The Lyons Roar on Broadway

The Lyons
Cort Theatre, NYC
May 16, 2012

The Lyons was another production that presented an ensemble cast but somehow featured each member of that cast in a way that allowed him or her to shine. The cast included long time theatre veteran Dick Latessa and well known comedic actor Linda Lavin.

The story is tragically comedic, or hilariously tragic. It’s about a dysfunctional family that comes together in the final days of the dying father’s life.

The elderly father has a terminal disease but he and his wife didn’t want to worry their adult children, so they decided to not tell them about it until he was in his final stages. They show up at the hospital knowing that their father is ill, but they discover once they get there that he only has days to live.

This lack of communication is the least of this family’s problems. The daughter is divorced from an abusive husband with whom she longs to reunite (but discovers that isn’t possible once she learns he is seeing someone new – she discovers this when he brings his new lover to her father’s funeral!), one of her children is developmentally delayed (though she is in denial about it), and she is an alcoholic. The parents blame her drinking on her ex-husband but she discloses that she has been a problem drinker since childhood.

The stress of her father’s illness (and soon to follow death) causes the daughter to relapse into drinking and as a result she loses her AA sponsor. She gets a new sponsor who runs away with her mother the day of her father’s funeral!

There is also an adult son who is a failed writer. He has also failed to ever have a real relationship. He has invented two lovers over time but finally has to admit that he has never had a lover and the two he has spoken of over the years are fictional. The second of his pretend lovers however is a real person, but not his real companion. He is simply his neighbor about whom he has fantasized for years. The neighbor is a realtor, so the son arranges to have the realtor show him an apartment and then reveals to him that he has actually been stalking him for years and has invented a relationship between them in his imagination. This so disturbs the realtor that he physically attacks the son leaving him with a ruptured spleen.

But the parents (Lavin and Latessa) have their own issues. The father fell in love with Lavin’s character and she felt “trapped” and couldn’t avoid the romance. She married him but never loved him and eventually she came to hate him. He in turn hated their gay son. The father and mother spend his final days arguing (as a symbol of immortality he wants her to promise to never change the living room furniture, but she has always hated the furniture and assures him there will be new furniture shortly after his demise…this causes him distress and they spend his final days arguing about it).

After his death, the father who had been afraid of “Hell” (though his wife chastises him for this fear – she says, “We’re Jews; Jews don’t believe in Hell!” He answers, “Some do.” And she responds, “We don’t.”) is shown in a brief solo scene in the afterlife. He is alone, but content…not in Hell, and in fact, comforted to have been greeted by someone he didn’t recognize by sight but who he knew by smell to be his father. And other than that strange moment of metaphysics, the father is never heard from again (as might be expected since he is now dead).

In the end, the sister refuses to comfort her injured brother, but does decide to try to attract a dying man in the hospital. The mother, as mentioned earlier, runs away with the daughter’s new AA sponsor, and in lonely desperation, the hospitalized son (recovering from his physical altercation with his pretend boyfriend) reaches out for warmth and compassion from a nurse, who finally, reluctantly, gives them to him. And in their moment of connection, the play ends.

What is genius about this production is that the characters, by description, are not terribly likeable. And yet, when played by these skillful actors, they become people the audience finds humorous, tragic, at times likable, at times pitiable, and at times repugnant.

The father finds some freedom and relief in his final days by swearing…a lot! Apparently swearing was never a habit of his, but in the end, he takes to swearing incessantly, and this bit is something the audience finds amusing.

Lavin’s character, though selfish and cold, is also charming and funny. She knows that her new lover (who is younger than she is) only wants her for her money, and she only wants him for the excitement of being with someone new and doing something impetuous. She has never been in love and even still has no hope of finding love, only escape. And somehow, despite the sadness of it all, I found myself thinking, “Good for you.” Lavin plays the character with such pathos that the viewer wants her to find some measure of happiness, if only from a loveless affair.

The children are just lonely, chronically miserable people who appear to be too broken to ever be whole. Honestly, I didn’t find them as compelling as their parents.

