Michael Bennett's Attempt to Fix "Follies"- Page 4

[Gothampc]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 3:44pm

Has anyone ever really nailed what generation Carlotta is supposed to be in?

 

I'm assuming she's older than Phyllis and Sally, but because the show relies on pastiche, she really can't be as old as Heidi, can she?

 

I just don't see a 70 year old Patti LuPone playing Carlotta.

Updated On: 11/21/15 at 03:44 PM

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 4:12pm

Updated On: 11/21/15 at 04:12 PM

[Mr. Nowack]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 4:22pm

Carlotta was in the Follies with Phyllis and Sally, so she's around the same age. Definitely perhaps a bit older but nowhere near say Heidi or Hattie.

 

Yvonne De Carlo was actually younger than Alexis Smith in the OBC.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 5:39pm

So I read "I'm Still Here" as Carlotta's autobiography, not her pastiche song.

 

If she sings about "I've gotten through Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover" and "In the Depression...I met a big financier..." then she has to be at least 10-15 years older than Sally and Phyllis.

 

Am I understanding "I'm Still Here" correctly?

[jayinchelsea]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 6:12pm

I've been watching FOLLIES since 1971 at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, 12 times in New York (including one of Hal Prince's several press openings, and the closing night, which is still one of the most amazing theatre experiences I've ever had in nearly 60 years of theatregoing). Also countless productions all over, including the sad stock tour with Vivian Blaine and Robert Alda (Selma Diamond as Hattie, not knowing the words of "Broadway Baby" and letting the company sing them in her stead); the very good Equity Library Theatre production; a great dinner theatre production in Chicago  (really, even stealing most of Bennett's original choreography, and in the round; you could cut the silence with a knife when Phyllis told us about her wringing-wet panties); the terribly rewritten, wrongly rethought London production (we can blame Cameron Mackinstosh for that); a fascinating concert production in Ann Arbor where the original four younger actors were now playing their older counterparts (and Donna McKechnie as a great Carlotta); a terrific one-night London BBC production (with Donna now as Phyllis, and the great Julia McKenzie as Sally again);  the Paper Mill one, which was okay with some great performances, but without the soul of the original; the amazing Encores one, with great turns by Garber, Murphy and Clark; and the Kennedy Center production, which was pretty wrongheaded in most departments, but lovely to see the great Susan Watson again. 

Yes, it is my favorite theatre piece, in its original form, which sadly we will never see again. But thanks for this thread, it is beyond remarkable.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 9:30pm

Gothampc said: "So I read "I'm Still Here" as Carlotta's autobiography, not her pastiche song.

 

 

 

If she sings about "I've gotten through Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover" and "In the Depression...I met a big financier..." then she has to be at least 10-15 years older than Sally and Phyllis.

 

 

 

Am I understanding "I'm Still Here" correctly?

 

"

I think you are, and the chronology is a bit dodgy if not actually impossible. And even if it's a pastiche number that Carolotta performed, she still had to be old enough to sing it, right?

 

Yvonne de Carlo was 49 when FOLLIES opened, so you are correct that she is just a few years older than Sally and Phyllis. (As you also point out, Alexis Smith was a year older, but de Carlo had been playing a mother on TV, so I think most of us thought of her as older than she was.)

 

Using de Carlo's actual age as a reference, she was 6 when Herbert Hoover was elected and 10 when he left office. Although the Depression is now dated more specifically by economists, I remember when it was a general term for the years between the crash of 1929 and the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941; by 1941, 19-year-old de Carlo was already dancing in a chorus line (other girls started even earlier), so it's not impossible that a financier helped a girl her age through the "Depression", statutory rape or not.

 

*****

 

On a different note, I agree with PalJoey that it was very odd to have Carlotta singing to the wait staff. Isn't the point of her one, big speech that men gush about how happy they are to meet her, but then only talk about themselves? It always amazes me when such a glaring paradox is built into staging. Doesn't anybody (AD, actor, the writer him or herself) say, "Uh, yeah, but she has this other speech..."?

