The Official Kennedy Center FOLLIES Thread- Page 24

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 12:55am

Thought some of you might like this. I found this picture from the OBC Playbill with ticket stubs. Kind of cool, I thought so I wanted to share.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 1:02am

I wish I could just jump into it, like in Mary Poppins. Preferably on a page where there's a picture of the set.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 1:12am

Those were the $6.00 seats, in the 4th row of the balcony.

I would sit in the $2.00 seats, in the last two rows.

[iflip4musicals]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 3:00am

I'm supposed to see it on Wednesday, I've been looking forward to it since tickets went on sale. I got back surgery on Thursday and if I have to miss this performance, I will not be a happy camper.

If I see it, is the view okay from the front row? Is it too close?

[FrauleinKost]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 3:05am

Front row? Oh no! It's ghastly. Tell you what, I will go in your place for you.

[Will42]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 8:59am

'THEN - get some no-names like Angela for Hattie and Kevin Kline for Ben'.

Angela Lansbury and Kevin Kline are 'no-names'? Sorry, but am I missing something?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 9:17am

Yes: jocular irony.

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 9:22am

PalJoey, I was at the Kennedy Center last night and was thumbing through the book about the making of "Follies". There was a different picture from "Whose that Woman" and one of the ghost dancer's did not have any shoes on (just like in a different book I referred to a couple of weeks ago). I think you might have that book. Take a look.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 9:48am

It's black-and-white and grainy, so it could be that she is wearing shoes that blend in to her stockings and the shadow on the floor, but it does appear that she is dancing--and tapping!--shoeless.

It's a mystery.

[Will42]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 10:20am

Well, thanks to you I found it:).

[Scripps2]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 12:28pm

"So who should attack Follies in its next incarnation? I vote for Stephen Daldry and his designer Ian MacNeil."

I have to say I think that is a brilliant suggestion.

Remember how in Daldry's An Inspector Calls he had different timezones inside and outside the house? And the characters outside could see the characters inside but not vice versa.

And how the daughter spent most of the time in her undergarments (as a representation of her transparency and integrity) whilst everyone saw her fully clothed.

And how the house vomiting it's contents was a great visual metaphor for what was happening amongst the characters inside it.

I could so see them doing Follies.
Updated On: 6/5/11 at 12:28 PM

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 12:44pm

Thanks for seconding the motion, scripps!

Your observations on "An Inspector Calls" match mine on that show as well as on "Billy Elliott". In Billy, remember how Ian MacNeil took a very realistic union hall and subtly fragmented the walls till they were collaged memories of many rooms in one space?

Remember how expertly the show could merge time and place to produce the shocking chorus of tutu'd girls partnering with uniformed police and produce a heightened sense of delight and terror at once?

And what's more Ziegfeldian than that gorgeous mirrored wall in Act II overlaid with the sweeping drapery paintings of the Royal Ballet? If only Follies' Loveland sequences could be surrounded by visuals like that.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 12:52pm

"it's real, it's going on out there and I can't reach it."

"Could I wave the years away
With a quick goodbye?
How do you wipe tears away
When your eyes are dry?"

[Scripps2]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 12:56pm

"Remember how expertly the show could merge time and place to produce the shocking chorus of tutu'd girls partnering with uniformed police and produce a heightened sense of delight and terror at once?"

I attended a Q&A session with Sondheim once where he said that the first 45 minutes of Billy Elliot were as good as anything he and Hal Prince were doing in the early 70s.

Charles: you've just found a Follies G-spot I didn't know I had.

Someone banish Trevor Nunn from London for the next five years.
Updated On: 6/5/11 at 12:56 PM

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 2:19pm

Dottie, I was there last night too.

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 6/5/11 at 11:33pm

scripps, so I guess when I finally see the Kennedy Center production this Thursday night (yay!), I'll also be watching a Stephen Daldry movie in my head at the same time, that plays and plays. It won't be just the good parts or the bad parts, it'll be the whole damn show...