Anyway, Lavin and the rest of cast demonstrate that one has to approach a character without judgment. Lavin can’t judge her character to be cold and heartless; she would have too much contempt for the character to make her interesting to the audience. Latessa’s character has to long for his wife’s love without Latessa judging him to be a pathetic loser, or his swearing won’t be the charming affectation of a dying man but rather just the bitter ramblings of a tragically unhappy person. Lavin and Latessa show that the actor must see the character as fully human (not just villainous or virtuous or humorous or unkind or perpetually angry…the character must be a multi-faceted person with whom the actor can share the experience of humanity) so that s/he can play the character in ways that aren’t just funny or just tragic, but that are as complex as human lives really are.

It’s a dark comedy, but both the darkness and the humor come from truth. Anyone who has felt desperate, unloved, lonely, hopeless, or overwhelmed knows that pain and humor, fear and fantasy, love and hate can be very close companions. The reality of the emotions make the story both funny and sad just as it makes it seem, for at least some of us, hauntingly familiar.

The Best Man Really Is The BEST

Gore Vidal’s The Best Man
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, NYC
May 15, 2012

A religious experience! It’s as if the Olympian gods said to one another, “Let’s put on a show!”

First of all: Gore Vidal.

Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-four novels, five plays, many screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and the critically lauded memoir, Palimpsest. Vidal’s United States (Essays 1952-92) won the 1993 National Book Award.[1]

Then, there is more than four centuries of combined theatrical experience on the stage of this production.

Thirdly, the cast is made up of legends: James Earl Jones (he was amazing!), Angela Lansbury (she was amazing, but I have adored her for so many years she could have been terrible and I would have buzzed with pure joy just to see her on the boards, but even so, she was flawless), John Larroquette (always good, maybe under-appreciated, at least by me, until now…he was brilliant), Candice Bergen (loved her for a long time and she did not disappoint in this production), and comedy legend Michael McKean (who gave a good performance too).

I didn’t recognize Kerry Butler, but her performance was strong. I was surprised by my dislike for the performance of Eric McCormack. McCormack’s character was indistinguishable from his “Will” of television’s Will & Grace except that his performance was further tainted by his inability to sustain some sort of dialect he was trying to achieve (he was playing the role of a senator from what we might now call a “red” state). His accent sounded like Canadian Eric McCormack playing New Yorker Will Truman playing, inconsistently, a “good old boy” from Oklahoma or Texas. His was the weakest performance on a stage that was otherwise the banquet hall of the gods. He was rather like the weakest of mortals stumbling into a den of Titans.

The play of course is well-known and shows the soul struggle of one who wants to be elected to public office but doesn’t want to compromise his integrity even as he is constantly advised to do whatever it takes to win office because only the strong deserve it and one can’t do much unless one has the position and authority to make things happen.

The characters are rich:

       The rural “hick” (Jones) who rose to become a popular and seemingly effective president who now, as a former president, is courted mostly for the power of his personal endorsement. He admits to not being disturbed by infidelity, cruelty, dishonesty, or scheming but is rather troubled by leaders who don’t understand people, who aren’t willing to enter into a political fight, and who appear to him to be “stupid.” He also admits (privately) to being an agnostic who has pretended to be a person of faith to win votes and the support of conservative areas of the country. By the end of the play, the former president dies.

       The party bureaucrat (Lansbury) who tries to use her influence with “women voters” to help shape the platform, message, and image of the candidates.

The philandering but civic minded, non-religious, highly principled (when it comes to public life), mostly honest candidate (Larroquette) who won’t stoop to character assassination even when the accusations would probably be true and could benefit his campaign. He is the party’s front runner. His chief aid is played by McKean.

His wife (Bergen) who is delaying divorcing him until after the campaign (and if it’s successful, until after his presidency). Her only stipulation for supporting him is that he cannot bring paramours into the white house nor ever be caught with a mistress. He agrees to her terms. By the end of the play, they have fallen in love with each other again and their relationship is renewed.

