. Even in the initial Times review, Frank Rich wrote that “Music of the Night” “proves as much a rape as a seduction.”BARONE One of the many dramaturgical question marks that hang over this show. But, strangely, that perversity is kind of what makes it an inheritor of the theatrical traditions it tries to emulate. And only because it is indebted to opera does it get away with as much as it does. Other composers — including him — have tried to copy the gothic romanticism of “Phantom,” but few have come close to his success. Opera is a medium that thrives in extremity, and Lloyd Webber follows that to a logical, undeniably entertaining degree. He found a cousin in “Sunset Boulevard,” in which he adopted a lavish Golden Age Hollywood sound in the score. But “The Woman in White”? The dead-on-arrival “Phantom” sequel “Love Never Dies”?VINCENTELLI Common wisdom has it that the show was trounced by critics when it opened, just like most mega-musicals are assumed to have been pilloried. But that’s not the case: Most of those shows have had at least mixed reviews, and most have earned tons of Tony Awards — regardless of what one thinks of the Tonys as critical arbiters, they do suggest a level of institutional and industry support. “Phantom” won seven Tonys, including best musical.SOLOSKI I think Rich was extremely fair-minded, acknowledging the deficits, and yet daring you not to enjoy it.BARONE Another favorite line from that review is, “If you don’t leave the theater humming the songs, you’ve got a hearing disability.”VINCENTELLI There was a really fascinating article in The Times in 1988 where people from the classical-music world weighed in on “Phantom.” William Bolcom, Frederica von Stade and Beverly Sills liked it a lot; Ned Rorem, not so much.BARONE Ned Rorem was witty as always, but I do think that to dismiss this music is to risk a kind of affected snobbery. It’s like saying Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky are too sentimental; in some ways that’s true, and you don’t see the same level of craft in their music as with some of their peers, but at the same time it has staying power simply because it continues to move audiences. SOLOSKI We’ve concentrated mostly on the music, but a lot of the power of “Phantom” is its visual splendor. I remember when we first saw it my mother sniffed that the Los Angeles audience applauded the set changes and chattered through the arias, but honestly, Maria Björnson’s sets and costumes are spectacular. Several of them were on display at the Museum of Broadway and the intricacy of the stitching and beading was glorious. I challenge anyone to watch “Masquerade” and not wallow in its excess.VINCENTELLI And at least they are genuinely exciting. I’ve seen people applaud massive, opulently appointed living-room sets at Manhattan Theater Club productions, and my reaction is “Oh, so we clap at Crate & Barrel showrooms now?” In his memoir, “Unmasked,” Lloyd Webber talks about how the sets actually are less grand than most people remember them. They are just very smartly designed.BARONE I was struck by this the last time I saw the show. The gilded proscenium masks — sorry to use that word — the fact that most of the scenic design is made from curtains. Draping black ones, ornately patterned ones with tassels, but curtains nevertheless.SOLOSKI Should we talk about the chandelier?BARONE Lot 666.SOLOSKI It falls … slowly, but it is definitive of the mega-musicals of this period, the “Miss Saigon” helicopter, the “Les Miz” revolve, the absolute commitment to spectacle. Spectacle gets a bad rap, but I wish more shows had the commitments and the budgets to deliver extravaganzas like these.Top 200 Broadway Shows by All-Time Sales More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Carol Burnett Leading Campaign to Rename Theater for Hal Prince

      by