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 12:03am

Saw it last night also, and I enjoyed many of the performances and the orchestra was glorious but I think Schaffer is a terrible director and Warren Carlyle should be shot for ruining Maxwell's LUCY AND JESSIE! I will post more on the MEGABUS trip home to NYC Monday.

[wickedfan11]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 7:28pm

I have a few questions about the stage door, as I am attending the show this Wednesday. I know it's probably already been covered in this thread, but I really don't want to have to search through 24 pages of posts.

How do you get to the stage door from the Eisenhower Theatre exit? Who usually comes out after Wednesday matinees?
Is the stage door usually crowded?

Thanks!

[SondheimFan5]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 7:49pm

Stage Door is on the Watergate side of the building. go out the main enterance, take a left, and then turn and go around the other side of the building. There is a sign that clearly marks it as the stage door.

[morosco]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 9:21pm

Some interesting stuff from Foster Hirsch's book Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre

The Follies set was an immense black box in which the characters were often stranded. To suggest emotional distance at different time frames the characters were often isolated by a spotlight, separated at opposite ends of the wide Winter Garden stage, or placed on different levels. The eerie limbo quality was enhanced by a chorus of ghostly showgirls dressed in black and white who glided silently through the play, unseen by the characters.

"The show never stopped moving," Dorothy Collins remembers. "From up in the balcony we were told it looked like a chess game. Music and dialogue flowed into each other; there was often movement upstage during songs; a dolly with a band kept going in and out of the action." Party goers filtered behind and to the sides of the central action, gesturing and talking in counterpoint to the unfolding drama between the two main couples; groups of characters emerged out of and then returned to the surrounding darkness, as platforms slid forward and back to change the shape of the central playing area. Ceaseless activity, cross-cutting between groups on either side of the stage, and fades between past and present action propelled the characters through the show's arc of arrival, breakdown, and departure.

----

Dorothy Collins remembers that "Yvonne [de Carlo] did things the character would do. It was appropriate - in character - that she often forgot or got mixed up on the lyrics of the song, and one night, when she didn't feel like doing the "Who's That Woman?" number she just sat on the edge of the stage - again, exactly in character.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/6/11 at 11:09pm

Collins is remarkably eloquent. From the last two rows of the balcony, a chess game is EXACTLY what it looked like.

But it was choreographed chess, balletic, and none of the movement of the party guests or the ghosts ever distracted from the focus of the scenes and songs.

"The show's arc of arrival, breakdown, and departure"--beautifully summed up.

[justoldbill]

Posted: 6/7/11 at 2:25am

As to all the speculation of those "Who's That Woman?" pictures with a shoeless Virginia Sandifur, the most likely explanation is that while the (tightly scheduled) photo session was in progress, her shoes were simply in the shop being repaired. What nobody ever mentions about these shots, however, is Florence Klotz's seamed stockings- a genius mind at work. Her sense of period and detail just isn't matched in this production. Where's the seven million dollars? It certainly isn't on stage.

Updated On: 6/7/11 at 02:25 AM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/7/11 at 8:27am

I didn't realize that was Virginia Sandifur.

[FrauleinKost]

Posted: 6/7/11 at 8:44am

The first time I saw it, there were only a handful of people waiting. If it's Bernadette you want to meet, she came out the side door (the door that patrons exit the theatre from), and a few fans went over to her (maybe three...), closer to where her car was waiting. (no, I don't think she was trying to dodge fans; I've seen cast members use this door before for other shows)

The second time I saw it, there were about 15 people there, and Bernadette came out of the stage door, signed/did photos before going to her car.

[wickedfan11]

Posted: 6/7/11 at 8:50am

FrauleinKost- Did you see evening performances or matinees? I know Bernadette didn't sign after matinees of ALNM, and I'm assuming she probably doesn't for Follies either.

EDIT: Do Danny, Ron, Jan, and Elaine sign after Wed. matinees? Updated On: 6/7/11 at 08:50 AM