The front runner’s closest competition (McCormack). He claims to be religious and a devoted family man, however, he is plagued by rumors of a homosexual affair during his military service. He hopes to keep these rumors out of the public, and if they should be made known he hopes to discredit them; but even though there are skeletons in his closet, he is willing (and determined) to use his opponent’s previous bout with depression against him to prove he is too unstable to handle the high pressure presidency. His wife (Butler) is his accomplice and biggest supporter, though apparently because she wants the prestige of being first lady more than she believes in his vision or skills.

In the end, the former cabinet secretary/party front runner running against a mud-slinging Senator chooses to both undermine his opponent and stand by his principles by pulling out of the race and giving all his delegates to the number three person in the race for the party’s nomination. By staying true to his values and doing what he honestly believes is best for the party and country, at some personal cost to himself, the Secretary/presidential candidate has a moral victory and even saves his troubled marriage in the process.

Though the play was written in the 1960s, it remains as relevant and topical as if had been written in the 21^st century. And while it is obviously an ensemble piece, each character is so well written that the actors’ performance of those characters tend to stand out. And James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury brought to the stage an energy, a gravitas, and a confidence that electrified the entire room. More than how they delivered lines, did “business” with props, or responded to other actors in dialogue, what they demonstrated most supremely was a comfort on the stage, a rapport with the audience, a complete identification with their character, and a belief in what the character was trying to accomplish. And those are lessons that can benefit the solo performer as much as the ensemble performer.

Still, for as good as the writing and the performances were, what was the most thrilling for me was seeing legends of the stage come together, work together, and make magic one more time. I hope I will see James Earl Jones or Angela Lansbury perform again, but as he is in his early 80s and she is in her late 80s, I can always treasure the experience of seeing them toward the end of their careers and of realizing that they were as good toward the end as they had ever been.

---

[1] www.gorevidalnow.com/biography

Seth Rudetsky’s Big Fat 70’s Show

Seth Rudetsky’s Big Fat 70’s Show
Amaturo Theatre, Broward Center for the Performing Arts
April 1, 2012

Review by Durrell Watkins

So tonight I went to see another one person performance: Seth Rudetsky’s Big Fat 70’s Show. I didn’t know exactly what to expect; I just knew that for years I have loved Seth’s radio show on Sirius XM radio (Seth Rudetsky’s Big Fat Broadway). He is a musical theatre historian and trivia expert. Well, by training (Oberlin) he’s a classical concert pianist. But prior to college he had been very active in school and summer camp theatre and so he soon returned to his first love, musical theatre.

According to his biographical monologue, he was the pianist in the orchestra of a few Broadway musicals, a comedy writer for the Rosie O’Donnell show, the musical director for various concerts, a composer, a stand-up comic, an author, an Off-off Broadway actor, a cabaret performer, and, of course, a satellite radio host. He was also a vocal coach on the MTV reality series, Legally Blonde the Musical: the Search of Elle Woods.

Seth’s radio program is fascinating because it includes interviews with working Broadway actors, songs from old and new, well known and obscure musicals (and sometimes, all the songs from an entire musical with commentary and synopsis thrown in), story-telling, and his natural, unforced brand of humor. So, I relished the chance to see his show live on stage.

Seth’s stage show is a self-described “deconstruction” of various performances. Apparently, his shows are often a deconstruction of Broadway shows or the careers of Broadway performers. But tonight’s show was very specialized. It was a deconstruction of one failed variety show from the 1970s!

The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, according to Seth, only lasted for 9 episodes and was born from a guest appearance the Brady Bunch cast had made on the Donnie & Marie show.

Seth’ set was super simple (and I always find that most effective). There was a piano (he played 4 measures each of 5 or 6 songs and that was all the piano was for…otherwise it was a prop…he never played a whole song, or more than a line of a song in the whole show). Other than the piano, there was a screen on which were played clips from the Brady Bunch Hour. Seth would set up each clip by giving some background (he apparently had done exhaustive research on this obscure failure from television history), playing the clip, commenting on the clip, and sometimes replaying the clip so that the audience could see more in/from it than they had originally.

