Edward Copeland's Tangents

Franklin Shepard, a successful songwriter and movie producer in his 40s, reviews his life, both professional and personal, especially his relationships with his best friends, Mary Flynn and Charley Kringas (his songwriting collaborator), and his two wives, Beth and Gussie. The action moves backward in time from 1981 to 1957.

"As we all should probably have learned by now, to be a Stephen Sondheim fan is to have one's heart broken at regular intervals. Usually the heartbreak comes from Mr. Sondheim's songs — for his music can tear through us with an emotional force as moving as Gershwin's. And sometimes the pain is compounded by another factor — for some of Mr. Sondheim's most powerful work turns up in shows (Anyone Can Whistle, Pacific Overtures) that fail. Suffice it to say that both kinds of pain are abundant in Merrily We Roll Along, the new Sondheim-Harold Prince-George Furth musical that opened at the Alvin last night. Mr. Sondheim has given this evening a half-dozen songs that are crushing and beautiful — that soar and linger and hurt. But the show that contains them is a shambles."

"Whatever you may have heard about it — go and see it for yourselves. It is far too good a musical to be judged by those twin kangaroo courts of word of mouth and critical consensus. It is the story of success, the complexities of compromise, and life lived amid quicksands. It also has that surging Sondheim sound that is New York set to music,"

The story takes place in 1971. The Weismann Theater, home to The Weismann Follies since 1918, is about to be torn down. Dmitri Weismann, the impresario who produced the shows, is giving a party on the stage of the theater and has invited all the living performers, along with their husbands and wives, to celebrate the nostalgia of the occasion. During the course of the party, we meet them all, but the action chiefly involves two chorus girls from the 1941 Follies, Sally Durant and Phyllis Rogers, who were best friends then and haven't seen each other since. They are escorted by their husbands, Buddy Plummer and Benjamin Stone, who courted them when they were in the show.
Stephen Sondheim writing his description of Follies in Finishing the Hat

The first draft of the script began with a brief moody opening, as the guests — the four principals and the other Weismann performers — arrived, shadowed spookily by their ghosts. Once the mood had been established, the plot proper began. When we read the draft over, we found that once the plot began, the show felt contrived and convoluted. So on the second round we extended the setting of the mood a bit longer and more elaborately, and delayed the machinations of a plot until later in the evening. Once again, as we read it to ourselves, the show gripped us until the plot took over. Gradually, we realized the obvious: what was wrong with the show was the plot — the mood and atmosphere were everything, the events secondary. The epiphany was clinched when we attended the first-anniversary party for Fiddler on the Roof, which was held on the stage of the Imperial Theatre. After a couple of hours had gone by and the guests were getting nicely soused, I suggested to James we sit in the orchestra and watch the activity on the stage. As we did so, one of the guests looked at his half-eaten sandwich with dismay, glanced around to find a place to deposit it and, not succeeding, dropped it into the orchestra pit. I turned to Jim and said, "There's our show."

Mr. Sondheim's music comes in two flavors — nostalgic and cinematic. The nostalgic kind is for the pseudo-oldies numbers, and I must say that most of them sound like numbers that you have almost only just forgotten, but with good reason. This non-hit parade of pastiche trades on camp, but fundamentally gives little in return. It has all the twists and turns of yesteryear, but none of the heart — and eventually the fun it makes of the past seems to lack something in affection. The cinematic music is a mixture of this and that, chiefly that I doubt whether anyone will be parodying it in 30 or 40 years' time.
The lyrics are as fresh as a daisy. I know of no better lyricist in show-business than Mr. Sondheim — his words are a joy to listen to, even when his music is sending shivers of indifference up your spine. The man is a Hart in search of a Rodgers, or even a Boito in search of a Verdi.

Neither Clive Barnes nor Walter Kerr liked Follies and they are this newspaper's drama critics. I am not about to say that they were "wrong," and right and wrong, rave and pan are the least of theater criticism anyway. I do believe, though, that every artwork is either good or it isn't, and I am convinced that Follies is monumental theater. Not because I say so but because it is there for anybody to see. Moreover, its importance as a kind of theater transcends its interest as an example of a musical. I mean to notice this in The New York Times because if this truly great work is not recognized in these pages, then a part of reality will have gone unrecorded here.
Follies is not just another hit show. Had it not succeeded so tremendously at what it was trying to do, the attempt alone — the very idea — would have made it a landmark musical. At a time when our musical theater is in a frightful state, devoid of even its traditional professionalism, this production has moved it to a new plateau, has reminded us that the musical is a theater form. For those who take the musical theater as seriously as it deserves, this show will henceforth be the standard. Aspirations to opera are now obviously absurd. The musical stage is unique and capable of the mighty.
Follies is a concept musical, a show whose music, lyrics, dance, stage movement and dialogue are woven through each other in the creation of a tapestry-like theme (rather than in support of a plot).

It is a measure of this show's brilliance (and its brilliance is often mind-boggling) that it uses a modern musical form, rather than the old-fashioned one that the Follies helped create, to get at its concerns. As in his Company of last year, producer-director Prince has thrown out the time-honored musical convention of using songs to advance a simple-minded script in favor of letting the music add new levels of meaning to a sophisticated libretto (by James Goldman). In this way, the central plot idea of Follies becomes merely one more ingredient of the show rather than its raison d'etre.

...placed the emphasis on decay but showed little respect for the true show’s assets, (Phyllis) was played by Blythe Danner, performing in the manner of one attending the funeral of person they didn’t know particularly well — the character may be jaded, but the actress portraying her should probably try to avoid seeming bored being onstage. The critical flaw of the production came in cast non-singers in the principal roles; in addition to Danner, the Roundabout production featured Judith Ivey as Sally, Gregory Harrison as Ben and Treat Williams as Buddy. (Bobbi Goldman) justified this approach to the press by claiming it was more grounded in realism — Phyllis and Sally were always supposed to be minimally talented chorus performers who never had the singing chops to be stars. That might make sense in a show in which lack of talent (or someone’s delusions of having it) plays into the pathos of the situation, and enhances the audience’s experience of it — Natasha Richardson’s tinny vocals in the 1998 revival of Cabaret brought the hopelessness of Sally Bowles’ plight into much clearer focus than Liza Minnelli’s collection of showstoppers ever did. A deconstructionist take on a show that was deconstructionist to begin with can only work if the dramatic structure can support it — and the book of Follies can only fitfully support the score as it is.