STAGE WEST: "Follies" at Cygnet Theatre

Foreground: Sandy Campbell and David Humphrey as Sally and Ben. In background: Audrey Duebig and Drew Bradford as the young Sally and Ben.                                                    Karli Cadel Photography

            A Stephen Sondheim musical, even a disjointed one as is “Follies,” will have – guaranteed – at least one song that stirs the heart. In this case it’s “Losing My Mind.” It will also have – guaranteed – at least one lyric demonstrative of nonpareil Sondheim cleverness. In this case it’s “I’m Still Here.”
            There’s more than just those two in this 1971 Sondheim collaboration with James Goldman which debuted in between the more successful and much better “Company” a year earlier and “A Little Night Music” in ’73. “Broadway Baby,” probably the best-known song in the show and delivered in it by the oldest of the reuniting Weismann showgirls Hattie Walker, is an audience pleaser. In fact the numbers written for all the former showgirls to perform together, like “Beautiful Girls” and the charmingly choreographed “Who’s That Woman?”, are even more Broadway than “Broadway Baby.”
            Still, “Follies” received mixed response from critics when it opened half a century ago, and perhaps too because of its huge cast and elaborate staging it’s rarely performed these days. Up to now, San Diego had only seen one production of “Follies”: by the bygone Starlight Musical Theatre 35 years ago.
            But now comes Cygnet Theatre’s “Follies,” which on Saturday night opened the brand-new, $43 million Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center (aka “The Joan”) in Liberty Station. Artistic Director Sean Murray has said that he’s always wanted to produce “Follies” but never had the right size theater space to do so. The 282-seat Joseph Clayes III Theater with its deep and spacious stage fits the bill. The cast is 27-actors strong, and there’s plenty of room for dance numbers and for grand entrances by the “ghosts” of the Weismann showgirls past.
            The choice of “Follies” to open the new Cygnet performing arts space is also poetic: the story, set in 1971, finds Weismann showgirls from the years between the ‘20s and the ‘40s reuniting at the very theater in which they once performed, a theater that is destined for demolition. You could say that the end of the Weismann Theatre and the birth of the new one for Cygnet are parallels in time. This plays beautifully with “Follies” itself: its former showgirls are mirrored throughout by younger versions of themselves in their original show costumes; and Goldman’s story set to Sondheim’s music and lyrics is a very bittersweet reflection on the relationship between past and future, between youth and old age, between dreams dreamed and those later faded or abandoned.
            “Follies” is truthfully two stories in one – intermingled but less a fit than I would prefer and tonally rather at odds. For me, the overarching narrative about the ex-showgirls coming together again and all their rivalries, mixed feelings and shared memories is more resonant than “Follies’” interpersonal drama: the unhappy marriages that former Weismann girls Phyllis and Sally are mired in, made only more untenable and miserable by the presence at their reunion of their husbands Ben and Buddy respectively.
            When the veteran showgirls are clashing, communing or, best of all, performing (as in the showstopping number that closes Act One and resumes at the start of Act Two), “Follies” is a delightful throwback perhaps to the big Broadway musicals that once were. The couples drama, while deepened by a couple of poignant tunes like “In Buddy’s Eyes” and “Too Many Mornings,” feels rather small by comparison, though one could argue that the girls mourning the loss of their old theater and the couples mourning the loss of their once-happier marriages is thematically compatible.
            Then there’s the what will be for anyone new to or unconversant with “Follies” a WTF transition from Act Two to “Loveland” near the end. But I’ll get to that.
            In an inspired stroke of casting, Murray, who directs, has enlisted to play the onetime Weismann showgirls veteran actresses familiar to not only longtime Cygnet-goers but San Diego theatergoers in general -- beginning with Karole Foreman and Sandy Campbell in the lead roles of Phyllis Rogers Stone and Sally Durant Plummer. These two last appeared together in Cygnet’s production of “A Little Night Music” seven years ago, and they’re both top drawer in “Follies.”
