Flawed but still glorious, ‘Follies’ revival opens in San Francisco
Welcome to Curtain Call, our mostly queer take on the latest openings on Broadway and beyond.With a multigenerational cast of 21, some particularly labyrinthine Sondheim lyrics, and one of the more unorthodox narrative structures in Broadway musical history, it’s taken Follies over a half-century to hit the boards in San Francisco.
The Bay Area’s first-ever professional production of the 1971 backstage psychodrama about a late middle-age reunion of Ziegfield-style showgirls decades after their days in the kickline marks a major achievement for The San Francisco Playhouse and its artistic director, Bill English, who also helmed the show.There are plenty of goosebumps in store for audiences, not least of which are those raised by the grand ambition and determination required to mount this near-mythical colossus in the midst of a pandemic: The production not only had to recast multiple roles as its run was repeatedly rescheduled from a planned 2020 debut, but even this week’s official opening came after two postponements due to COVID in the company.Related: In Broadway’s ‘The Kite Runner,’ redemption drifts in the windThe anginal heart of Follies is the relationship of two struggling married couples — former chorines Sally (Natascia Diaz) and Phyllis (Maureen McVerry) and their husbands, Buddy (Anthony Rollins-Mullens) and Ben (Chris Vettel) — who effectively provide a musical theater counterpart to the quarrelsome quartet of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
All four characters are brilliantly played with palpable neuroses, each unpredictably swinging between comic and creepy extremes.
McVerry, a stalwart of stages on both coasts, provides a running subtext to her lines with perfect wrist flips and eyebrow arches.
