Follies

[mrbarnaby]

I've got virtually every recording made of this show and the Paper Mill is by far my favourite.

[kathryn]

We loved this. Our first Follies, and I think all the better for it. Wonderful to see a proper big production on the Olivier stage, cast were great - I had no problems with the singing, Imelda and Philip Qast and Tracie Bennet were all marvellous, and Broadway Baby a highlight.

[jek]

I really enjoyed this - much more than I was expecting to. I suspect that I am the perfect demographic for this - a woman in her mid 50s with fond memories of the glamour of the 70s (for some reason I found myself thinking of guests on the Parkinson show) and of course the sort of life experiences that anyone lucky enough to make a half century has. Too Many Mornings was certainly the high point for me - I only know the Mandy Patinkin version. And I just loved watching Josephine Barstow.

Both when I collected my tickets and on showing them to the usher the lack of an interval was stressed. In fact one of the ushers was loudly telling people to go to the toilet before going in. I'm used to being told that at the Unicorn where they are catering for the younger audience and (admirably) employ ushers who have special needs and are clearly drilled to tell audiences this. But certainly a new experience at the National! I didn't find it dragged but my 16 yr old daughter (who enjoyed the show too) told me the woman sitting next to her kept checking her watch.

My daughter, who plays the trumpet, was absolutely thrilled by the orchestra. A real treat.

We were in the centre front of the circle and it felt like a good place to be for this. We're back to the cheap seats for Oslo and Jane Eyre - and I'm sure my ageing bones will feel the difference!

[tmesis]

Sept 2, 2017 20:44:30 GMT kathryn said:

We loved this. Our first Follies, and I think all the better for it. Wonderful to see a proper big production on the Olivier stage, cast were great - I had no problems with the singing, Imelda and Philip Qast and Tracie Bennet were all marvellous, and Broadway Baby a highlight.

I agree, makes you nostalgic for Sir Trev.

[theatrelover123]

Sept 2, 2017 16:00:51 GMT frankubelik said:

Saw this last night and came away so very disappointed and have spent the day trying to formulate an appropriate reaction. Overall it is undercast, poorly sung, badly directed, staged and lit. There is little cohesion between scene and song - it desperately needs a show doctor.
Oddly for this show, the men emerge and register much more strongly than the women - both are more than fine. Imelda has no soprano range and "fakes" the rest; Janie cracked on every top note and Tracie needs to stop channeling Garland. The latter is never believable as a movie star and can never lose her innate low class personality. Was Dawn Hope really miming during "Who's That Woman?" and did Sally and Phyllis really bring their tap shoes to the party? Why were we allowed to see them change into these before the number? Why was young Phyllis so much part of "Lucy & Jessie"? Thank God for the Strallen though as she saved the number but it is wrong. Why did the "Beautiful Girls" come down a fire escape? What happened to the party guests? They disappear after their respective "turns". I could never once believe Ben's feelings for Sally both then and now. No interval is good but portions of the show feel rushed (Ben's breakdown for example). I think Imelda faces over exposure now; she has been found out at last. She is a Very Good Actress but starting to repeat herself and vocally lacking in tone.
As ever here I will be in the minority but have had to put my honest thoughts out there. 

Saw it tonight. Will write more tomorrow. But in the meantime this above review sums up most of my thoughts too. What a shame 

[Deleted]

Got back from seeing this tonight and I really enjoyed this. Did not know much about follies bar a few song and went to the sondheim talk so learnt a but more. The production value and style of this show is phenomenal. The set and esspecilay costumes are great. All the cast are also very good but for me the book and actual story lacked. I know that is part of it but I wanted more and to feel for the main characters more. They were all very good and well performed but I was nevertheless really on there side. Imelda was very good I. This as was worried it would like her Martha which I rally wasn't a fan of. The other 3 mains were good and Janie Dee was also very good. I really liked Tracy bennet in this and her rendition if I'm still here was great and it like others I have seen online, big more a plea of being here and wanting to be hear and one more kiss was vey touching. I also really like doing the mirror dance and the shadows following around added something. The Loveland scene and folly scenes following surprised me quite a but but it was a nice change in pace and all four were very good I esspecilay like buddy's blues being wacky and vaudevillian and Imeldas rendition of loosing my mind. I really enjoyed this but feel this is more espcaism and doesn't have a real moral or feel for the main characters so my h. A great production of a slightly patchy musical.

