Follies
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman.
The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies", a musical revue (based on the Ziegfeld Follies), that played in that theatre between the World Wars. It focuses on two couples, Buddy and Sally Durant Plummer and Benjamin and Phyllis Rogers Stone, who are attending the reunion. Sally and Phyllis were showgirls in the Follies. Both couples are deeply unhappy with their marriages. Buddy, a traveling salesman, is having an affair with a girl on the road; Sally is still as much in love with Ben as she was years ago; and Ben is so self-absorbed that Phyllis feels emotionally abandoned. Several of the former showgirls perform their old numbers, sometimes accompanied by the ghosts of their former selves. The musical numbers in the show have been interpreted as pastiches of the styles of the leading Broadway composers of the 1920s and 1930s, and sometimes as parodies of specific songs.
The Broadway production opened on April 4, 1971, directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, and with choreography by Bennett. The musical was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and won seven. The original production, the second-most costly performed on Broadway to that date,<ref> Follies sometimes is called the most expensive musical production in Broadway history at the time, but theatre historian Ethan Mordden names the 1969 musical Coco, starring Katharine Hepburn, as that times' actual record holder.
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