      The Majestic Theater has housed “The Phantom of the Opera,” which Prince directed, for the entire 35 years of its run.Carol Burnett doesn’t own a Broadway theater. But she does have a long résumé, a lot of friends and fans, and an Instagram account. And now she is hoping to use what influence she has to persuade Broadway’s bigwigs to rename a theater after the legendary director and producer Hal Prince.Burnett, speaking in a telephone interview, said that last week’s announcement of the impending closing of “The Phantom of the Opera,” which Prince directed and is the longest-running show in Broadway history, prompted her unexpected activism. She said she has come to believe that the Majestic Theater, which has housed “Phantom” for the entire 35 years of its run, should bear Prince’s name.“Hal not only had the longest-running show, but he had 21 Tony Awards, and now that ‘Phantom’ is closing, what a great way to honor him,” she said. “It should have been done a long time ago.”On Wednesday, she posted a short Instagram video urging the renaming, and called on others to do the same. Among those supporting her efforts: Chita Rivera and Kristin Chenoweth. “He changed the face of musical theater,” Chenoweth said in an email. “Changes are happening, and this is one he’d be so proud of.” Rivera agreed, saying in an email: “Hal was such a visionary director and producer as well as an extraordinary human being. It is so vitally important to keep his flame burning.”Prince, who died in 2019 at the age of 91, was among the most significant figures in Broadway history, directing not only “Phantom” but also “Cabaret” and a string of Sondheim musicals, from “Company” to “Sweeney Todd.” He also directed a 2002 play called “Hollywood Arms,” which was based on Burnett’s memoir.Burnett, 89, said she considered Prince “a dear friend” and felt the time was right for Broadway (where she won a special Tony Award for contributions to the theater in 1969) to name a theater for him. “The Majestic is fit for a Prince,” she said, test-driving a slogan she hopes will catch on. The project is being coordinated by Eila Mell, a writer who just co-wrote a book about Broadway set design.Hal Prince, left, with Andrew Lloyd Webber at a 2006 performance of “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Majestic Theater. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPlenty of people have had ideas and suggestions about whose names should be added, or subtracted, from Broadway’s 41 theaters, and the decisions are up to the theater owners and operators. This year, two renamings are already underway — last week the Cort was renamed the James Earl Jones, and this fall the Brooks Atkinson is to be renamed after Lena Horne — both moves prompted by an agreement between theater owners and Black Theater United to name some buildings for Black artists.The Shubert Organization, which operates the Majestic Theater, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      What Makes ‘Follies’ a Classic? 7 Answers and 1 Big Problem.

      by

      Fifty years ago, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman exploded the Broadway “concept” musical by conjuring the bittersweet reunion of aging showgirls.It was supposed to be a murder mystery: two couples, four motives, one gun. What it became was a different kind of mystery entirely: a musical that got prominent pans, alienated much of its audience and lost most of its investment — yet survived.Not only is “Follies,” which opened on Broadway on April 4, 1971, still here 50 years later, trailing a string of revivals, revisals and gala concerts, but it is also now recognized as the high-water mark of the serious “concept” musical, that genre in which form and function are brought into the tightest possible alignment. The score, by Stephen Sondheim, is a marvel and a minefield of layered meanings. The sets make comments. And in the original staging, by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, even frivolity had to serve a purpose.Not that there was much frivolity in James Goldman’s script; the gun disappeared but the two couples were still floridly dysfunctional. Both wives had been showgirls in the Weismann (think Ziegfeld) Follies at the end of its run of annual extravaganzas in the years between the World Wars. Both had been in love with Ben, a Stage Door Johnny with big ambitions. But Phyllis was smart enough to nab him; they are now wealthy, unhappy sophisticates. Sally — romantic, conventional — got Ben’s feckless pal Buddy; never for one moment in the 30 ensuing years has she been happy with the trade-off.Ghostly showgirls wander through the ruins of a theater in the 2017 London revival.Johan PerssonDuring a Follies reunion at the decrepit Weismann