Some of what Seth pointed out was the campiness of the show. A closeted gay man, Robert Reed, was in the cast, a flamboyant gay man, Bruce Villanch, was one of the writers, and the show was produced by Saturday morning children’s program producers Sid & Marty Kroft; this all made camp inevitable.

These were television actors (Florence Henderson had enjoyed a Broadway career before television), and most of them were child stars who never did much acting beyond their Brady Bunch series, so to throw them into a variety show format where they were expected to sing and dance throughout every show was obviously beyond their comfort zones if not their skill sets.

Then there was the premise. These actors were not doing the show as themselves, but as the characters from their canceled situation-comedy television series. But the characters (an architect, a house-wife, their children, and a housekeeper) are for some reason singing and dancing and telling bad jokes as part of a variety show! And the children are all adults now, and thrown in with this suburban American family who just happen to be singing disco versions of old songs and dancing badly to them are synchronized swimmers (without explanation as to why they are there).

Camp is the best the show could hope to be! But what made it tragic (well, other than the ridiculous premise, the bad singing, the bad dancing, the really bad jokes, and the gratuitous swimmers) was that it was not recorded in front of a life audience. Laughter and applause were all by pre-recorded tracks; so, what was aired was the final or best take of each scene. After who knows how much rehearsal and how many attempted takes, the best of what they could piece together to air was music where “Greg Brady” was often flat, where “Mike Brady” sounded like he was singing with a lozenge stuck in his throat, scenes were almost none of the male members of the cast showed any real capacity for dancing (and “Mike” was particularly awkward), and even one scene where a wayward background dancer crossed hurriedly behind the set from one side of the stage to the other for her next entrance . That the finished product was so shoddy (and surely much better than the many attempts leading up to the finished product) made a show that had little chance of being good into something that was actually horrifically bad.

However, the tragedy that was The Brady Bunch Variety Hour became comedic genius in the creative hands of Seth Rudetsky. He pointed out the flaws, made fun of them, mimicked some of them, and left us desperate to see the next terrible scene (one, or two, or three times!) just so we could explore with him (or follow his guidance to a predetermined discovery) the delightfully humorous failings of the short-lived variety show.

The final scene of the show was brilliantly interactive. He brought to the stage volunteers from the audience to re-enact a simple dance number from the variety show. He taught the steps (and chose the role of “Mike” for himself), and then led the dancers through a quick rehearsal and then finally the performance of the number (about 24 beats in all). He even had two volunteers shoot arcs of water from water pistols to create a special effect similar to the original variety show. The “dancers” were self-conscious and had a great time stumbling through the moves and playing with Seth on stage. And that frivolity ended the 90 minute performance.

Seth afterward very graciously posed for photos and signed autographs.

With virtually no set, and with no other performers (save a few volunteers from the audience at the very end), and with very little live music (though he is a musician), this Broadway expert spent 90 minutes showing clips from a television variety show that almost no one had seen, made fun of the scenes (without ever being cruel), shared a little bit of history about some of the cast members, and with that simple story-telling performance captivated an audience and made us love something that in 1977 absolutely flopped. It was genius. It was comedy. It was history. It was pop-culture. It was theatre. What could be better than that?

Relatively Speaking

Nov. 30 - Wed. Matinee
The final show of my 3 day entertainment marathon was so good (but honestly, not any better than The Devil's Music).

Relatively Speaking is at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre which is a lovely space on West 47th Street.
I was 3rd row orchestra (not first...why be greedy all the time?!), but still close enough to see everyone spit.

RS is made up of three one-act comedies: Talking Cure, George is Dead, and Honeymoon Motel.

Each has its own playwright and its own cast (though three or four actors wind up in two of the plays).