[princeton]

Sept 2, 2017 16:00:51 GMT frankubelik said:

As ever here I will be in the minority but have had to put my honest thoughts out there

I have to say that I agree with much of what you said. I'm quite familiar with the piece and have seen several production of it here and in the US - and I felt that this was somewhere in the middle of the pile.

It's a problematic piece at the best of times - but I felt many of the directorial and, in particular, musical staging choices amplified the problems rather than hiding them. There are casting problems too - some of which are overcome in individual performances others less so. Imelda Staunton predictably acts the part well (although perhaps she unravels too quickly so that by the time she gets to Losing My Mind she's it's all rather overstated) but there's no getting away from the fact that she doesn't have the soprano range and some key moments have been transposed - most notably in Too Many Mornings which tends to dilute the impact of that scene. Janie Dee looks and dances the part well though, as noted, Lucy and Jessie is so badly staged that she's not really the focus of it and makes no sense for the younger Phyllis to be in the number - I thought she nailed Leave You. On her own terms I thought Tracie Bennett was fine - but without any hint of Hollywood glamour. Who's The Woman was one of my low points - again the routine makes no sense - too often the younger dancers didn't 'mirror' the older dancer rather they did a more complicated routine - and then for some bizarre reason the entire company joins in at a the end (and good point about the shoes - in the US revival Stella came on with a box of shoes). I thought Philip Quast and Peter Forbes were both good - although the latter was hampered by the drag version of God Why Don't You....which gets laughs for the wrong reason. I thought all the younger quartet did well (though why all the props doing Loveland - they are just a distraction) and Josephine Barstow's One Last Kiss was a moment of stillness in an otherwise over-frenetic production. The Rain in the Roof etc medley was fine - I've seen it done better - Ive seen it worse. And Beautiful Girls on a two tier-fire escape is never going to be particularly magical or moving.

Maybe it all comes down to anticipation or knowing the piece too well - but all in all i was disappointed. 6/10 perhaps. I'll go back later in the run with completely different expectations and I'm sure I'll enjoy it more - but at this moment in time it all feels like such a missed opportunity.

[callum]

deleted

[tmesis]

I was at yesterday's matinee.
Just a few thoughts since most points have now been aired.

On the whole I enjoyed it but was not blown away; good audience reaction however, with 2/3rds ovating. I think my reaction was more to the problems of the work than individual performances, although a more experienced director of musicals would probably have given it more pace.

I thought Imelda and Janie were very good and both were in excellent voice at the matinee. Imelda floated some exquisite pianissimo high notes at one point, belying some of the criticisms I've read. Janie had none of the vocal problems some have mentioned; she does seem sometimes prone to vocal 'issues' - I remember her virtually speaking through her part in Putting it Together a few years back.

Both leading men were excellent and the smaller parts were well taken.
I didn't enjoy Tracy Bennett in I'm Still Here - completely unsubtle and the part lies in the wrong part of the voice. Good job I knew all the words too because they really weren't clear.

(Dame) Josephine Barstow was superb - great to be reminded of her glory days in the 80s at ENO.

I'm going again in late October so will be interested to see how well it shapes up further into the run.

[Deleted]

Thought this was excellent

On the interval issue: if Mr Sondheim never intended this to be done with an interval, why did he bung a big tap-dance number exactly half way through?

[westendwendy]

Sept 2, 2017 16:00:51 GMT frankubelik said:

Saw this last night and came away so very disappointed and have spent the day trying to formulate an appropriate reaction. Overall it is undercast, poorly sung, badly directed, staged and lit. There is little cohesion between scene and song - it desperately needs a show doctor.
Oddly for this show, the men emerge and register much more strongly than the women - both are more than fine. Imelda has no soprano range and "fakes" the rest; Janie cracked on every top note and Tracie needs to stop channeling Garland. The latter is never believable as a movie star and can never lose her innate low class personality. Was Dawn Hope really miming during "Who's That Woman?" and did Sally and Phyllis really bring their tap shoes to the party? Why were we allowed to see them change into these before the number? Why was young Phyllis so much part of "Lucy & Jessie"? Thank God for the Strallen though as she saved the number but it is wrong. Why did the "Beautiful Girls" come down a fire escape? What happened to the party guests? They disappear after their respective "turns". I could never once believe Ben's feelings for Sally both then and now. No interval is good but portions of the show feel rushed (Ben's breakdown for example). I think Imelda faces over exposure now; she has been found out at last. She is a Very Good Actress but starting to repeat herself and vocally lacking in tone.
As ever here I will be in the minority but have had to put my honest thoughts out there. 

