Broadway’s best

Sondheim’s Follies still sizzles

Follies National’s Olivier Theatre

Stephen Sondheim’s pastiche-rich paean to old Broadway and the golden age of the Ziegfeld Follies revues, which lit up the Great White Way between the wars, failed to ignite wildfire passion among audiences during its New York premiere run in 1971. Despite seven Tony Awards and glowing reviews, the production lost its investment; when it closed, the composer sat and sobbed in a dressing room.

I can’t imagine Sondheim shedding any tears backstage at the National, playing host to a superlative revival by Dominic Cooke (the first major one in London since 1987), except those of happy gratitude. His reputation is now second to none, but it must be satisfying, all the same, to see audiences rising to their feet at the end. Sure, those standing ovations are an expression of affection for a musical genius who has reached the impressive age of 87. And the opulent spectacle of the night – boasting a carnival flotilla’s worth of scantily clad yet lavishly bedecked young beauties doing chastely erotic justice to the nubile chorines of yesteryear – seems to demand some equivalent razzmatazz from those watching. Above all, though, the show “connects” at a powerful level – you understand what Sondheim is saying, why it matters.

Through an arcane framework, he gets to the heart of the hauntings that stalk us all as life goes by: coulda, shoulda, oughta

– the people we once were, or could have been, the roads travelled, the turnings missed. Granted, it takes a while for the Chekhovian mood – intense, volatile, savagely funny – to envelope us fully.

We’re at the reunion of former “Weissman Follies” girls, hooking up – partners in tow – on the stage of their old stomping ground on the eve of its demolition (designer Vicki Mortimer rustles up a fantastic, revolving array of ruined brickwork and tumbled masonry). Cue strained conversations, while a ghostly hinterland of the participants’ younger selves stirs to statuesque life, headdresses a-go-go, the past elegantly colliding with the present.

The early roll-call of numbers, accompanied by the ebb and flow of genteel nostalgic reminiscence, affirms that Sondheim knows this world inside out, yet the characterisation suffers from a rather cardboard quality. Even that of the central quartet: Imelda Staunton’s nervous Sally, married to unfaithful (yet adoring) salesman Buddy (Peter Forbes), while hankering increasingly openly and drunkenly after former politician and old flame Ben (Philip Quast), the latter’s withering, sophisticate wife Phyllis (Janie Dee) looking on in hurt disdain.

Bit by bit, though, the sense that we’re here to admire, in an offhand way, a cavalcade of stylish turns – book-writer James Goldman kept the “plot” as slender as a flying-wire – departs, to be replaced by a sense of raw identification, awe at the way everything threads together and joy at some of the best Sondheim songs in the canon. Di Botcher, as the formidable, suited Hattie – seized anew by gleaming-eyed hunger to be in a “show” – raises the roof with The show’s dancers, above, and Janie Dee, on left, with Imelda Staunton, below Broadway Baby, and so too, thereafter, does Tracie Bennett’s angrily prowling film-star Carlotta, hurling out defiance in I’m Still Here. As Phyllis, Janie Dee faultlessly executes a controlled volley of witty contempt in Could I Leave You? and Staunton quavers her way through that indestructible ballad of shattered hopes and unrequited longing Losing My Mind.

“I’d go straight back and see it again,” I heard a woman enthusing as she exited. You’d swear she’d lost her marbles (the prices at the Olivier are steep, too, by NT standards) – until, that is, you see it for yourself.

Unmissable, really.