The entire show was directed by John Turturro (actor in such films as Jungle Fever, Do the Right Thing, Quiz Show, etc.) but is also a very accomplished film and theatre director. He's currently acting in The Cherry Orchard with Dianne Wiest (downtown, eastside).

RS is star studded (as Broadway has to be these days), but let me regale you with one one-act at a time.

Talking Cure:
A guy on lock down in a mental hospital is being treated by a psychiatrist. the patient, a postal worker (I know, right?!), apparently snapped one day when an elderly woman complained about the condition in which her package arrived. Mr Postal Worker responds by beating her down with a tape dispenser.
Most of this play takes place in a "cage" (which, those not very therapeutic, is where the therapy sessions are taking place...i suppose it was meant to show how "trapped" the patient felt not only in the hospital but also in life).

At the end of the play, we are given a flashback to the man's beginning...the day his mother goes into labor with him. His parents apparently loathe each other and are in a heated argument when she goes into labor. The dysfunctional family hostilities are meant to show us how the patient started life without much hope of sanity.

Predictably, the therapy sessions swing from rage to hilarity and back again. and while there is a breakthrough when the patient admits he has self-image/self-esteem and anger management problems, and why (the parents, of course), we never get to see the broken fragments of psyche reintegrated.

The patient, doctor, attendant (walk on part), mother and father are all the characters.
The patient was played by Danny Hoch....Danny is a playwright and an actor (not the playwright of this show, that would be Ethan Coen...he's done a million things, but is probably best known for his screen plays - Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and for his adaptations of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and Charles Portis' True Grit).

Hoch gives a caricature more than a character. He is so preoccupied with clownish facial expressions, exaggerated hand movements, and perfecting a stereotypical Brooklyn Italian accent that there isn't much space left for developing a three dimensional human being for us to care about. Still, his gimmicks were funny enough and the writing was so good that it was still a worthwhile venture.

The mother, played by katherine Borowitz seemed familiar, but her career has consisted mostly of theatre (regional and off-broadway), and I don't think i've seen any of her films (Illuminata, Men of Respect, Internal Affairs, A Serious Man)...but maybe i've seen her in ads or previews for the flicks. Anyway, she was good, though her character isn't given a lot of time to show who she really is. the entire scene with the parents are the two of them arguing at dinner over petty annoyances (which have them at the point of violence) and then her going into labor. So all we see of her or her husband is a comical, petty bickering session.

Meanwhile, its Broadway Cares collection time again, and she was the actor who accepted my contribution at the door :-)

The doctor may be the most famous of the cast: Jason Kravits (you've seen him as an ADA on the Practice, a guest spot on everything, including the fabulous Grey's Anatomy, the final episode of friends, and various films. He not only was the biggest name for the opening act, but he was also the strongest actor with what seems to have been the best written part.

It was cute, funny, enjoyable...but no masterpiece.


George Is Dead:
This was the jewel of the show and should have been the final/anchor piece.
It was written by Elaine May, probably best known for her screen writing, (True Colors, Heaven Can Wait - for which she was nominated for an Oscar, and The Birdcage).

It starred Broadway biggie Lisa Emery, Grant Shaud (the cute producer, Miles, on Murphy Brown...PS - he's fat now), and super brilliant stage goddess Marlo Thomas. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HER! If you only know her from That Girl (which was funny btw) and St Jude Hospital pitches, and her recurring role as an attorney on Law/Order:SVU (which she is fine in, but of course any capable actor could provide plausible cameo appearances as an attorney)...you might not know that she is GENIUS.
OMG, she was comedic like Bea Arthur and Carol Burnette and Phyllis Diller and Toti Fields and Betty White all rolled into one human...but she didn't camp it up or throw it away...she took her comedy very seriously and played a shallow, wealthy, and apparently friendless woman who receives a phone call in the middle of the night that her husband has died in a skiing accident.

She turns to the daughter (Doreen, a woman she hasn't seen in decades) of her childhood Nanny for comfort. Doreen takes her in and provides her support even while her own marriage is disintegrating in front of her. The old nanny eventually comes in to save the day, which is sweet and painful...sweet b/c she still cares about the child she raised professionally...painful b/c she never seemed to care that much about her own daughter.