Theater, on the night before it will be razed to make room for a parking lot, the two couples meet up and promptly disintegrate. As they do, their past selves appear alongside them as living characters. At the same time, former stars of the Follies relive memories and stumble through old numbers, magically ventriloquized from Broadway’s past in the Sondheim songs.As the ghosts crowd in, the couples’ tangled history is unearthed, bringing them to the point of a group nervous breakdown in the form of a 30-minute mini-“Follies” of their own. To see them collapse, dissolving into a fantasy world accompanied by a Golden Age score, is to see American optimism collapse along with them.But its big canvas is not the only reason “Follies” remains important. (See seven more reasons, and a caveat, below.) In its seriousness and cleverness, in its matching of style to substance, in its use of a medium to comment on itself, it has hardly ever been bettered. In any case, ambitious musical theater would never be the same; we would not have “Fun Home” or “Hamilton” or “Dear Evan Hansen” without “Follies” hovering behind them, the most beautiful ghost of all.1. A requiem for nostalgiaThe ensemble of older actors with their younger counterparts hovering above in the 2001 Broadway revival.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times “Follies” is about two lousy marriages. Mucking around among their mind games and betrayals, it more readily recalls midcentury drama than anything in the musical canon. (Imagine “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” staged by Busby Berkeley.) But it’s also about the lousy marriage of American ideals and American reality, a union of near opposites polished and preserved by the shellac of nostalgia.The brilliant concept was to use the two stories to inform each other, letting the Faulknerian past that is “not even past” intrude upon the present. So Sally’s ghost makes love to Ben while his makes love to her; later, she sings a torch song that sounds as if it’s from 1941. The reunion, if it reunifies one couple, destroys another. Even the songs we love are dangerous. That paradox is crystallized in “One More Kiss,” warbled by an ancient Viennese soprano while her younger self casually tosses off its coloratura. “Never look back,” the lyric warns. “Follies” is what happens if you do.2. In praise of older womenThe ghosts of Follies past that live in the theater had to be both ethereal and imposing. Casting was done among Las Vegas showgirls who were already six feet tall before their enormous headdresses turned them into giants. Even so, a Who Was Who of middle-aged and older women stole the show: Dorothy Collins, 44; Mary McCarty, 47; Yvonne De Carlo, 48; Alexis Smith, 49; Fifi D’Orsay, 66; and Ethel Shutta, 74, among them. Though cast for the kick of nostalgia their names elicited, they made survival itself seem vital and sexy, as Smith’s high-stepping Time magazine cover demonstrated.3. Copies that improved on the originalsBernadette Peters performing the now-standard “Losing My Mind” in the 2011 Broadway revival.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAll of the performative songs in “Follies” — the ones sung as if they were real numbers from the past — are pastiches, sampling Harold Arlen (“I’m Still Here”), George Gershwin (“Losing My Mind”), Irving Berlin (“Beautiful Girls”), Sigmund Romberg (“One More Kiss”) and many others. With this catch: In almost every case, they are better crafted and richer than their templates. Which makes their salute to the past a wonderfully complicated, and sometimes cruel, gesture.4. A number for the agesTerri White, center, as Stella Deems leading “Who’s That Woman” in 2011 with (from left) Elaine Paige, Florence Lacey, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Jan Maxwell, Peters and Susan Watson.