My biggest wish for the Kenendy Center's FOLLIES... — Page 3

I'm actually a fan of writers who allow for experimentation with their work. Even when the experimentation proves wanting, I like the idea that a writer supports the other theatre collaborators. It always strikes me as funny when people get completely up in arms when changes are made in revivals. At some point, these works will be in the public domain, and no one will need permission to experiment with them.

I will never, however, understand what MARRY ME A LITTLE adds to COMPANY. If one wanted to interpolate a song for Bobby at that moment, the natural fit seems HAPPILY EVER AFTER. It would add bite to a character that seems to be a cipher, it would set up BEING ALIVE beautifully and it would allow Bobby to actually have someplace to go in Act 2.

If writers have made changes to a work over time - I personally feel they should allow theatre companies the choice to choose the original or revised form for production.

I agree with that completely.

At some point, these works will be in the public domain, and no one will need permission to experiment with them.

Alas, most likely this will not happen in our lifetimes. I do wish that community and regional theatres were allowed a little more leeway to experiment. I think in the days before BWW organizing group tattles on companies that change a word or two there was more freedom for that. Granted, you don't want so many changes that show becomes unrecognizable (unless it's Cabaret, which in that case I think you are contractually obligated to make each production as different as last year's as possible).

The London production of Cabaret from a few years back (post Broadway revival) is different STILL.

and now back to the real subject.......Does anyone have decent quality pictures from the original Broadway FOLLIES? Because people talk about this huge spectacle of a show but youtube clips are blurry or they don't show the set very much.

I also hope for the Kennedy Center production they don't do celebrity stunt casting, they should stick with real talented Broadway (or talented film) stars.

My dream cast:
Ben - Brian Stokes Mitchell or George Dvorsky
Phyllis - Donna Murphy
Buddy - Danny Burstein
Carlotta - Patti LuPone (!) or Bette Midler -- someone who can really belt the heck out of that song
Stella - Donna McKechnie
Hattie - Rosie O'Donnell
Solange - Chita Rivera
Roscoe - Arthur Rubin (the absolute best Roscoe)
Emily & Theodore Whitman - A married Broadway duo
Heidi - A retired colotura opera star
Young Heidi - A young opera star

A good revival...maybe a tour? what could we get out of this...

Updated On: 9/21/10 at 03:45 PM

I think those arguing that FOLLIES book isn't strong enough are probably largely those who think there should also be literal chiars and tables and buffet service on the stage (a la the Roundabout production)

Not I.

I argue that Goldman's book is inferior to the other aspects of the show, but everything about the Roundabout productions made me sick to my stomach for weeks.

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You'll have to contact us--by seance--and tell us all about it.

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Okay, here's a good example of what I was talking about earlier, how the revised script, while seemingly following the original pretty closes, really neuters to best parts of what has remained. For example, Phyllis' acerbic monologue between The Road You Didn't Take and the Bolero.

Here is the 1971 version -

Bargains, Buddy. That's the way to get through. One makes bargain's with one's life; that's what maturity amounts to. When we're young and every road loads clear we take them all, ignoring Newton's laws of motion, going every way once. Star, mother, hostess, hausfrau. So I learned to be an artist with my life. I constantly select, as if each day were a painting and I have to get the colors right. We're careful of our colors, Ben and I, and what we've made is beautiful. I had a lover once. His name was Jack, I think. He played the drums and had long hair and no command of language. He was young and crude and foolish and we'd wash away the afternoons with Gallo wine and one another, listening to the pop hits and the news. I have a birthmark just here under my left breast - my only flaw. I think he loved that in me most of all. He was so tender touching it, and when he kissed me there, one found it difficult to breathe. I thought it answered everything, but these things pass, and I have $30,000 worth of Georgian silver in my dining room.

This is Paper Mill

Bargains, Buddy. One makes bargain's with one's life; that's what maturity amounts to. When we're young there is no limit to the roles we hope to play: star, mother, hostess, hausfrau all rolled into one. I learned to choose, to constantly select, as if each day were a painting and I have to get the colors right. We're careful of our colors, Ben and I, and what we've made is beautiful. I had a lover once. His name was Jack, I think. He played the drums and had long hair and no command of language. He was everything Ben wasn't, and we'd while away the afternoons with Gallo wine and one another, listening to the pop hits and the news. I thought it answered everything, but these things pass, and I have $60,000 worth of Georgian silver in my dining room.

This is Roundabout, the script that is currently published, but not - to my best knowledge - the one currently licensed, which is the 71 version. Also, for the sake of this thread I have omitted the London version, even though I'm pretty sure the speech was totally cut from it, anyway.

Bargains, Buddy. One makes bargain's with one's life; that's what maturity amounts to. When we're young there is no limit to the roles we hope to play - star, mother, hostess, hausfrau - all rolled into one. I learned to choose, to constantly select, as if each day were a painting and I have to get the colors right. We're careful of our colors, Ben and I, and what we've made is beautiful. I had a lover once. His name was Jack, I think. He played the drums and had long hair and no command of language. He was everything Ben wasn't, and we'd while away the afternoons with Gallo wine and one another, listening to the pop hits and the news. I thought it answered everything, but these things pass, and I have $60,000 worth of Georgian silver in my dining room.

So, there are the minor, innocuous changes - some lines trimmed at the beginning, the value of her the silver doubling, etc.

