FOLLIES at Paper Mill — Page 3

Hey Magruder--what do you think? Should we write the book?--lol. It would truly be fascinating.

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I will buy that one. Angela Lansbury told me stories about that one. I love the score, though.

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To anyone who saw the Mackintosh London FOLLIES...

HOW do they get out of Loveland?

In the orig prod Ben has a breakdown and Loveland come crashing down around him. On the London Cd set, the new number (Make the Most of Your Music) finishes with a flourish. Was the ending created for the recording the way an ending ws tacked onto "The Right Girl" on the Capitol OBC? Or did Ben not have breakdown in the London FOLLIES?

As for my favourite FOLLIES recording, I like them all except the London cast. The 1971 disc has those historic performances but the many trims and deletions. The 1985 concert generated such excitement and gave us FOLLIES freaks our first chance to hear much of the music cut from the OCR. The PMP set with all the bonus tracks is the most complete. But the London cast fails for me. No Overture or prologue, the running order mucked about with and it is two not-very-full Cd's making it a very expensive set.

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GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES did not play the Paper Mill. It transfered from Goodspeed. Although, some of the critics are not fond of the director, Robert Johanson, this was his best work and Ben Brantley was in our pocket. I know Stephen Sondheim pretty well and he never said those things about Robert to me. Mrs. Goldman had nothing to do with casting the show. I was there the whole time and she wasn't. The only cast member that Sondheim didn't want was Liliane Montevecchi, and that was because she never learned the music for the concert at Lincoln Center. She got the part at Paper Mill because there was no other star that was right for it. Chase Mishkin and Roger Berlind had most of the money raised. It really angers me that everybody thinks they know what happened and they weren't even involved in the production. I was there through the whole wonderful experience. Everyone is definitely entitled to their opinion, but opinions is all the are. I have done 22 shows at the Paper Mill from 1982 through 2000, so I definitely had an inside track on what was going on. It was a very controversial time and Mrs. Goldman was definitely the villain. It's hard to believe that she would have so much power. I have never been involved with anything other than SWEENEY TODD that audiences reacted to so passionately as the production of FOLLIES at the Paper Mill.

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Updated On: 3/10/05 at 07:07 PM

As usual, Margo, you are right in your assessment of Burnett's inadequate rendition of "I'm Still Here."
It happened almost twenty years ago, but I can still remember how electrified my friends and I were while in the audience at FOLLIES IN CONCERT.
While everyone else in the production was at a career peak, especially Barbara Cook, Lee Remick, and Elaine Stritch, Burnett's lackluster performance made one wish that Stritch had done the song instead of her.
I suspect that those performing at Sondheim's 75th celebration will be the most exciting group on one stage since the legendary concert version of FOLLIES in 1985.
Here's hoping there will be a DVD release of this sure to be once in a lifetime event.

Sorry, but how do you know what I know and what I dont? I happen to be very close with a lot of people at the Paper Mill and was the resident conductor for a few years. You also don't know Robert Johanson very well, because, if you did, you would know that no one tells Robert what to do. I have done 20 shows with Robert and no one knows him professionally better than I do, and he did his finest work on this show. Jerry Mitchell did a fabulous job, and is a great guy to work with, but directorally what was on that stage was all Robert's.

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Updated On: 3/11/05 at 10:59 PM

my point is made, we need a book about this production! i still need to read that PETER PAN title book about Johansan, too. MAGRUDER, it's funny you mention PRETTYBELLE, and it might have been intentional---as that show as out of town at the same time as the original FOLLIES, and in the same city, so it is a fairly large part of EVERYTHING WAS POSSIBLE. What's great about EVERYTHING WAS POSSIBLE, aside from the stars-in-rehearsal and creative-team-in-the-midst-of-collaboration (which it would share with a book about the PaperMill FOLLIES), is how clearly Chapin was able to get across the economics of the business at that point in time. Those who have worked at two of the biggest regional theatres with Broadway transfer potential, Goodspeed and PaperMill, would do well to give the genre a document that also touched on those topics. The face-off of COLEMAN and MME. ROSE suggests that various perceptions exist, but even a flawed document put in writing and reviewed might generate commentary and reaction that get historians in the field closer to the truth. With all the regionals now serving as "out of town" instead of Broadway productions going on the road first under their own steam and renting venues, the context of the changing practices would be particularly valuable. Truly innovative attempts at new musical theatre (as opposed to commercial tries at "sure bets" like jukebox musicals and West End transfers) now come through the regionals even more---as the "preview" period for NYC shows often occur without any out of town process. Thanks for considering such a pivotal book.

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