I agree with ALL OF THIS!!! So so true....

[ilovewemusicals]

For anyone who is seeing Follies and wants to understand the references to American history better in I'm Still Here (fab song).
www.sondheim.com/features/im_still_what.html

[mallardo]

I loved it, no reservations. Not everything worked as well as it should - it's still in previews - but it's all there and kudos to Dominic Cooke for the clarity and strength of his production and for finding the right blend of magic and mundanity. It's such a busy show with all the now/then cast doublings, extra people intervening or just hanging around, ghostly chorus girls, etc., but it always felt under control.

It got off to a slow start - the show's problem, not just this production - in part because the big set required more time for the actors just to get to where they can say their lines so there were some extra pauses that will, hopefully, be eradicated. "Beautiful Girls" went for surprisingly little. The lofty fire escape which worked perfectly for "Waiting For The Girls Upstairs" was simply not right for the parade of aging chorines evoking memories of past glamour. The number should get applause while it's happening - it did not. A shaky Roscoe did not help.

The show didn't really come alive until "Waiting For The Girls Upstairs" where the double quartet of leads really comes into play. I was especially impressed with Peter Forbes's Buddy here. It's his energy that drives the song and gets everyone into it and he made it work. From this point on - for me - just about everything worked.

Geraldine Fitzgerald's Solange was very funny in her dialogue moments and handled "Ah, Paris" with style while Di Botcher's Hattie predictably scored with a rousing "Broadway Baby" that, I thought, was particularly well characterized and well staged.

The next big number, "Who's That Woman?" was the show stopper it's supposed to be. The ladies were given a lot of dancing to do - not as much as their younger alter egos, of course - and pulled it off. When the two generations blended together at the end it was a great moment.

And then there's "I'm Still Here". To say that Tracie Bennett pulled out all the stops is an understatement. The song can certainly take a BIG interpretation and it got one here but she made it work for her - perhaps still channelling a bit of Judy Garland? - and she stopped the show. The biggest applause of the afternoon.

And not to overlook the beautiful "One Last Kiss" radiantly sung by Josephine Barstow (in great voice) and Alison Langer.

So, what about the four leads? As noted, Peter Forbes's Buddy is terrific, both in his two second half numbers - although "Buddy's Blues" featured two guys in drag playing the Margie and Sally characters, still funny but why? - and in his dramatic scenes. Buddy is a difficult character to play. He does a lot of pleading and apologizing and can get tiresome but this Buddy was not. It's a fine all around performance.

Ben and Phyllis are, I think, somewhat easier to get a handle on. Their scenes together, full of venom and wit, constitute the best written moments in James Goldman's script. These are the kind of characters he handles best - think of Henry and Eleanor in his The Lion in Winter where the hatred is palpable but a deep love is never quite absent. Janie Dee and Philip Quast do these scenes and these characters full justice, especially Dee who, arguably, has funniest lines in the show. From the moment Phyllis strides onstage, full of careless confidence and repressed rage, she is the woman in charge. Dee has her down cold. And her numbers are highlights. "Could I Leave You" is delivered full throttle and perfect, but so is "The Story of Lucy and Jessie" where her dancing is in the spotlight and she is quite amazing.

Not to short change Quast. He's excellent as Ben, both the cynical self absorption and the vulnerability always on show. He never takes the whining self pity too far and he makes his breakdown moment in "Live, Laugh, Love" - maybe the hardest scene in the show to get right - actually work. Plus he sings well.

And so to Imelda Staunton. Sally is by far the most difficult character to portray and I think Staunton's take on her, while good, is still a work in progress. Sally lives in a fantasy world, both past and present. She has spent a lifetime making accommodations with reality - she's the character who best represents the fantasy/reality mood of the whole piece. She has a desperation and an inner turmoil that are ever present and yet there's also the self-awareness that is expressed in her great second half song, "Losing My Mind" which is, in fact, her deeper truth. Staunton, incidentally, sings that song beautifully and generally sings well, especially in the softer and more reflective moments. She only has vocal issues when she has to go into head voice in "Too Many Mornings". In any case, it felt to me like she is most of the way there in finding her Sally. A few more shows and she will be fully invested.

BTW, it should be noted that the young quartet - Fred Haig (Buddy), Adam Rhys-Charles (Ben), Zizi Strallen (Phyllis) and Alex Young (Sally) - are all wonderful and shine when they get their chance in "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow/Love Will See Us Through".

