April 2007
Follies - The Show
Follies is set in a crumbling old Broadway theatre, scheduled for
demolition, during a reunion for all the past members of the "Weismann’s
Follies"; a musical revue (based on the Ziegfeld Follies) which
played in that theatre between the World Wars. The musical mostly focuses
on two couples, Buddy and Sally Durant Plummer and Ben and Phyllis Rogers
Stone, who are attending the reunion. Sally and Phyllis were both showgirls
in the Follies as are many of the other guests. Both marriages are having
problems because Buddy, a traveling salesman, is having an affair with
a girl on the road, Sally is still in love with Ben as she was years
ago, and Ben is so self-absorbed that Phyllis feels emotionally abandoned.
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The two couples
interact with each other and other partygoers, and throughout the first
half, musical numbers from the old Follies are
performed by the characters, sometimes accompanied by the ghosts of
their former selves. These songs are pastiches of songs by popular
songwriters of the past. The second half contains a string of vaudeville-style
numbers reflecting the characters' own problems and joys, before returning
to the theatre for the end of the reunion party.