Musical theatre lovers should seize the opportunity to see Follies performed as intended

MUSICAL THEATRE
Follies ★★★★
Victorian Opera, Palais Theatre, until Febrary 6

For Stephen Sondheim fans, this production of Follies will be a tremendously exciting prospect. It’s the rarest of opportunities to see the show, and Victorian Opera can rightly claim it as Melbourne’s first full staging of the musical at a commercial venue – although Boomers might have seen it performed at the Camberwell Civic Centre in 1979, or at the 2016 staged concert in Melbourne Recital Centre with Lisa McCune and Philip Quast.

Taao Buchanan, Jack Van Staveren, Mia Simonette and Jacob Steen in Follies performed by Victorian Opera.Credit: Jeff Busby

Follies is the last of Sondheim’s major works to be ticked off my bucket list, and I’m glad to see it in middle age. Its spiky, unsparing take on disillusionment and the dangers and derangements of nostalgia is probably wasted on the young.

The curtain rises on a curtain about to fall. A reunion of former stars of the Weissman Follies – based on the interwar Ziegfeld Follies – gather to reminisce at their old New York theatre, soon to be demolished to make way for a car park.

As William Faulkner reminded us: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” And the fancy canapes and awkward pleasantries of the showbiz party yield to a more troubling interior, a backstage of the mind. The musical’s characters are crawling with ghosts and memories and illusions.

Callum Marshall and Marina Prior in FolliesCredit: Jeff Busby

For married couples Sally (Antoinette Halloran) and Buddy (Alexander Lewis), and Phyllis (Marina Prior) and Ben (Adam Murphy), the reunion provokes an encounter with what they recall of their youthful selves – played by Mia Simonette, Jacob Steen, Taao Buchanan, and Jack Van Staveren – and a reckoning with the lives they’ve lived since.

It’s much more volatile and cynical psychological terrain than the black comedy of Sondheim’s Company, and you can’t help feeling the maestro of American musical theatre was preparing to expiate a midlife crisis of his own when he wrote it.

This full-dress production gives much that a concert or a soundtrack can’t, including a close encounter with our own theatre’s grand dames – Anne Wood, Rhonda Burchmore, Colette Mann, Evelyn Krape, Meryln Quaife, Geraldene Morrow – all legends of the stage whose stars scintillate with enough comic talent to leaven the torment and self-loathing of the leads.

The dance between youth and age is evocatively rendered throughout. Age wins a pyrrhic victory: Prior embodying the fury and bitterness of the marital discord in Could I Leave You is a sight to behold.

A concert simply cannot capture the brilliance of Sondheim’s music drama folding in on itself in climactic “Follies” based on musical styles of yore, either. Director Stuart Maunder and the design team pull out all the stops for that showstopping conceit. It’s mesmerising to watch Halloran seduce us into her shrinking spotlight in Gershwin-like torch song Losing My Mind, or Lewis’ desperate vaudeville in The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues.

Musical theatre lovers should seize the opportunity to see Follies performed as intended. You may not get another chance, and the star-studded cast and live orchestra give this musical drama all the glamour and turbulence it needs to cast its haunting spell.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
Shirley Valentine ★★★
Athenaeum Theatre, until February 16

If Sondheim’s Follies can leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the middle-aged, this upbeat touring production of Shirley Valentine is the perfect tonic. Audiences will likely know the one-woman play best from the 1989 film adaptation starring Pauline Collins, and it is just as charming with Natalie Bassingthwaighte in the title role.

Natalie Bassingthwaighte stars as Shirley Valentine at the Athenaeum.Credit: Brett Boardman

A middle-aged housewife from Liverpool, Shirley Valentine has lost herself. Her childhood dreams and youthful rebellion were abandoned when she fell in love and did what was expected of her – motherhood and marriage. Now her kids have grown up, Shirley has become desperately lonely, talking to the wall as she cleaves to her dreary domestic routine.

While cooking for a distant and psychologically abusive husband, Shirley breaks open a bottle of wine and gossips endlessly and good-naturedly about everything. Her kids, her own childhood, her marriage and how her life has descended into loneliness … and her feminist friend, Jane, who has bought her a ticket for a girls’ trip to Greece which might offer a reprieve from the misery and sense of loss she feels – if her husband lets her go, that is.

When he takes out his rage at his own miserable life on her one too many times, Shirley ups and leaves for Greece on the sly. It becomes a journey of self-discovery and transformation.

Shirley retains her cute quirks – she still talks to inanimate objects and probably always will – but reclaims her self-confidence and reimagines her own destiny, determined to live for herself, unencumbered by regret.

Natalie Bassingthwaighte has the charisma and acting chops and comic charm to keep audiences beguiled and moved and amused.Credit: Brett Boardman

A full-length, one-woman play is a serious challenge, and Bassingthwaighte has the charisma and acting chops and comic charm to keep audiences beguiled and moved and amused.

The first half is stronger: Bassingthwaighte steers the offbeat observational humour around poignant glimpses of what the character has lost. Director Lee Lewis helps to achieve a strong sense of domestic menace through design and interpretation, alive to the fact that while Shirley doesn’t think of herself as a feminist, she becomes one through action.

The odd spell-breaker creeps in after interval. Bassingthwaighte’s Scouser accent doesn’t slip exactly, but the effort shows. There’s a muffed line here and there, and the characterisation leans harder on a narrow range of affectations. These flaws will vanish as the season progresses, I think, and they’re easy to overlook in an otherwise impressive and endearing performance that had the audience on its feet.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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