Follies
Follies is a musical by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Goldman (book).
It premiered on Broadway in 1971 at the Winter Garden Theater , directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett , and won 7 Tony Awards . In 1987 the work came out for the first time in England, in the West End (London) . The German premiere took place in 1991 in Berlin at the Theater des Westens under the direction of Helmut Baumann . In 2013 the work had its first performance in France at the Opéra de Toulon .
action
1970: The Weissman Theater, a legendary revue theater of the 1920s, is to be demolished. Impresario Weissman therefore invites his former ensemble to a farewell performance. The guests include the former revue dancers Sally and Phyllis, who appear accompanied by their husbands Buddy and Ben. While former stars of the Weissman Revue are performing their old numbers again on stage, Sally, Buddy, Phyllis and Ben get more and more caught up in the vortex of their memories. Sally was once in love with Ben, who then married Phyllis. The dissatisfaction with their current life and the feeling of having missed something drives Sally and Ben together. Buddy admits to Sally that he was on the side and Phyllis breaks up with Ben. On stage, the nostalgic retrospect takes on increasingly grotesque forms, until Ben finally can no longer bear the discrepancy between appearance and reality and collapses. Phyllis returns to Ben and Sally asks Buddy to take her home. All couples have realized that it is not good to live in the past and that one has to face realities.
backgrounds
The title refers on the one hand to the legendary revue Ziegfeld Follies by theater producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. and on the other hand is an allusion to the English word for folly: "Folly".
Performances
The premiere in 1971 featured former stars from the American film and television business: Alexis Smith as Phyllis, Gene Nelson as Buddy, Dorothy Collins as Sally, Yvonne De Carlo as Carlotta. Following on from this, Eartha Kitt as Carlotta, Brigitte Mira as Hattie, Margot Hielscher as Solange, Alice and Ellen Kessler as Stella and Renate Holm as Heidi could be seen in Berlin in 1991 .
On September 6th and 7th 1985 a concert performance with an outstanding star cast took place at Lincoln Center in New York: Barbara Cook as Sally, Mandy Patinkin as Buddy, Lee Remick as Phyllis, George Hearn as Ben, Betty Comden as Emily, Adolph Green as Theodore, Liliane Montevecchi as Solange, Elaine Stritch as Hattie, Phyllis Newman as Stella, Carol Burnett as Carlotta and Licia Albanese as Heidi.
In 2018, London's Royal National Theater brought out a production of Follies by Dominic Cooke , which won the Laurence Olivier Award 2018 for Best Musical Revival and received eight other nominations for the Olivier Award.
The production in a new German translation by Martin G. Berger, who also directed, which appeared in 2019 at the Dresden State Operetta , moved the plot carefully to Dresden and played with echoes of the former GDR and the old house of the State Operetta in Dresden- Leuben , but emphasized at the same time the relational psychological components of the work. The main roles were designed by Frederike Haas (Sally), Christian Grygas (Buddy), Franziska Becker (Phyllis) and Marcus Günzel (Ben), the musical direction was Peter Christian Feigel .
Recordings CD
- 1971 - Original Broadway Cast (Alexis Smith, Gene Nelson, Dorothy Collins, Yvonne de Carlo)
- 1985 - Follies in Concert (Barbara Cook, Mandy Patinkin, George Hearn, Lee Remick, Carol Burnett)
- 1987 - Original London Cast ( Diana Rigg , Daniel Massey, Julia McKenzie, David Healy)
- 1998 - New Jersey Cast (Kaye Ballard, Tony Roberts, Phyllis Newman, Donna McKechnie, Ann Miller )
- 2011 - Broadway Cast ( Bernadette Peters , Jan Maxwell, Ron Raines, Danny Burstein, Elaine Paige )
Recordings DVD
- 2001 - Follies in Concert (Documentation and excerpts from 1985 with Barbara Cook, Mandy Patinkin, George Hearn, Lee Remick)
- 2013 - Toulon Cast (Graham Bickley, Liz Robertson, Jerome Pradon, Charlotte Page)
swell
- Reclams Musical Guide
- Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater
Individual evidence
- ↑ Olivier Awards 2018: Winners in full BBC.com, accessed January 4, 2019
- ↑ Dresden State Operetta: Follies, book by JAMES GOLDMAN music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim Broadway original production of Harold Prince | Orchestration by Jonathan Tunick | In agreement with Cameron Mackintosh | German version by Martin G. Berger | Dresden State Operetta. Retrieved February 23, 2020 .