          Foreman inhabits all the confidence and don’t-eff-with-me attitude of Phyllis while still conveying the hurt beneath the surface. Her “Phyllis’ Folly” turn in the “Loveland” sequence (“The Story of Lucy and Jessie”) is also the show’s sexiest offering. Campbell’s Sally is a wistfully unhappy woman, self-deceived while trying to be brave about it. Possessing one of the loveliest singing voices in town, Campbell mines the emotional core in Sondheim’s songs time and again. (Nio Russell and Audrey Deubig appear as the young Phyllis and Sally.)
              Also among the cast as Weismann alumnae are Leigh Scarritt as the sexy, showbiz-hardened Carlotta Campion, Anise Ritchie as the flamboyant Solange LaFitte, Amanda Naughton as unfailingly bright Emily Whitman, Melinda Gilb as self-deprecating (and very funny) Stella Deems, Dagmar Krause Fields as soprano supreme Heidi Schiller, and 80-year-old Patti Goodwin as Hattie Walker. Even their entrances and exits are great fun; Scarritt shines brightest with Carlotta’s “I’m Still Here,” a vampy mingling of cynical and self-affirming.
            The chief male roles in “Follies” are either peripheral – the aged major domo Roscoe, played by Ralph Johnson; Dimitri Weismann himself (Will Doyle), and Emily’s song-and-dance hubby/partner (Eddie Yaroch) – or the much more visible husbands of Phyllis and Buddy (David Humphrey as Ben Stone, Russell Garrett as Buddy Plummer) who are critical to the couples drama. Neither is a sympathetic character (no knock on Humphrey or Garrett, both steady), but it’s not hard to imagine Phyllis and Sally being better off without them.
I don’t know how “Follies” was staged on Broadway where it was produced by Hal Prince, but I have to believe that Cygnet’s production honors the sophistication, nostalgia and inventiveness of those days. The presence of the showgirls’ younger selves, their placement and their movement during the storytelling are thoughtful and atmospheric. Elisa Benzoni’s costumes and headwear are stunning, Peter Herman’s wig and makeup design ideal. “Follies” was inspired by the famous “Ziegfeld Follies.” As a tribute and an evocation, it stands tall.
The show is choreographed with high style by Katie Banville, a frequent Cygnet collaborator. Resident artist Patrick Marion leads a seven-piece orchestra, himself on keyboards. At times the music inside the new Cygnet theater sounded a tad too loud, but it’s a new space for me too, and I guess I got used to it. Overall, the acoustics in this venue are very good.
I’ve stalled as long as I can re: the “Loveland” sequence that arrives near the end of “Follies.” It honors the “dream shows” that typified “Ziegfeld Follies” shows of the past, conceived then as performances in the afterlife. In “Follies,” a four-way, full-throated confrontation among Phyllis and Ben and Sally and Buddy gives way suddenly – jarringly –to what will be a swan song (complete with swan-pictured scenery) for the former Weismann girls and a curtain call for the wayward Buddy and the forlorn Ben as well.
A showgirl announces each character’s “Folly” with a sign, after which we’re treated to: the philandering Buddy doing a vaudevillian “The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues”; in shimmering gown Sally singing the torchy and dark “Losing My Mind”; Phyllis’ dance-happy aforementioned “The Story of Lucy and Jessie”;  and Ben, in top hat and tails, trying to keep stiff upper lip through “Live, Laugh, Love.”
There had to have been folks in the Cygnet audience who thought this lengthy “Loveland” coda too weird or over the top. Me, it’s the sort of device I’d build into a stage musical if I had the talent to write one (which I don’t). I usually enjoy a sharp left turn, and sharp this one is.
There’s a palpable sense of melancholy at the very end of “Follies,” but as we know, measuring the past, navigating the present, fearing the future and reconciling all of it while emotionally keeping it together comes with some melancholy. I know this has nothing to do with “Follies,” but here it is: As Omar Khayyam wrote “The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on.”
Moving on is hard. Our own follies can get in the way.
This production is a suitably opulent and ambitious opening for The Joan. Even with its imperfections, “Follies” is thoroughly entertaining and yet another reminder – as if we need one – of the brilliance of Stephen Sondheim.
“Follies” runs through Oct. 12 in the Joseph Clayes III Theater in the Joan, Liberty Station, Point Loma.