Follies is one of those shows that hits hard and digs deep. It's personal. We will all find ourselves somewhere in it and confronting it in the theatre can be an emotional experience. It was for me, at any rate. And while not everything in this production is or will be perfect I'm grateful it's as good as it is. For it is VERY good. I'll be seeing it again soon, I'm sure.

[tmesis]

Regarding the casting of the four main 'leads', which a few here have found wanting, I really don't think it could be, at this moment, better cast than it is.

(Sound of gauntlet being thrown down...)

[Deleted]

Really good review mallardo, On expectations, I think any older show has you carry an imagined production of it in your head (or is that just me?) As such, one moment of staging that I've always disliked is how Beautiful Girls is staged to get applause. To me, it should pull the audience up on seeing the difference between what was and what is. The idea of a fire escape and the bathetic nature of it, compared to the grandeur they had when doing the same thing when they were young deliberately stopping the applause, making it more reflective/emotional. It always stuck out a bit, to me, as an applause number and one of the hand me downs from the eighties concert that has been unhelpful.

Whilst I'm sharing production ideas, I've seen no pictures or descriptions of Loveland but, if I had the chance to direct this (not going to happen), I'd create an expressionistic nightmare of a set, twisting the Follies opulence into angular, strangely off kilter, deconstructions. That way, instead of a Follies retread, you get something which supports the psychological breakdown. In fact, with its mix of domestic rancour, the elisions of time and the out and out strangeness of Loveland, the one director who I've always wanted to film it, is David Lynch (again, won't happen). It'd get a lot of people's backs up but wouldn't half be memorable.

[viserys]

I saw yesterday's evening performance as well and for me it was pretty much exactly what I had expected. Now I'm not an expert and probably unaware of the finer nuances, nor do I have any other performances to compare these too.

For me the show came only alive during the actual show numbers - Oh Paris, Broadway Baby, Who's that woman, I'm still here and so on. But between these numbers the show came to a grinding halt whenever it was about the central quartet and their tedious love woes. I know that due some RL experiences I'm a terrible cynic when it comes to love and relationships, so this might be my personal problem, but I cheered when Jerry and Lise finally sank into each other's arms at "An American in Paris" on Friday evening and I even squished a tear in my eye during the Saturday matinee of Adrian Mole at the Menier when Pauline finally returned to George and Adrian.

But the central quartet in Follies is so mind-blowingly obnoxious and I just can't stand the portrayal of Sally, this needy whiny "My whole world orbits around a man!" type of woman I detest. As much as I like Imelda Staunton and thought she was fabulous in Sweeney Todd, Gypsy or Virginia Woolf, she couldn't save this. There were moments where I thought, "okay, well, she's pretty nuts with her idealization of Ben and why not, it's a common human trait to hinge your dreams on another person and what might have been" but even that couldn't save it.

I think what added to my irritation is that this kind of stuff has been done in countless musicals, plays, movies, etc. before, whereas here we'd have the unique chance to look back at the lives of these "Follies" women, their hopes, their dreams and their ambitions... I would have loved to hear more of them, I would have loved to see more of all those fabulously talented charismatic performers on stage... and way less of the whinging.

So... yea, for me it was a show of two halves - one fantastic half and one awful half.

[mallardo]

Interesting reflections, CP. I don't agree with you about "Beautiful Girls". I don't think the first number in the show is the place to underline "the bathetic nature" of the event. Seeing these aging women looking as glamorous as they can, assuming the roles of their younger selves, is poignant enough without making them look, well, just a bit awkward as they descend not a lavish staircase but a fire escape. Thankfully, to me, this is one of the few wrong notes hit in this production.

Loveland in this production is just what you don't want, a Follies "retread", with gauzy curtains descending from the flies to create a stage within the stage, a playing area not only for this number - chorus girls, glitzy costumes - but for the four "follies" that follow it, culminating in the finale. For me, Dominic Cooke got this exactly right. Nothing needs to be supported. The show goes on until it can no longer do so. Only then do things fall apart. The finale doesn't need to be set up - that would undercut it. I think, maybe, when you see it, you'll agree that Cooke knew what he was doing.

[Deleted]

Sept 3, 2017 14:33:12 GMT mallardo said:

Interesting reflections, CP. I don't agree with you about "Beautiful Girls". I don't think the first number in the show is the place to underline "the bathetic nature" of the event. Seeing these aging women looking as glamorous as they can, assuming the roles of their younger selves, is poignant enough without making them look, well, just a bit awkward as they descend not a lavish staircase but a fire escape. Thankfully, to me, this is one of the few wrong notes hit in this production.