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStella Deems, an old-school belter, had a specialty “mirror” number in the Follies. Now, at the reunion, she and six alumnae of the chorus line, including Phyllis and Sally, try to perform it, even though the dance (as one of them puts it) “winded me when I was 19.” Soon you see why, as the choreography, which at first involves simple poses and mirroring gestures, turns into an exhausting tap extravaganza, courtesy of Bennett. But the mindblower comes halfway through, when strange shards of spinning light emerge from the dark behind the panting, middle-aged women. These are the ghosts of their former selves: glamazons in mirror-encrusted costumes performing the number tirelessly and perfectly.By the time the real and the remembered choruses merge in a thrilling finale, the idea of mirroring has taken on a larger meaning. “Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord!” Stella sings in wonder and horror at the person she sees in her looking glass. “That woman is me!”5. ‘I’m Still Here’De Carlo — a movie star of the ’40s and ’50s but Lily Munster to everyone thereafter — had the biggest name in the cast yet one of the smallest roles. She needed a showstopper; the one Sondheim originally wrote wasn’t working. During tryouts in Boston, he replaced it with “I’m Still Here,” a five-minute number that catalogs with tart good spirits a showbiz life (based on Joan Crawford’s) in which you “career from career to career.” It could not have been staged more simply: De Carlo basically just stood downstage and let it rip. Still, it was (and remains, in the many interpretations since) a knockout, driving home the point that long-term professional survival, and maybe emotional survival as well, is often a matter of inoculating oneself with failure.6. The fabulousnessAt $800,000, “Follies” was a very expensive show for its time, but you saw where the money went. Boris Aronson’s set, which exploded into lace and froufrou for the final sequence, was technically complex; Florence Klotz’s costumes were among the most sumptuous seen on a Broadway stage since Ziegfeld himself. And with all the major roles doubled by “ghosts,” the cast was huge: 47 performers, not including understudies and standbys.“Nearly everything that could cause a Broadway musical to go over budget did,” says Ted Chapin, now the president of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization but then Prince’s apprentice — and the author of “Everything Was Possible,” a memoir of that experience. “If it were produced today, I would imagine it would log in at close to $30 million.” Alas, that’s a sum no one would spend on such a chancy show, which means we’ll never see its like again.7. That posterDavid Edward Byrd designed the poster for the original production.PhotofestIn 1971, the graphic artist David Edward Byrd was best known for his rock posters, including one for the original Woodstock and one for Jimi Hendrix. But he’d started designing for theatrical productions as well, and when an “aesthetic argument” led Prince to ditch one of his Art Deco-inspired sketches, Byrd came up with the now-famous face of “Follies”: an impassive beauty with flowing Technicolor hair and a branching crack from chin to brow. (The face was based on Marlene Dietrich’s, in a photo from “Shanghai Express.”) To Byrd, it represented the end of an era, but it also conveyed, with powerful concision, the crackup of an American fantasy of endless tranquillity. And, not incidentally, made a Broadway show seem as cool as Woodstock.8. Then again …“Follies” is brilliant and “Follies” is a mess. It bowls me over perhaps more than any other musical, yet I have never been fully satisfied with it intellectually. Look beneath the unparalleled packaging — the score, costumes, casting, staging — and you find a lot that doesn’t add up. As Frank Rich noted in his 1971 Harvard Crimson review, it’s “a musical about the death of the musical” — a wonderful paradox but one that undermines the experience. If musicals are dead … is this one too?Sometimes — even when Carlotta sings “I’m Still Here” — the vaunted concept seems a bit opaque. (If it’s about her own life, how could it also be her Follies number?) And don’t look too closely at the main characters, either; spouters of self-conscious dialogue, they are only fully believable when they sing. For that, Goldman usually gets the blame — but if so, he should also get credit for providing the armature for everyone else’s epochal achievement. It may be about the death of musicals, but “Follies” pointed the way to bringing them back to life. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      ‘Follies’ Was My First Broadway Show. 50 Years Later, I Remember It All.