There is pathos, and grief, and silliness, and intelligent humor, and amazing timing, and unhealed wounds, and helplessness, and strength all in the space of less than half an hour!
The men provide good support for the women (a funeral director, his assistant, and Doreen's unsympathetic husband played by Grant Shaud), but Marlo Thomas, Lisa Emery (Doreen), and Patricia O'Connell (the nanny/mother) make the show. It would almost have been as good if the men weren't ever seen (in fact, i think it would have worked just as well). and the giant of the cast was Marlo Thomas. The very next thing she does, I hope to see!

Honeymoon Motel:
Written by Woody Allen (and the real reason I went to the show)...best known for his quirky and smart comedic films, this was actually his fourth play to be produced. As far as laughs, it was a knee slapper. Lots of schtik, and good schtik, lots of "insider" Jewish and NYC jokes (very Allen), and a plot that was uncomfortably close to his real life (A woman leaves her fiancee at the altar and runs away with his still married to his mother step-dad)...funny and a little yucky too (but maybe less yucky if you didn't know Allen's T).

This had the largest cast with the most "names" -
Steve Guttenberg (remember super cute Steve Guttenberg? Well, he's aged badly and bears little resemblance to the 80s actor we couldn't wait to see shirtless); he's funny, but plays for laughs which makes his character seem a little less real and a little less likable.

His almost daughter-in-law turned paramour played by Ari Graynor (from Veronica Mars and The Sopranos) is very pretty and sexy and plays the pretty, sexy, husband steeling vamp as well as anyone could.

Grant Shaud is in this one act also, as a more likable character than in George Is Dead. But he's just the friend who supplies straight lines for Guttenberg and throws in a few obvious laugh lines himself.

Caroline Aaron, playing Guttenberg's wife, is a striking woman with a powerful presence and she's very funny (not Guttenberg, "look at me i used to be cute and i still try to exude boyish charm so please laugh at my silliness and tell me i matter" kind of funny, but really, strong, good comic timing, has a sense that the person she's playing is a person even if the emotions she is sharing are contrived for comic effect). You'd know her if you saw her - she's done everything...Sleepless in Seattle, Primary Colors, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Edward Scissorhands, etc. She was one of two great performers in the piece.

The other great performer was Julie Kavner (Marge Simpson, Rhoda's sister...THAT Julie Kavner) who was hilarious! Julie and Caroline should put together a two woman show and take it on the road! Julie played Graynor's mother.

There was a rabbi (Richard Libertini), and Danny Hock played the pizza boy (though his character was indistinguishable from the patient in Talk Therapy), and Jason Kravitz played a psychiatrist (not the same psychiatrist he played an hour earlier), and Mark Linn-Baker (Perfect STrangers) was Kavner's husband.

The tart who dumps her man for her man's step dad, the step dad, his buddy, his wife, the tart's parents (Kravner we learn has had two affairs during the course of their marriage...one with her boss, and one with the marriage counselor they were seeing because of it...funny b/c it is so preposterously unethical, and Linn-Baker retaliated by sleeping with her sister), the rabbi who was performing the ceremony, Guttenberg's therapist (?!), the step-son/dumped groom, and a pizza guy (Graynor is hungry for pizza and orders delivery) all wind up in a cheap motel room where Guttenberg and Graynor have taken refuge for their night of post-wedding disaster love-making. In the end, everyone leaves, relatively OK with life, and Guttenberg and Graynor kiss as the lights go down.

