Thursday 31 August 2017

Theatre Review: Follies (National Theatre)

 Znalezione obrazy dla zapytania Follies national theatre poster



Do people really enjoy Stephen Sondheims sour sentimentality songs like Every Day a Little Death?’” wondered Pauline Kael in 1978. The answer, these days at least, seems to be a definite Yes: so much so that every major revival of a Sondheim musical becomes a cultural Event and even shows that were indifferently or negatively received at their premieres are now all treated as classics of the American musical theatre. As such, its no surprise that the hype machine has gone into maximum overdrive for Dominic Cookes production of Follies (1971) at the National Theatre, with the production billed as the latest dazzling take on a musical masterpiece.
Is the show a masterpiece, though? Theres no doubt that there are some wonderfully enjoyable bits throughout Cookes lush and lively production: whether its a charmingly staged Beautiful Girls; Janie Dee coarsening up to deliver a biting Could I Leave You?; a tap-happy “Who’s That Woman?”, exuberantly choreographed by Bill Deamer; Di Botcher’s knowing, gutsy take on “Broadway Baby”; or Imelda Staunton and Philip Quast wringing maximum emotion from a great “Too Many Mornings.”
A problem for me, though, is that Follies is just that: bits a selection of skits, routines and turns in search of a dramatic centre. Its no surprise that the show has had so much success in concert presentations, since theres no plot to speak of, just a situation: the reunion of a group of former showgirls (plus spouses) on the stage they used to share, shadowed by their younger selves.
James Goldmans book (rewritten for some productions but apparently presented in a slightly tweaked version of its original form here) provides scenes that are just sketchy little blurts. The piece seems to have many more protagonists than it knows what to do with, or that can be developed in any depth. As it is, the characters scuttle around Vicki Mortimer’s ever-revolving, crumbling-theatre set, dropping waspish quips or soppy revelations, stopping occasionally to sing. But don’t expect to learn much about most of them, as they’re shuffled on and off.
Clearly the structure is meant to evoke that of Follies shows, but that doesn’t make it particularly satisfying, conceptually or dramatically. There are few arcs, and so the show feels incohesive, thin, unintegrated: a selection of broads, belting. (At first it looks like Tracie Bennett is going to do something really fresh with “I’m Still Here”, starting the song in a more muted conversational style, but by the end the song’s become a generic camp show-stopper.)
Only four characters - Staunton’s Sally, Dee’s Phyllis, Quast’s Ben and Peter Forbes’s Buddy (played in their younger incarnations by Alex Young, Zizi Strallen, Adam Rhys-Charles and Fred Haig, respectively) - really come into focus, and I’m afraid their relations are mostly marked by the “sour sentimentality” that Kael identified as characteristic of Sondheim. Amid the quartet’s quarrels, Dee is the funniest and Staunton is most successful at bringing humane touches throughout listen to her lovely light pause before Sally delivers her married name - but it’s not a happy development when we’re cued to understand that the character is simply, in Sondheim’s definition, “crazy.” If Staunton’s much-anticipated Losing My Mind feels self-conscious and slightly disappointing, to me, it’s possibly because its part of the Loveland sequence: an expressionistic dream/nightmare vision of the characters’ different neuroses that I found to be a bit of a kitsch horror.
By this point, in fact, Follies seems to have degenerated into a something of a style exercise, and it seems that most of its number could be shuffled around and placed anywhere without the show losing too much. Compared to other theatre-maker Sondheim musicals, I’d rank it as better than the endlessly blasting Gypsy but inferior to the nuanced and truly touching Merrily We Roll Along. Cooke’s production is going to get lots of praise, and maybe its as good as it could be. But, for all its undoubted high spots, Follies is such a bitty piece of work that its hard to imagine any production really making the show cohere.

7 comments:

  1. I suspect that Pauline Kael had a hard time spotting irony, if she thought Every Day A Little Death was sentimental, sour or otherwise.

    Follies needs to be looked at as a landscape rather than a portrait, the bits make sense as a wider canvas of a nation, generation and the individual in turmoil. Much as I like the score of Merrily, one could never describe that soap opera plot as nuanced, compared to Follies.

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    1. Oh, I don't think Kael could be accused of not appreciating irony or humour of any kind... she just wasn't keen on Sondheim's brand.

      I like the idea of the show as a landscape not a portrait, but I'm not sure that it really delivers in those terms. Surely a landscape still needs shapeliness, design, flow, a sense of integration... FOLLIES feels lazy and awkward in its structure to me, for all its entertaining moments.

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  2. I was 13 when I first read the script of Follies and I remember saying, 'wow', as I finished it. I don't think I've since read something with the ambition of Follies - it's in the eye of the beholder, perhaps, but there's quite patently nothing lazy about it, awkward,in places, perhaps, but the overall result is a play that foreshadowed some of the political issues that would emerge in that decade, in the US, and is still very relevant both in the UK and the US today. It is a potent piece.

    BTW mistaking irony for sentimentality, is never a good sign in a critic, she might have known something at film, but Broadway musical theatre was not Kael's forte

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    1. I'm curious to look at the text, but on the evidence of the production, FOLLIES just doesn't seem to have the fluidity that I'd argue characterises really great musical theatre: the sense that each song is moving the narrative forward, contributing to character, working as a pivotal dramatic scene... I just don't feel it in this piece, though it may be true of some other Sondheim musicals.

      As for Kael, yes, it's true that film was her focus. But she brought a really diverse, wide-ranging cultural knowledge to the task: of literature, music, theatre.

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  3. I saw this production of Follies in one of the previews and couldn't agree with your review more. The three of us (lifelong Sondheim fans, all), sat unmoved as the rest of the audience leapt to its feet in rapture. Bitty, overblown, emotionally unengaging....the 2012 Merrily at the Menier was a coherent, heart-breaking masterpiece of restraint compared to this. Even the original, badly reviewed Broadway Merrily -- (though about which New York Times reviewer Clive Barnes said, ""Whatever you may have heard about it – go and see it for yourselves. It is far too good a musical to be judged by those twin kangaroo courts of word of mouth and critical consensus") had all the hallmarks of a strange and wonderful meditation on youth and age that this Follies could only hammer home with a bludgeon. Thanks for this. I was beginning to think I was insane.

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    1. Thank you! I'm sorry you were disappointed, but happy that there are at least a few people who agree! :)

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  4. I couldn't agree with this review more. Give me Merrily any day for coherent, tight storytelling and emotional bite. This Follies left three tried and true Sondheim fans stony faced while the rest of the audience leapt to its feet in rapture. It's all there on the surface, but underneath, where the sharks should be circling, I saw nothing but a few limp weeds.

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