FOLLIES. To 18 November.
Northampton
FOLLIES
by James Goldman Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Royal Theatre To 18 November 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat 2, 18 Nov 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 50min One interval
TICKETS: 01604 624811
boxoffice@royalandderngate.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 November
For a grand re-opening, Follies turns out to be wise.
One theatre closes; another opens. Last year, Northampton’s Royal Theatre said Goodnight with its sweet prince, shutting for 18 months’ building work. As Hamlet closed it, another preoccupation of modern Theatre, the American musical, re-opens the brightly-restored auditorium. If the old Royal ever troubled claustrophobics with its narrow passageways, now it’s agoraphobics who might fear, given the extent and depth of the opened-up and added-on front-of-house space.
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1971 musical is a tribute to the variety stage, and to the follies of human behaviour, as former song-and-dance girls reunite for a last party before their old theatre’s knocked down for a parking lot. What makes human folly matter is that there’s no going back; life has no repeat performance tomorrow.
At first, the sense of time is wistful as dancing girls from the twenties to the forties return in anything from their fifties to their seventies, parading down the bare, flowing staircase central to Jessica Curtis’s spare, big-statement design (its tall side-window evocative of grand old days).
But time’s impact deepens at the ‘Mirror’ number, sensationally danced (and lit, Oliver Fenwick’s lighting creating a dappled kaleidoscope). The character’s younger selves, all bare-legs and spangles, start shadowing the people they’ll become. Later, the central quartet’s past and present selves will circle each other, as if knotting again their lives’ emotional complexities.
The production’s a triumph, and should lead to local car parks being converted onto theatres. Despite younger bodies’ natural suppleness maturer cast members rival their counterparts in high-kicks and stamina throughout Nick Winston’s sparkling dances. To afford all this has meant combining a professional team and community cast, and they do genuinely combine.
In both, director Laurie Sansom’s chosen people who can sing (rarer than might be thought in these amplification-hides-much days). That includes Jan Hartley’s beautifully sustained, quiet high notes and Louise Plowright’s brassy Weill-like number about, fittingly, two women of different generations who want each other’s qualities.
It includes a lot more too, in a production where no quality is wanting. Local people are lucky; for the rest, it’s train tickets to Northampton all-round.
Young Carlotta: Suzy Bastone
Young Ben: Peter Caulfield
Young Weissman: Darren J Fawthrop
Ben: Julian Forsyth
Young Phyllis: Haley Flaherty
Buddy: Alex Giannini
Sally: Jan Hartley
Young Sandra: Katie Lovell
Young Deedee/Young Heidi: Laura Pitt-Pulford
Phyllis: Louise Plowright
Young Stella: Pippa Raine
Young Sally: Savannah Stevenson
Kevin: Alain Terzoli
Young Buddy: Oliver Tydeman
Roscoe: Phil Abbott
Sandra Crane: Sue Barbour
Stella Deems: Maureen Barwick
Waiter: Alex Bloomer
Emily Whitman: Joan Carnell
Carlotta Campion: Barbara Cawthorn
Hattie Walker: Rita Gee
Theodore Whitman: Keith Green
Dmitri Weissman: Bryan Hall
Francesca Weissman: Natalina Malena
Solange La Fitte: Susan Moore
Deedee West: Deanne Pritchard
Heidi Schiller: Margaret Walker
Waiter: Ed Warner
Max Deems: Anthony Woodward
Director: Laurie Sansom
Designer: Jessica Curtis
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Sound: Whizz
Orchestrator: Paul Mitchell Davidson
Musical Director: Jonathan Gill
Choreographer: Nick Winston
Dialect coach: Heather van Straten
Associate director: Andrew Panton
2006-11-02 01:45:31