Pull up a chair, Stephen Sondheim fans: I’ve got eyewitness reports from the National Theatre of London’s first preview of “Follies.”
Directed by Dominic Cooke, this lavish production, set in a hulking, decrepit theater, features a staircase to rival Norma Desmond’s in “Sunset Boulevard.”
“Hats off, here they come, those beautiful girls!”
Onstage, a 21-piece orchestra performs Sondheim’s fabled score. The cast numbers 37. The leads — Imelda Staunton, Janie Dee, Tracie Bennett, Philip Quast, Peter Forbes — are in fine form.
But the standout is Dame Josephine Barstow. Once one of opera’s leading sopranos, at 76 she plays the aging coloratura, Heidi, who sings “One More Kiss” with the ghost of her younger self.
“You could see the years etched on her face, but the voice was magnificent,” one of my spies says. “It’s everything ‘Follies’ is about.”
For sports fans who’ve landed on this page by mistake, “Follies” is about a reunion of retired performers from a “Ziegfeld Follies”-like revue from the ’30s. They gather in 1971, at their old Times Square theater, which is about to be torn down to make way for a parking lot.
Cooke’s version is as cynical as Hal Prince’s legendary 1971 production; like that one, it’s performed without an intermission.
My spies quibble with the dim lighting and the choreography. (“How can you have the famous ‘Mirror, mirror’ number when nobody’s mirroring anybody? Bring back Michael Bennett’s choreography!”)
My spies quibble with the dim lighting and the choreography. (“How can you have the famous ‘Mirror, Mirror’ number when nobody’s mirroring anybody? Bring back Michael Bennett’s choreography!”)
Sondheim was at Tuesday’s first preview. The cast acknowledged him during the curtain call, and 1,150 “Follies” fanatics went bananas.
This “Follies” is probably too expensive to go anywhere, but if you can’t make it to London, you can see the National Theatre’s live broadcast at the Beekman in New York on Nov. 16.
*****
In a business full of brash, egomaniacal and (in some cases) crazy people, Tom Meehan stood out because he was none of those things. Quiet, self-effacing and quick to share credit with others, Meehan, who died this week at 88, co-wrote three of Broadway’s most beloved musicals: “Annie,” “The Producers” and “Hairspray.”
He was working at the New Yorker in 1971 when his friend Martin Charnin asked him if he’d like to write the book for a new musical.
“I was thrilled,” Meehan told me when I interviewed him for my book “Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway.”
“I’d never been involved in the theater, though I loved to go. But I was [over] 40, and I thought that ship had sailed.”
When Charnin told him the musical would be based on the comic strip “Little Orphan Annie,” Meehan’s heart sank. “I was a ‘Dick Tracy’ fan,” he said. But after poring over microfilm of the comics, which began in 1924, he found a way in.
“I suddenly saw orphans in darkness,” he recalled. “I love Dickens, and I began to think maybe we could make this Dickensian. Nixon was president, and it was a dark time. I thought it might be interesting to write something, set in the Depression, that starts off dark but then becomes hopeful with a president — FDR — who radiates optimism.”
At a reading of the show for potential backers, Meehan saw a woman pass a note to her husband. He later found the note on the floor. It read: “I’ll kill you for having brought me to this thing.”
After many revisions, “Annie” opened on Broadway in 1977, and became one of the most lucrative musicals of all time.
But Meehan’s most successful collaboration was with Mel Brooks on “The Producers.” They worked well together. Brooks would jump around the room, acting out all of the parts, improvising jokes. Meehan sat in a corner, taking notes. He’d go home, pick out the best bits, add his own jokes, type up the scene and go over it with Brooks the next day.
New York magazine called him Brooks’ “secret weapon,” which mortified Meehan, because he never wanted Brooks to think he was trying to muscle his way into the spotlight.
But Meehan knew his worth, and had a sly sense of humor about “The Producers,” which was clobbering every other musical on the street.
One night, over martinis next door to the St. James Theatre on 44th Street, Meehan and I invented tag lines for the show. I’ve forgotten all but one, which was Meehan’s: “ ‘42nd Street,’ where the line forms to buy tickets to ‘The Producers.’ ”