FOLLIES Begins Rehearsals Today; Casting Complete! — Page 3

I hope they keep elements of the old number as well. For example, the boys dancing was athletic, sexy and wonderful. On the other hand, they just cannot give Maxwell a lot of dancing because that is not her strong suit. The number fell every time she attempted to dance. Eventually, it was a tad painful to watch. This is not a knock on Maxwell, it is a knock on Shaeffer and Carlyle for putting her in that position. She's obviously incredibly talented, give her moves & direction that work for her.
Lucy & Jessie needed changing and, simply, I hope they keep the good stuff (the boys dancing) & change the stuff that didn't work (Maxwell's dancing).

I wouldn't hold my breath for the Bolero, there has been no casting news for Vincent or Vanessa.
I pray they get rid of that walkove Jan did into the guy's arms, it was so awkward and I feared for her life. In Maxwell's case they need to use her strength, her presense, timimg and statuesque form.

Perhaps that's why they recast Theodore when Terrence Currier was fine in the role...they might've been looking for a dancer to match Susan Watson for the Bolero.

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I think Lucy and Jessie can be done without too much dance. Lee Remick's version was great, and the dance was minimal.

Yes, they do it as the Whitmans.

With all due respect, I hope they create something that we've never seen before and surprises us. If you knew how to do that you would say, instead all you do is say what doesn't work. Again, with all due respect, because I actually think all the comments you post are quite intelligent and insightful.
Yes, "Lucy & Jessie" is about Phyllis, but I hope they decide to express it in a way that you & I have not thought of. The dancers worked, to me, despite what you think. Bennett had those guys in there too and doing similar things. Except he had a huge set shift to distract as well. The number was not much better, IMHO. Bennet for all his genius wasn't quite able to make this one work perfectly either. It's a damn hard nut to crack, granted. I certainly don't have the answers, lol. Truth be told, this is one of those numbers, like "The Right Girl", that has yet to be truly found. Having said that, I think "The Right Girl" in the KC production is the closest they've ever come to making it work. From what my husband tells me, who produces & knows people involved, Sondheim feels the same way. They just need to rethink "Lucy & Jessie" in order to make it work for Ms. Maxwell and this production. And make it make sense. Now, how to do that, lol? Ah, well.

I think Bennett's staging of LUCY AND JESSIE is what clenched the TONY for the excellent Ms. Smith, and Carlyle's is what wrecked Ms. Maxwell from a complete Tour de'Force.
And I adore Mr. B. , and will be rooting again for him at TONY time, but there has to be a better solution for a non-dancer to make that number work.
I am cautiously excited to see the changes, but would be more excited if there were rumors that some better choreographer was helping out.
Back to this: Did the older Whitman's dance the Bolero, or did they have ghosts?

Bennett's staging of "Lucy and Jessie" was a precursor to his conception of "One" in A Chorus Line: the idea of the chorus being there only to illuminate the "singular sensation" in front of them.

Shockingly, he had the chorus boys (and the girls too, dressed as boys) facing upstage for the ENTIRE number. Watch it again: They NEVER turn downstage:

http://youtu.be/6TxLGIdv85I

It was Bennett's solution for creating a dance number around Alexis Smith--who was not a dancer but had great legs.

Warren Carlyle makes the dancers look good while the leading lady struggles to keep up. But Bennett made Alexis Smith look not merely good but also great--great enough, as CurtainPullDowner said, to clinch the Tony.

The chorus facing upstage the entire time forced the audience's attention on Smith's face (and legs), But the stage picture was still enlivened by their arm and leg movements and their shifting body positions. They were completely background for the audience. And the number completely told the story of the song.

Watch as Smith does the signature and specific hand choreography that Bennett was famous for, which Yvonne De Carlo referred to as "those marvelous Michael Bennett gestures." Here arm shifts and body position show the difference between Lucy and Jessie with irony and humor that are as sophisticated and clever as Sondheim's lyrics.

In the end, with numbers, like this, "The Right Girl," and "Who's That Woman," what you can see in the scratchy videos from the 1971 production is that Michael Bennett's staging rose to the level of Stephen Sondheim's writing.

That's a high bar to jump, and something we'll all be lucky if we see again.

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Updated On: 8/2/11 at 07:57 AM

I don't think you can say that it's a matter of a number being "solved" or not. There are always multiple ways to arrive at a good result. The original choreography of both Lucy & Jesse and The Right Girl was quite good, but like everything in the world, it's not necessarily perfect. In Lucy & Jesse, a little more movement from Phyllis would have made it more exciting for me. When reading Everything Was Possible, I imagined The Right Girl to be much bigger than the video makes it out to be. I think you need Buddy to be utilizing the entire space. Maybe I'm wrong, but everything is subjective.

And, for what it's worth, Sondheim isn't necessarily the best critic of his own work. He often says that the best song he's written is Someone in a Tree, which I have to disagree with (and I'm sure many others will, too). He really hates most of his lyrics for West Side Story, which are generally regarded quite highly, though he does raise some fair points.

Didn't Bennett have to simplify his choreography for The Right Girl because Gene Nelson, despite his best efforts, couldn't handle it?