A small, initimate FOLLIES can indeed work.
Years ago, I saw a production (it might have been produced by St. Bart's Players) at the old Wings Theatre on Christopher Street. It had almost none of the trappings that a multi-million dollar production can buy you.
But the material is so strong and, in this case, the performances were good enough to put the material over and that's all we needed. One of my strongest memories of this production is that the actors playing Young Buddy and Young Ben were very good at differentiating those two characters so that, for the very first time, I could see why Young Ben was the object of both Young Sally and Young Phyllis and Young Buddy was kind of the also ran of the quartet. Usually, I'm left wondering why Young Ben is all that, especially considering that, in the 1941 scenes, Young Buddy is doing better than Young Ben. Without the foresight of the 1971 scenes, why are both of these women so convinced that Ben is the guy for them? In this tiny production, I got it...mainly thanks to the performances. |