      by

      On a thrilling trip to New York, a 16-year-old budding critic learned that the insistent optimism of musical theater was a beautiful lie.At long last, I was exactly where I had yearned to be for most of my young life. I had arrived in the holy land, which for me was a show palace in New York City, the world capital of my childhood fantasies. My very first Broadway musical, a form of entertainment I regarded as a religion, was about to begin.Then the lights went down in the cavernous Winter Garden Theater. It got dark, which I had expected. It stayed dark, which I hadn’t. The stage was flooded in shadow, and you had to squint to make out the people on it. Some were tall, spectral beauties from another era in glittering headdresses, and others were as ordinary as my parents, dressed up for a night out. None of them looked happy.The grand orchestral music seemed to be eroding as I listened, like some magnificent sand castle dissolving in the tide, as sweet notes slid into sourness. This was definitely not “Hello, Dolly!” or “Bye Bye Birdie” or “Funny Girl,” whose sunny, exclamation-pointed melodies I knew by heart from the original cast recordings.I didn’t know what had hit me. I certainly didn’t know that it would keep hitting me, in sharp and unexpected fragments of recollection, for the next 50 years.It was the spring of 1971. The show was“Follies,” a title that turned out to refer to both bygone Ziegfeld-style spectacles and the delusions of its main characters. It had a score by a rising composer named Stephen Sondheim and was directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, names that didn’t mean much to me then. The cast included Yvonne De Carlo, Gene Nelson and the divine Alexis Smith, whom I knew from old movies on television.A ghostly showgirl in the original production of “Follies.”Martha Swope, Billy Rose Theatre Division/The New York Public LibrarySince the show was still in previews, there had been no reviews to cue my expectations. And word of mouth hadn’t reached Winston-Salem, N.C., where I was a 16-year-old public high school student.My parents had finally succumbed to my pleas to be taken to Manhattan, where my older sister lived. We were all side-by-side in orchestra seats, and I could feel my mom and dad basking in my excitement.That excitement was tinged with a thrill of illicit betrayal. Yes, “Follies” was undeniably a big Broadway musical, staged with an opulence that would be unthinkable today. But this tale of two unhappy couples, stalked by the ghosts of their younger selves during a showbiz reunion in the ruins of a once stately theater, was telling me that the optimistic promises of the musical comedies I had been weaned on were lies.In a cover story that came out a month later — its pictures would adorn my bedroom walls, along with posters of Humphrey Bogart and Vanessa Redgrave, until I left for college — Time magazine enthusiastically (and accurately) described “Follies” as anti-nostalgic, a modern corrective to the cheery, escapist camp of hit revivals like “No, No Nanette.”Time’s assessment was the opposite of that of the New York Times critics Clive Barnes and Walter Kerr, who didn’t like “Follies” at all. The plot, they wrote, was hackneyed and formulaic. As for the songs, with their homages to styles of showbiz past, Barnes called them a “non-hit parade of pastiche.”I couldn’t disagree about James Goldman’s book, which felt like a rehash of the best sellers about middle-aged disenchantment I borrowed from my parents. (I already suspected that my future was in criticism.) But the songs stuck with me, along with piercing images of aging performers clinging to a waning spotlight. And I had a vague sense that I would be destined to forever recall this odd and majestic show “like a movie in my head that plays and plays,” to borrow from its script.In some ways, “Follies” was a perfect match to my adolescent self. My parents had always encouraged me to understand that old people hadn’t always been old, to look for the layers of what they had been. (I was fascinated by the culture of my grandparents’ generation, which meant that references to Brenda Frazier and “Abie’s Irish Rose” didn’t go over my head.)And part of what I found so affecting about musicals were the differences between their exalted forms and the often ordinary lives they portrayed. (I would restage classic musicals in my head with my friends and family in the leading roles; it made me cry happily.)What I didn’t get then — and couldn’t have as a teenager — was how the music was the very sound of memory. It was the cleverness of Sondheim’s lyrics that attracted me in my youth. I loved quoting their sophisticated rhymes.But the older I got, and the more I listened, the more I appreciated the complexity of the pastiche songs, like “The Story of Lucy and Jessie,” “Broadway Baby” and the torchy “Losing My Mind” (which I confess to having sung, drunk, in a piano bar). These aren’t just facile imitations from another era; they’re inflected with the echoes and distortions of all the years that have passed since. As a memory musical, I came to realize, “Follies” approaches Proustian dimensions.When I hear anything from “Follies” now — or see a new production (I’ve written about seven incarnations for The New York Times) — it’s with the memory of watching that first cast of characters remembering. Every time what I’m listening to sounds deeper and richer, and sadder and funnier. And I recall, with a tightening of my chest, that 16-year-old boy staring at the stage in rapture and bewilderment. More