Loveland in this production is just what you don't want, a Follies "retread", with gauzy curtains descending from the flies to create a stage within the stage, a playing area not only for this number - chorus girls, glitzy costumes - but for the four "follies" that follow it, culminating in the finale. For me, Dominic Cooke got this exactly right. Nothing needs to be supported. The show goes on until it can no longer do so. Only then do things fall apart. The finale doesn't need to be set up - that would undercut it. I think, maybe, when you see it, you'll agree that Cooke knew what he was doing.

I'm fully open to all interpretations, so a Follies retread is no problem (as would be a different Beautiful Girls). In the end, these are jigsaw pieces and the only thing that matters is the whole, and there are hundreds of possible ones; addressing the challenge that Sondheim/Goldman set - as in - here you go, we're giving you  a book that reflects the self obsession of early seventies America and its drama/cinema and we're going to rub that up against recreations of long ago musical styles and shake the whole thing up with an expressionist elision of the two. A great challenge for a director (and the audience, too).

On another track, if people believe these characters are irritating (and yes they are, that's what they are meant to be), then you can't have seen They're Playing Our Song. I can empathise with most but even I was struggling with those two!

[ali973]

Guys, does the NT Bookstore or the souvenir stand sell the Ted Chapin book "Anything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies"?

[viserys]

Could you have asked me that two days ago?

[sf]

Sept 3, 2017 16:16:29 GMT ali973 said:

Guys, does the NT Bookstore or the souvenir stand sell the Ted Chapin book "Anything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies"?

It isn't listed on their website, and I would expect they probably don't - it's (less than) half the bookshop it used to be.

The new edition of the script with this production's artwork, incidentally, is not the version of the show being performed in this production - it's the awful watered-down rewrite cobbled together from the Papermill and Roundabout revivals, which I suppose will save me a tenner when I see it later this week.

(...except I just spent more than a tenner on replacing my lost copy of the 1971 Random House script. Oh well.)

[loureviews]

My blog review of yesterday's matinee:

Stephen Sondheim’s bittersweet musical of theatreland gone by has its first major revival in London in years, and the book by James Goldman has now been returned fairly closely to the original plot, with the songs added for the 1987 revival dropped and the likes of ‘The Road You Didn’t Take’ and ‘The Story of Lucy and Jessie’ returned to their rightful place.

The set is a depiction of the decayed and partly demolished Weissman Theatre, where the neon still works but the walls are crumbling, the seats are distressed, and the auditorium is ruined.  For me, the opening scene and prologue takes too long to introduce everyone, but that would be true of every version of this show, and it is certainly touching to see the mature showgirls descend the ‘staircase’ (in reality, a less-than-glamorous fire escape) one last time, while their younger selves move in ghostly sequins and sparkles in from the stage.

This show is very much about those ladies who graced the Weissman Follies between the two World Wars, and although we are more focused on the story of two of them – Sally (Imelda Staunton), and Phyllis (Janie Dee) – we still feel invested in the others, from Carlotta the movie star (Tracie Bennett, done up as Joan Crawford in stern red, and decaying from despair, drink, and dallying with young men who ‘mean nothing’), ageing opera diva Heidi (Josephine Barstow, whose delicate depiction of sad memories of an affair with the boss, Mr Weissman (Gary Raymond, who makes an sobering impact in a nothing part, as lost in time as his girls), is as touching as her faded soprano voice in ‘One Last Kiss’, a duet with her younger self, played by Alison Langer), to the much-married and knowing Hattie (Di Boutcher, who knocks ‘Broadway Baby’ out of the park from the moment she removes her glasses, but who is surely far too young for the part), and the rather sad Solange (Geraldine Fitzgerald, with her memories of ‘Paree’).

Staunton has shone in a couple of award-winning Sondheims already – from 2012’s glorious ‘Sweeney Todd’, to 2015’s ‘Gypsy‘.  Further back she was a stunning Miss Adelaide in ‘Guys and Dolls’, so she has the musical credentials, and as an Oscar Best Actress nominee for ‘Vera Drake’, she is also known as a talented actress.  Both skills serve her well as Sally Plummer, a tiny housewife with a salesman husband, Buddy (Peter Forbes), who is cheating on her, and dreams which have never died for her former lover, Ben (Philip Quast, always a favourite of mine, and I’m delighted to see him back in a leading role), who rejected her for her friend Phyllis (perhaps sensing she would be more acceptable material for a politician’s wife).