Then there are the changes that aren't necessarily detrimental, but really diminish the imagery and use of language the 1971 version had. Cutting the reference to Newton, the way she describes the relationship with Jack.

Finally, there's the most egregious change in this scene - the removal of any mention of the birth mark and how she couldn't breathe when he kissed it. To this day, I can't understand why anyone involved felt that that should have been cut.

Anyway, that's the best example, although the various endings are good for parsing why the revisions just damage the script. The scene just prior to Loveland, too.

No one can sway me from my belief that despite all protestation to the contrary, any subsequent version lightens the story, or makes the characters more likable or leaves you feeling less depressed. I think that the biggest problem is that modern directors make it too dark too soon and really think of it as less of ghost story (which it should be) and more just a domestic drama (which it should not be). Granted, this knowledge only comes from listening to the three *o*t*l*g* I have of the original production, but even just aurally I can feel a lightness with the material that no one else ever seems to get.

Updated On: 10/13/10 at 12:51 AM

Also. I cannot understand for the life of me why the Roundabout script cuts this wonderful exchange

CHRISTINE: I thought you were just marvelous. You're Phyllis, aren't you? I'm Christine. I had the dressing table next to yours. Don't you remember me at all?

PHYLLIS: You never liked me.

CHRISTINE: What a thing to say.

PHYLLIS: I never liked you, either.

Why cut this??? Did Papermill keep it?

lljay, yes that line is in the Paper Mill version. And yes, the most drastic change in Roundabout is the ending, although just like Phyllis's monologue, the whole show is like someone took the 1971 script and gutted it of as much humor and pathos as possible.

I don't have the scripts in front of me right now, but I can sort of explain the changes of the ending.

There's the OBC - With Sally leaving the dishes in the sink and her truly important line "I should have died that first time. I should have been dead all these years" - which I think has never appeared in a version of the script since the original.

In Phyllis and Ben's final scene he says to her - and I'm semi-paraphrasing - "I've always been afraid of you.... I've always thought ... it can't be me she loves." To which Phyllis replies, "Well, think again!" That's gone, too.

If you remember the Chapin book, he mentions an ending that DIDN'T WORK with the four spouting empty platitudes to each other at the end. That version (or at least something similar)
seems to have infected everyone since the original. The London is really REALLY happy, all things considered. There's not near the sense of devastation and loss after the Loveland sequence.

Paper Mill has Sally leaving the dishes in the sink, but makes no mention of her attempting suicide. Ben says he has a breakfast meeting, but decides to cancel to spend the day with Phyllis, ostensibly to try and steer their marriage back in the right direction.

The Roundabout version again cuts all references to Sally's suicide attempts, Phyllis never agrees that it IS Ben she loves, and there are the awful lines between the four - Sally telling Ben she's "just fine" and telling Phyllis to "take care of him." Buddy tells Ben "If you're ever in Phoenix..." It's truly the most depressing of all the endings and it leaves you feeling no hope for ANY of them.

And we have already gone on at length about how the party guests return in the middle of the final scene in every version but the OBC, killing the tension and disabusing any notion that the evening wasn't real. That's pretty much the big overall problem with each revision. It grounds the show in a reality it doesn't need.

Other changes since the OBC are giving the Whitmans, Hattie and Solange lines before their Montage, making it clear that it's happening in real time instead of just sort of spontaneously appearing out of nowhere like it does in the original.

Updated On: 10/13/10 at 09:45 AM

That line appeared in Paper Mill as well.

I'd sign your letter!

So did "Oh dear God, It IS tomorrow." appear in Papermill?

I am determined to get the attempted suicide lines back. I hope there isn't some kind of ban on them preventing them from being in a production. I assume they are still in the licensed version.

It's so simple though, just do the original damn ending word for word! It's perfect.

I agree with Phyllis. If more directors saw it as a ghost story and let the darker colors about failed relationships emerge, it would be for the better.

Michael Bennett and Hal Prince understood it was all about the ghosts--Michael Bennett especially. They had great creative fun making them look and move like ghosts--with slow motion and shades-of-gray costuming and zipping in between the older characters who sort-of could and sort-of couldn't see them. Price and Bennett had fun making them look like ghosts because, of course, they weren't ACTUALLY ghosts. The characters are alive and living people don't literally have ghosts.

I have come to believe that directors who think they are "bringing out the darker colors" frequently miss both the lighter colors and the contrast between dark colors and light colors that give them each perspective.

It's about dynamics. A good conductor would never say, "I'm going to bring out the loud qualities of this score." The soft parts are what make the loud parts seem loud.

So in the ghost-story version of Follies, the 7-foot-tall showgirls all in shades of gray and the younger, peppier versions of the characters look like ghosts and act like ghosts but actually become a metaphor for who we once were, who were thought we were and who we hoped we would be.

In the end that's what the show is about. It's not about the fact that relationships fail or people get old, as the Roundabout debacle seemed to be. It's about the fact that who we are is not who we wanted to be, yet we can still become who we want to be now, even though that seems impossible.

That's what the morning means at the end. That's why Sally's "It IS tomorrow" has hope in it, as unlikely as that seems. (Because it's tomorrow and she's still alive--she didn't commit suicide.)

That's why there's hope for Phyllis and Ben at the end, as unlikely as their bickering. (Because the show doesn't end with their getting a divorce, despite how many times they've threatened each other with that.)

That Phyllis/Christine exchange is wonderful. It's not just the bitchiness; it's the succinctness.

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