Follies tempts Imelda back to the National
The National Theatre has signed Imelda Staunton to head a big new production of the musical Follies — featuring a landmark score by Stephen Sondheim — next year.
The garlanded actress has been wooed back to the National by its artistic director Rufus Norris.
Staunton made her debut there as Mimi, a hot Box girl, in Richard eyre’s 1982 Guys And Dolls. She advanced to the choicer role of Miss Adelaide when Guys And Dolls was revived a few years later.
Norris has partnered Staunton with director Dominic Cooke, who has been enjoying a hot streak since directing a sizzling revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at the NT, and the powerful second series of hollow Crown films for BBC TV.
Follies is a huge undertaking for the National, and will be a centrepiece of next year’s programme. Boasting a book by James Goldman and some of Sondheim’s most celebrated music and lyrics, it tells of a reunion of performers who played the fictional Weismann Follies on Broadway between the wars, and who meet up again in 1971 — 30 years after their last show.
It focuses on two of the former chorus girls — Sally and Phyllis — who turn up with their husbands in tow, and revisit the ghosts of Follies past.
Ms Staunton will play Sally, now a housewife from Phoenix, unhappily married to Buddy, a travelling salesman. But she believes she’s in love with Ben, a wealthy politician and businessman, now wed to her former best friend Phyllis. The ‘boys’ used to wait for the ‘girls’ at the stage door.
Janie Dee, who won an Olivier award when she appeared in Carousel at the National, will play Phyllis.
Staunton will fall into Follies after a run in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? at the harold Pinter Theatre from February 22.
‘It’ll be nice to do that double whammy,’ she joked. She added that initially she had protested she couldn’t possibly play Sally. ‘What are you talking about? I can’t sing that — I’m 20 years too old!’
But she’s relishing the challenges. ‘They’re all tough things to do. But it’s good. People say women don’t get roles to do but — touch wood — I’ve been extremely lucky,’ she added.
Follies will run in the autumn of 2017, most likely opening in the Olivier Theatre. Staunton said she would follow it with the Broadway transfer of Gypsy (for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics) in 2018. That show was a massive, award-winning hit for her at the Chichester Festival Theatre and later the Savoy.
Janie Dee, meanwhile, said Follies resonated with her because she danced in sequins and tights when she was 18. ‘I was a showgirl once. Not exactly the Follies, but the end of the pier. With the Krankies,’ the actress told me, during a break from rehearsing for a performance with music to be staged at the Barbican on October 4.
(She’s playing Cleopatra, from Anthony And Cleopatra, and Beatrice — from Much Ado About Nothing — and the show will be repeated at the hollywood Bowl.)
Dee noted that Follies brings the main characters, and the spectres of their younger selves, to the stage. ‘They keep replaying the past, but you can’t turn back time,’ she said.
The musical was originally staged on Broadway in 1971 and has some fabulous songs including Beautiful Girls, I’m Still here, Don’t Look At Me, In Buddy’s eyes and Broadway Baby.
SOMe critics felt Goldman’s book was uneven; though he did revise it for Cameron Mackintosh’s production at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1987. These days, most folks consider Follies to be pure theatrical treasure.
And with Dominic Cooke putting it together , Dee said the NT had a master director who would mine the text for all its hidden gems.
Now that Staunton and Dee have been contracted, casting on the other major glamorous roles will begin.
The National Theatre told me that they will officially announce Follies on October 11.