FOLLIES in a Word

Welcome! I’m so glad you stopped by.

About a year ago, I was asked to direct The Arlington Players (TAP) production of Follies in the spring 2009. When I accepted, I reflected on the last musical I had directed – TAP’s Ragtime in 2005 – and it dawned on me that it had been so long since I directed a musical. The world continues to change since then – a whole crop of young people have gone through and graduated high school and college since I last directed. And as we all know, the theater world and the actors in the DC area are in continual flux – four years is an eternity of artists coming and going. Since there is a new world of people creatively out there, I thought that I would really like to share my preparation process, my thoughts on themes and dramaturgy, and how the technical team is approaching Follies.

What was the best way to do this?

Nowadays, blogging seems a natural way to share my take on Follies and bit of the preparation process. Blogging also allows an opportunity to generate interest and partner with those theater folks who’d like to get involved. It’s a great chance to raise interest and to see who’s out there that share my passion for this piece. It’s over-reaching, I know, since the entire internet population can read this – but the few that are interested in the DC area may find that this sparks their interest to become a part of this exciting production.

So here’s the first blog.

A few points on logistics before I continue with my initial thoughts on Follies: I plan to blog regularly over the next few months before rehearsals start. As a director that honors the rehearsal process and its creative privacy, I plan to stop blogging during that time. After the run of the production (April 17-May 2, 2009), I hope to reflect on the experience as a wrap-up and lessons learned next May.

I’m happy to receive feedback and will respond and post as is appropriate.

So, on to Follies.

When approaching a piece as a director, I like starting ‘at the very beginning,’ to quote Oscar Hammerstein II, and to me, the beginning is the title of the piece. I like analyzing it – seeing what it tells me – and I like looking at both the denotative and connotative meanings of the title. Titles can guide the writing of a piece and keep the writer of the book, lyrics and music on the same page; in other cases, titles are changed and finalized after a piece is written, reflecting a growth toward a theme or point of view – or crassly, better marketing for the piece. Stephen Sondheim, the composer and lyricist of Follies, is a master of word play and capitalizing on multiple meanings of words and it is never more evident than in his title for this piece.

So what is a folly? Here’s a dictionary definition.

Folly –noun, plural -lies [Origin: 1175–1225; ME folie < OF, deriv. of fol, fou foolish, mad.]

1. the state or quality of being foolish; lack of understanding or sense.

2. a foolish action, practice, idea, etc.; absurdity: the folly of performing without a rehearsal.

3. a costly and foolish undertaking; unwise investment or expenditure.

4. follies, a theatrical revue.

5. a fake romantic ruin made in a garden.

6. Obsolete. wickedness; wantonness.

—Synonyms imprudence, rashness, mistake, foolishness, indiscretion, injudiciousness; madness, lunacy.

The underlines are mine. Talk about playing multiple levels of meaning – I think that all of these fit perfectly and are all played out in Follies.

Before discussing why I think these play out, I should give a description of the plot for those unfamiliar with Follies. I can’t help but reveal themes and plots I hope to explore in this description.

With a book by James Goldman and music and lyrics by Sondheim, Follies centers on a reunion and what happens at every reunion is remembering. The year is 1971 and the Weissman Theater, a theater on Broadway, is to be razed so that a parking lot can be built. The Weissman Follies girls come back to the theater for this reunion – to meet and remember the days between the Wars when they strutted their stuff on stage as top-drawer showgirls and remember their younger selves.

As with most reunions, expectations, memories, and reflections are front and center. And as with most memories when we reflect, what was and what is, what was planned and what has happened are often in discord. Like all of us, the ex-Follies girls bring who they are now to the memory of who they were. Strangely, the persons they actually were are still there in the theater and these ghosts are both independent of the memory of their older selves and a reflection of their older selves. This mix of real persons and ghosts shows memory and reality creating a place where surreal happens.

Some Weissman showgirls remember their past with joy and panache – ex-showgirls reprising their old big numbers – and the atmosphere is heightened by the presence of the ghosts of former selves, who sometimes sing along, sometimes reenact important events, and interact with the present. The reunion also leads some to remember and act in unwise, rash, imprudent and off balanced ways.

Former showgirl Sally Plummer and her husband Buddy are at the reunion, and Sally comes with a mission: to reunite with her long ago true love, Ben Stone. Ben Stone and his former showgirl wife and Sally’s best friend from the old days, Phyllis, are there too, with the shambles of their marriage in tow. When Sally tries to rekindle her old flame with Ben, confusion ensues and feelings and memories are revealed – some of which are not remembered with wisdom or reality. Sally, Buddy, Ben, and Phyllis each live out their follies in a dream-follies sequence, “Loveland.”

Sad, happy, disappointed, satisfied, the memories swirl and the ghosts of who they were are conjured up and interact with who they are now. The past and present have never been so palpable and present.

Follies contains a score that is written with a deliberate sense of two types of stories – the vaudeville numbers and the book numbers, the latter which focus on developing character and plot. The convergence of the two genres results in the “Loveland” sequence, where the each of the four lead characters (and their younger, selves) use traditional vaudeville song structure (comic, ballad, faux burlesque, showgirl kick line) to comment on and act out their emotional preoccupation. Though painful, reclamation and reconciliation are possible with remembering true.

What is memory? Can we drive ourselves crazy by not remembering the past and who we were? More important, can we ‘lose our mind’ if we do not remember wisely? And is regretful romantic remembering a good thing or can it take on a life of its own if not careful? Follies is all about remembering. There is a hauntedness and a sense of foreboding because we enter a living terrain of ghosts and memories when we remember. Catharsis may take place by walking in memory land, but Follies reminds that it is a dangerous thing to remember wrongly. And it is also dangerous to ignore your memory.

Going back to the definition of folly, we can see that all the bolded and underlined meanings defined for folly are in Follies: there is imprudence, rashness, mistakes, foolishness, indiscretion, injudiciousness, madness, and lunacy – presented as a fake romantic ruin of reality and surreally presented in a second act theatrical revue.

Wow, how good is that title?

Next up, reflections on reunions and how they catapult us into our memory – Memory Agonistes – Reunions.

For additional information about the production itself, go to The Arlington Players website: www.thearlingtonplayers.org.

If you have questions for the director, feel free to respond to the blog or email him at folliesdirector@gmail.com. Responses to the blog may be posted publicly; email correspondence will be private.

Parts of the plot description are taken from Sondheim.com and Music Theater International’s write up on Follies.