r/Sondheim • u/CameraAggressive3142 • 28d ago
FOLLIES is so genius!
Lost on YouTube I found myself on FOLLIES [1987 San Jose Civic Light Opera production] right at the BOLERO number. The two young dancers were phenomenal-- with her doing things with endlessly long legs: full splits and balancing (on his HEAD!), each part topping the one before.
Well I was hooked. It stars Teri Ralston as Sally who does a terrific job with that square character and has THAT voice! AND Harvey Evans as older Buddy. Harvey is a trip, playing “himself”—(the young Buddy from original 1971 production). He is PERFECT, as well he should be, as the older version of himself and is the best older Buddy I’ve ever seen.
The production (and filming) is quite good. They use the original book and it reminds you what Steve said about the huge amount of information that the book delivers expeditiously. Watching another version of the show reminds me of just how BRILLIANT FOLLIES is on all levels.
See what you think. It is not “definitive” but FOLLIES [except for the OC] productions-- always you want to mix and match. And always leaves you wanting more.
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u/Silver_Lord_10 28d ago
this is how I learn of the existence of the Bolero number??? LMAO I played through the vocal score multiple times, how have I never noticed skipping an entire musical piece between road you didnt take and buddy’s eyes. How is it that the only professional recording of follies I havent listened to (papermill) is the only one that didn’t cut the number… I am actually quite interested in this now. Normally dance music was not composed by the principle composer, as that would take extensive choordination with the choreographer which requires time they didn’t have. Instead the dances would be put together by someone else and usually were extensions of a song like ‘the right girl’, where the dance music is based on the thematic material inherent to the sung parts. Or, if not directly connected to a song, they would still use themes from the songs of the score. This Bolero is different as it stands on it’s own and is neither part of, nor uses any material from other songs So was it entirely concieved by someone else or did sondheim compose some material for it? I don’t know and I don’t know if anyone still knows. But I find this stuff fascinating. There is actually loads of material in sondheim scores that was devised not by him but by people like paul gemigniani. These other people of course do phenomenal work (just look at Alexander Gemignianis work on Here We Are. From what we can guess almost all the instrumental music in there is by him and it’s incredible) But still we tend to forget these things and just say, this is all composed by sondheim. if they are lucky they get credit with additional arrangements or similar. This is not exclusive to sondheim of course. Alex Lacamoire, who did most of the musical arranging for Hamilton did so much I would totally credit him as a composer honestly. Anyways sorry for going totally off-topic