By Will Cox
On a Tuesday morning, Victorian Opera is channelling a 1920s Broadway revue. Interwar glitz and glamour are substituted with sweatpants and trainers.
The cast of VO’s new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies is pulling together the choreography for the number Who’s That Woman?
Merlyn Quaife, Marina Prior and Geraldene Morrow will be performing together in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Rhonda Burchmore, playing Stella, leads a troupe of ageing dancers through a half-remembered number from their glory years. Soon, they are joined by the spectres of their younger selves. Burchmore, in tap shoes, is leading a company of ghosts. The decades interweave.
Despite being one of the best-known works of musical-theatre legend Stephen Sondheim, Follies won’t be so familiar to Australian audiences. Victorian Opera is calling this the first full, professional production of Follies in Australia (though some point to the Festival Theatre Company’s 1979 production at the Camberwell Civic Centre).
In the show, the veteran performers of the Weissman Follies, a once-great revue show (heavily based on New York’s Ziegfeld Follies of the 1920s and ’30s), gather in a condemned theatre to reminisce and reflect. As they rehash old glories and tensions, they are shadowed by younger performers, the ghosts of their youth.
The young rub shoulders with the old, glamour rubs shoulders with faded grandeur. At times, the performers on stage range from their 20s to their 80s.
The show is said to have been inspired by an evocative photograph of Gloria Swanson, in a gown and red feather boa, standing in the rubble of New York’s Roxy Theatre in 1960. The photograph says it all: the past lies in ruins behind us, and looking back can only be bittersweet.
“It’s all about memory and regret and the looking back on your life that people can only do when you get to a certain age,” says Marina Prior, who plays the elegant Phyllis. “There’s something very profound about doing this as an older actor. It’s a specific but highly relatable topic for so many people.”
In the rehearsal room, assistant choreographer Mitchell Fistrovic Doidge is guiding the cast through steps. “We never had kids, or made much money,” says Stella at the end of Who’s That Woman? “But on the whole, all things considered…” she tails off. One of the younger dancers, the ghosts, gets a note to make it a bit less Defying Gravity. We’re in the 1920s here, not the 2020s.
Despite being one of the best-known works of musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim, Follies won’t be so familiar to Australian audiences.
“I’m not up to date with what comes around now,” Merlyn Quaife tells me. “I saw Wicked, the movie version. Too bloody long!”
Rhonda Burchmore in rehearsal for Follies.Credit: Casey Horsfield
Quaife is a soprano with a storied career in opera, and musical theatre isn’t exactly her natural habitat, but the Follies characters cross genres. “Theatre is theatre,” she says. “The same kinds of people are drawn to it.” Quaife plays Heidi, a retired Broadway legend with a feature song in the middle of the show, One More Kiss.
“It’s a beautiful Viennese waltzy song which says you shouldn’t look back,” says Quaife. “But of course, everyone’s looking back.”
Quaife is no exception. She was at home in Bendigo when the email came through offering her the role. She happened to be with Prior at the time. Prior has been one of Quaife’s students since she was 14.
Geraldene Morrow has been on stage for eight decades, since she was two years old.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“She was my first and only singing teacher,” says Prior. “Singing was all I ever wanted to do, all I was ever going to do.”
Quaife recalls telling Prior she had been offered the role then and there. Until now, they had never worked together outside their four decades of singing lessons. “She almost burst into tears,” says Quaife.
“She’s not sugary and fluffy,” Prior says of Quaife. “She tells me what I’m doing wrong. She rarely tells me what I’m doing right. There are plenty of people to pump your tyres up. What you need in a teacher is someone who cuts through and says you can do that better.”
To this day, she returns to Quaife when she takes on a new role. “I go for what we call a tune-up,” she says. “We spend a great deal of the lesson just talking.”
Appearing alongside Prior and Quaife is Geraldene Morrow, who, at 82, is sure she’s the oldest person in the cast, and holds her own in the dance rehearsal. She’s been on stage for eight decades, since she was two years old. Prior also considers Morrow a mentor, having performed with her in Phantom of the Opera in 1991.
“When you do a musical, it’s a slog,” says Prior. “It’s not glam. You become family. As soon as I saw Geraldene, we just slotted straight back into the relationship. It feels the same, standing next to her on stage. It’s so familiar.”
As the performers settle into their nostalgic characters, preparing to take to the stage of the art deco Palais Theatre alongside familiar faces, looking back is inevitable. A few weeks ago, Quaife found herself delving into her personal archives for a show on radio station 3MBS.
“It does feel like I’ve created a PhD-worth of work,” she says. “I have no regrets. The body starts not doing what you want it to do. The voice is fine.”
Follies is on at the Palais Theatre from February 1 to 6.
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