Allen, Turturro, Guttenberg, Shaud, Kavner, Graynor, Linn-Baker, Libertini...You'd think, wouldn't you? I mean, this has got to be 4th of July kind of fabulous. It was more like Presidents Day kind of acceptable. Big laughs. A couple of comic diva geniuses. But at no point did i ever care what happened to any of them, and was actually a little deflated when Graynor and Guttenberg wind up together in the end without any remorse for the lives and families they've destroyed. The pizza boy gives some home spun wisdom about a morally neutral universe (or, in his words, "there are no rules") and there are some very brief ponderings about metaphysics in general...but mostly, its "let's laugh at a lot of one liners, question the existence of a higher power as Allen so famously does, and, thumb our noses at any sense of caring for the feelings of others...break as many hearts as you can as long as you end up happy, or at least relatively pleased"...a decent sit-com for TV, but not especially good theatre.

If the decent first play (though one of its two prime characters was played in my opinion by a weak actor) was followed by the Allen amorality farce and then the Marlo Thomas piece had ended the show...it would have gone from strength to strength and would have made for a better theatrical experience. Almost any time spent in any NY theatre is worth the experiment, and this play as a whole has value for the laughs (however cheap some of them may be), but the bread slices that surrounded the Marlo Thomas meat were jsut that...something to hold up the tasty thing you really want to consume. Marlo's performance and the entire cast/performance/writing of "George is Dead" made what would have been an acceptable theatre outing into a true joy. But honestly, if they had simply done the one act with Marlo in some Off-broadway venue, it would have been a far better venture.

here endeth this NY excursion...

durrell

Follies 2011 - FABULOUS

Once a decade a person should see Sondheim’s Follies. Some call the book “dark” and others say it is poorly written; but no one disputes that the music is haunting, beautiful, compelling, and evocative. And, when the show is well directed and well choreographed, the story seems to tighten up a bit too.

I’ve heard multiple cast recordings of Follies and have seen scenes and heard songs performed from it dozens of times, but in 2001 I finally got to see it on Broadway. I was enchanted. First of all, there are some complex (if habitually unhappy) characters and there are amazing songs. And the 2001 cast was star studded: Treat Williams (still gorgeous at the time), Gregory Harrison (also easy on the eyes), Blythe Danner, Judith Ivy, Betty Garrett, and Polly Bergen were all on the same stage for the same show! Sondheim’s music performed by superstars of stage, film and television all on the Broadway stage was a ShoMo’s wet dream! Betty Garrett soft sold (but very effectively) “Broadway Baby”, Polly Bergen gave dramatic gravitas to a song that is often just an excuse to show off a singer’s “pipes” and Treat Williams, much to my surprise, was a really good singer! Judith Ivy and Blythe Danner might have been odd choices for Sally and Phyllis, but even if their singing voices didn’t quite measure up to Broadway musical theatre standards, their acting more than compensated for it (I’ve always said I prefer to hear actors sing than see singers act). So, even though the costumes, lighting, and sets were over all uninspiring, I was all the same thrilled with the production and very happy to have experienced it in person.

But THEN there was the 2011 Broadway production. OMG! I saw it tonight and would gladly (at full price) see it again tomorrow!

Danny Burstein was maybe the most sympathetic, likable “Buddy” in Follies history. He’s no Treat Williams in the looks department, but his physical grace (he must have been a dancer at one point in his life), his musical talent, and the gentleness he brought the character were nothing short of genius!

Ron Raines, for me, was the worst of the best. He was adequate and his acting was believable but he just didn’t sell it like the others did. Honestly, I think Gregory Harrison was better ten years ago in the role.

Jan Maxwell played Phyllis and if she is not nominated for a Tony there is NO justice in the universe. The woman’s power (not aggression, but merely presence) completely overshadowed Bernadette Peters (who received top billing, but it should be given to Maxwell at once). Her singing, her dancing, her acting, her energy, her physical presence, her facial expressions were all flawless. She wasn’t scene stealing; she never broke character or any way dismissed the importance of anyone in the ensemble cast, and yet, her radiance almost hid the lesser beings on stage entirely from view! Surely, SHE is exactly what Sondheim had in mind 40 years ago. Finally, the REAL Phyllis emerges from the shadows!