This Weissman reunion brings Sally and Ben back together for the first time in thirty years, and in ‘Don’t Look At Me’, Staunton attempts to make a connection which leads Ben to think back to the girl he used to know (Alex Young, who made such an impact in the ENO’s ‘Carousel‘ this summer, as Carrie, and previously in the New London’s ‘Show Boat’), and to look, for a moment, kindly on the disturbed and clingy woman she has become.  When Quast and Staunton duet in ‘Too Many Mornings’, there is a glorious blend of music, memories, and the magic of what could-have-been, however transient that feeling may be.  Staunton may be a little short, height-wise, for the pivotal kiss which she takes as a way out of her boring life with the Buddy she has ceased to see, but we do engage with their relationship from this point on.

Janie Dee’s Phyllis is the textbook example of a rich socialite whose life is totally empty, with a nice house bursting at the seams with ‘the Chagalls and all that’, but lacking love, attention, or the children she so desperately wanted.  She has grown so tired of life, that her ‘Would I Leave You’ is perfectly delivered and completely believable; theirs is a marriage of convenience that doesn’t even feel convenient anymore.  But yet, in the end, she is the one who shows the most strength, and who will, we feel, at least attempt to pick up the pieces.  Her younger shadow is played by the dazzling Zizi Strallen, who has the star quality and energy which must have turned the young Ben’s head while he and Buddy were ‘Waiting for the Girls Upstairs’.

Peter Forbes is Buddy, a salesman who is really no good, and who calls anywhere he lays his hat home.  His routine involves going out on the road to shack up with Margie, a bright young thing who idolises him (the character always makes me think of ‘Death of a Salesman’ and Willy Loman, who is stuck in a spiral of not quite reaching the American Dream), and then returning to Sally, who fantasises that in his eyes she’s ‘young and beautiful’.  Their marriage has children, but they have moved away to escape their mother’s neuroses and arguments, so you can imagine the echoes of their empty rooms where the boys once played and fought.

The last section of the show moves from the realism of the crumbling theatre of the past to a fantasy staging of ‘Loveland’, a sequence which I always find problematic, but which brings the young quartet to the fore (as well as Young and Strallen, the young Ben and Buddy are played well by Adam Rhys-Charles and Fred Haig) before moving into the individual follies of each as they are now: Buddy, dealing with a drag depiction of his mixed love-life done in a vaudevillian style; Sally, in a blonde wig and a sumptuous dressing room, ‘losing her mind’; Phyllis, in old and young versions, doing as well as she can to tell us about Lucy and Jessie; and Ben’s Fred Astaire pastiche which collapses into an emotional breakdown.  Although I love ‘Losing My Mind’, and Staunton did it well, this whole sequence remains a problem, and as much as I admire Quast, and he did all he could with the number, the breakdown felt rushed to me, which may well have been a directorial mis-step.

What else?  Bennett channels Judy Garland (again, but beautifully) in the caustic ‘I’m Still Here’.  The mirror number ‘Who’s That Woman’ weirdly has the young chlorines not mirroring their older counterparts, and I felt in this case the Royal Albert Hall concert did this number better (although I did like Dawn Hope’s Stella, and the chance to see Liz Izen’s Deedee in the line-up).  Billy Boyle and Norma Atallah are fun, and poignant, as the Whitmans.

This may not be a perfect revival, but it is a great show, and it is rare to see something done on this scale, with so much love and energy – an emotional powerhouse, with eminently hummable tunes.

Do go, and also grab a copy of the fantastic programme, which is full of information, articles, and pictures and can be yours for just a fiver.

[crabtree]

Good morning, and is there a name for the genre of musicals, like Follies and Barnum, that use the conventions, techniques and tropes of their subject to tell their story - using circus skills to tell the story of a circus figure? I guess 'metatheatrical' is wrong as that is used when characters have an awareness of being in a musical and such.

[Deleted]

Production Photographs are out! It looks beautiful!

www.broadwayworld.com/article/Photo-Flash-First-Look-At-FOLLIES-At-The-National-Theatre-20170904

[loureviews]

Sept 4, 2017 13:53:49 GMT danieljohnson14 said:

Production Photographs are out! It looks beautiful!

www.broadwayworld.com/article/Photo-Flash-First-Look-At-FOLLIES-At-The-National-Theatre-20170904

It is, and I am so stealing that lovely picture of Philip Quast for my online scrapbook