Follies

No subtitles here either, but we did get a ten and five minute to curtain warning in the top right corner near the end of the show. Quite distracting.

If I could vote for one it would be Janie Dee ... and then I would cast her in every sondheim role I could!

Yes, I thought about this and wondered if it was deliberate.  I wondered if the director's thinking was that they're meant to be showgirls rather than fantastic singers.  They are all also meant to have their best years as performers behind them.  They can't dance as well as they did when younger either.

I saw it last night via NT Live and adored it. The 4 principals were simply outstanding as was Tracie Bennett. They conveyed every emotion of their characters beautifully - the yearning, ecstacy, abandonment, the searing pain of a life lived regretfully, the 'making do'. Fabulous. No subtitles but occasionally the orchestration overpowered the vocals. It didn't detract too much. I was rapt.

Rewatched it again tonight at a different venue, with much better sound quality, and no subtitles. Tracie Bennett gives her life in I'm Still Here, and its glorious to get to hear Dawn Hope sing that ending of Who's That Woman with as much power and conviction as she does. It's just the perfect production for me. Imelda really got me again tonight, Losing My Mind is masterful

I tweeted them and asked but got no reply 😕

My God I wish they did!

Went back for a second viewing on Friday and it's as good as it was at the first preview, although there have been a few changes in the staging. They have cut the bolero dance 'Bolero D'Amour', Solange (who is still the weakest link) now starts her number on the fire escape stairs, The Loveland section use to have a curtain pulled round after each number, which left too long of a pause between each song, has been replaced with a drop down that speeds things up. 'You're Gonna Love Tomorrow' now has the male ensemble bring on prop furniture during the number, and pulling focus by camping it up as they went off! I wonder if that was why Margie is now female, so they could use the boys in this.

The biggest change was during Ben's breakdown at the end. At the preview it was just Ben and Phyllis on the stage, but now the entire cast come on stage and stand around him. Because I was in the circle i was able to see it all, but if you were in the first few rows, i doubt you would have been able to see through everyone.

Imelda Staunton was excellent and looks like a tiny Polly Pocket from upstairs. Janie Dee sounded like she might have been having a few issues vocally, her Phyllis seems to be quite bitter from the moment she comes on stage and didn't really leave her anywhere to go, so it seemed a bit the same all the way through. Still, it is a fantastic production and doubt i'll see a Follies production like it again.

I'm pretty sure there was no furniture in previews. I think it was an empty space. I know they used the balcony to dance on, but now i cant even remember if they used the balcony on Friday, because i was too focused on the camp guys moving the furniture, especially the guy pushing the drinks trolley around!

Can anyone else who's seen it since previews remember?

I also wonder why they brought on all the cast for Ben's breakdown... it didnt really add much.

Ethel Merman famously said "call me Captain Birdseye, this show is frozen!" when the creative team tried tinkering with one of her shows after opening night. Not many stars have that power nowadays, and many directors will make adjustment s to productions well after press night. There are always things that never quite get fixed in previews, so why not sort them when the pressure's off?

Not that Dominic Cooke has slavishly followed the printed stage directions elsewhere, but it's written into the script that the entire cast is onstage for Ben's breakdown. If anything, at the preview I saw, the chaos section at the end of 'Live, Laugh, Love' didn't go on for quite long enough. From page 104 of the original 1971 published script:

(The Follies drops begin to rise, and bit by bit we're back on the stage of the Weismann theater. Not literally, however. We're inside BEN's mind, and through his eyes we see a kind of madness. Everything we've seen and heard all evening is going on at once, as if the night's experience were being vomited. Ghosts, memories and party guests - all there. They stand on platforms which are moving insanely back and forth, they mill about the stage, and all of them are doing bits and pieces of their scenes and songs. And through it all, downstage, BEN's chorus line continues dancing. The cacophony is terrible, and we can barely hear BEN as he races from one group of people to another screaming.)