Bernadette Peters’ squeaky voice was cute and predictable. She played the frail, delusional Sally very traditionally and adequately. The one time that she really lived into her diva image was when she sang “Loosing My Mind.” It was a dramatic masterpiece, and yet she had so underperformed by then, the audience didn’t seem to appreciate (or even notice really) how good that one moment of her performance was. The audience’s judgment was repeated during the curtain call. Maxwell was the penultimate cast member to come out and was greeted with thunderous applause, shouts, cat calls, and riotous enthusiasm. Then finally, Bernadette came out and while she was greeted warmly, the response felt lack-luster in comparison to the ovation Jan Maxwell received.

Mary Beth Peil’s “Solange” was acceptable, but I seem to remember Jane White’s performance of that character in 2001 being much stronger.

Terri White’s performance as Stella was a triumph! I used to go to Rose’s Turn in the Village to hear Terri sing. She released a CD which I had her sign. Her deep, smoky, bluesy alto voice could unseat Zeus himself, rendering his thunderbolts useless. I read a couple of years ago that Terri had fallen on difficult times but had made a comeback and it was thrilling to see her in this show. She looked better than ever, sounded as good as ever, was funny, and commanded the stage with her tap and jazz moves (I don’t remember Carol Woods’ Stella in 2001 moving much at all, or even being able to in her cumbersome costume).
(On a side note – Joane Worley performed the role, I believe, in 2007. I didn’t see her performance, but so wish I had. She undoubtedly brought some comedic skill to the part, but it would be nearly impossible to outshine Terri White as Stella).

Jayne Houdyshell is a long time theatre veteran, though maybe not as well known as the others I’ve mentioned. But her lack of celebrity status is in no way because she is anything less than brilliant on the boards! I never expected to see “Broadway Baby” performed in a way that I liked as well as Betty Garrett’s performance in 2001, but Ms. Houdyshell won me over instantly. She lacked the glamour or grace of the other women, but rather than allowing that to be a hindrance she used it to her full advantage. She was comedic without being clownish, moved with more confidence and purpose than her body shape suggested possible, and sang as powerfully and masterfully as any of the other creative geniuses in the cast.

Elaine Paige as Carlotta was another high point. She played the aging sex kitten perfectly and performed “I’m Still Here” as well as anyone I’ve ever heard. Still, as good as she was, I seem to recall Polly Bergen being at least as good or maybe better. And for me, though not nearly the singer Paige is, the quintessential Carlotta will always be Yvonne De Carlo. When Carlotta sings, “First you’re another doe-eyed vamp, then someone’s mother, then you’re camp”…that line will never sound as powerful as it sounded from an actor who had been a B-movie vixen and then Lillie Munster before accepting the role of a diva whose star was fading in Follies. Yvonne WAS Carlotta! Still, Polly in 2001 was amazing and Elaine in 2011 was a very close runner up. I guess Polly was a better actor and Elaine was a better singer…the actor sang well and the singer actor well, but I’ve already disclosed by personal bias.

Florence Lacy had a small role (“Sandra”), but I was excited because I just saw her 10 months ago in Sunset Blvd (in the leading role) at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA. So in my geekiest fashion I was all, “Hey, it’s HER…we just saw her in something else a few months ago.”

Finally, I must praise the 81 year old Rosalind Elias (“Heidi”). Ms. Elias studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and then continued her studies in Italy, and has had an impressive opera career. In her 50+ year career she has received Grammy awards and has performed in every major opera house in the world, but she now proves that there are always new goals to reach as she makes her Broadway debut with Follies! And not for nothing, but her mezzo-soprano voice is still rich and wonderful. She’s still got it.

The 2001 production had bigger “stars”…but the 2011 production had better choreography, sets, lighting, costumes, and direction. And rather than a collection of stars sharing a stage, this production was a true ensemble cast working together to make magic. I loved it 10 years ago, and I loved it 100 times more tonight. I hope I get to see an even better production of Follies in 2021 (though I wonder how that could be possible).

---Durrell Watkins
Oct. 19, 2011