Updated On: 11/21/15 at 09:30 PM

[Musical Master]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 9:36pm

Whenever I see beautiful pictures of Boris Aronson's set during the ending I just think: Wow the staging of the ending after Ben's huge meltdown must have been beautiful and sad. I must ask for those who do remember how that ending was staged, that would be awesome.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 9:53pm

I hesitate, to respond, Master, because I feel certain I've invented by own ending over the intervening 45 years, but here goes:

 

I think I remember the set pieces moving during the pandemonium sequence and ending up looking even more like debris than they had before and making a sort of surreal skyline. And I think there was a glimpse of sky over the leaning walls, almost as if the roof had caved in during the pandemonium. And I think the lighting of the sky suggested dawn.

 

And I think I remember the characters climbing up and over the wreckage like the survivors of an earthquake in order to escape the rubble.

 

But I so could have invented the above: I saw the show twice in my teens and then listened to the album thousands of times. I'm sure there's a lot I "restaged" in my mind over the years. (I've also seen several other productions, but they were nothing like the original in their sets or staging.)

[Musical Master]

Posted: 11/21/15 at 10:21pm

Thank you so much Gaveston for answering that. Whenever I do look at the picture all I could think of this humorous exchange I made up:

 

Ben: Ughh.. What happened? Phyllis!

 

Phyllis: I'm here Ben- WOAH! What happened here?

 

Ben: I think we blacked out or something. Why is there a big hole in the wall now?

 

Phyllis: This is just great, the first earthquake New York has had in years and we all slept though it. This has not been my whole day has it?

 

Ben: Nope. Let's go and see if Buddy and Sally are fine.

 

Phyllis: Okay, but Buddy and Sally owns me restitution!

 

Ben: Amen to that.

Updated On: 11/21/15 at 10:21 PM

[jayinchelsea]

Posted: 11/22/15 at 8:55am

Gaveston, I remember everything you do, except for them climbing over the debris. Great idea, though.

By the way, I just remembered one more production of FOLLIES that I have carefully blocked out, an earlier Eric Schaeffer take on the show at Signature, where, I think, all the characters were already dead and/or playing their own ghosts. Ghastly.

[imeldasturn]

Posted: 11/22/15 at 9:04am

jayinchelsea said: "Gaveston, I remember everything you do, except for them climbing over the debris. Great idea, though.

 

By the way, I just remembered one more production of FOLLIES that I have carefully blocked out, an earlier Eric Schaeffer take on the show at Signature, where, I think, all the characters were already dead and/or playing their own ghosts. Ghastly.

Oh my, is this the one with Florence Lacey as Sally? How was she?

 

[Scripps2]

Posted: 11/22/15 at 3:47pm

The vid of Elaine Paige singing I'm Still Here to her boys made me glad I didn't waste money on a plane ticket to see that production. It seemed inappropriate enough when Dolores Gray sang it to her fellow party guests. 

 

Stephen Daldry needs to the next director as he demonstrated he can handle multiple time levels, ghosts, surrealism and stunning visual metaphors in An Inspector Calls.

[#1CarrieFan]

Posted: 11/22/15 at 4:04pm

I'm not quite sure if I'm feeling like one of the old fogie muppets that sit in the balcony, but how refreshing to come on the message board today and read something interesting and more enjoyable than the usual snark!

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 11/23/15 at 12:25am

I should have chosen a better phrase than "climbing over the debris", which sounds like they were wading through broken cement and fallen plaster.

 

WHAT I ACTUALLY REMEMBER is that the on-stage platforms, by the end of the pandemonium, were set in a way that the characters had to walk up them like steps to get off of the stage. (As opposed to the 2012 production in LA, where the characters simply exited through the rear theater door.) In my mind, I interpreted those platforms as "debris", but it wasn't the mess my wording seemed to imply. If my memory is correct, it was Ben and Phyllis helping each other up and out that gave one the sense that they had reached a rapprochement.

 

I honestly can't recall what happened to Ben and Sally at the very end. Anybody? I'm sure they left somehow, because the young ghosts of the central quartet were left alone on stage as the curtain fell.

 

Updated On: 11/23/15 at 12:25 AM

[NoName3]

Posted: 11/25/15 at 4:13am

Jayinchelsea, I too saw the Equity Library Theater production and it was so fine and moving on no budget whatsoever. The intimacy with the characters in that tiny space made it quite special. Like Ragtime, people who saw or heard about the original production think it needs to be big to work but that's not the case at all.