FOLLIES: IN CONCERT NY PHIL CD

SKU/Barcode: 078635712827

Follies in Concert, drawn from two performances at Avery Fisher Hall in New York in September 1985, features a handpicked cast of stage, screen, and nightclub stars, and represents songwriter Stephen Sondheim and record producer Thomas Z. Shepard's attempt at a do-over of a cast album for Sondheim's 1971 musical Follies. The show had an original Broadway cast album, but it failed to convey the breadth of the score, which was unusually long, since it contained both contemporary show music and a series of pastiches of the kind of music that might have been heard in one of the interwar musical revues the characters were said to have appeared in, Sondheim's takes on the styles of predecessors like Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter. It would have taken a two-LP set to encompass all the material, and while major record labels were still recording cast albums in 1971, Capitol Records, which handled Follies, restricted it to only one disc. Fourteen years later, RCA was willing to plump for a more complete rendering, and Sondheim and Shepard put together a concert cast who did not have to conform to the demands of a realistic stage performance. The show is set at a 30-year reunion of the fictional Weismann Follies, and the two couples who are the main characters, middle-class Buddy and Sally, and upper-class Ben and Phyllis, are supposed to be about 50 years old. In this version, film star Lee Remick (a veteran of Sondheim's 1964 musical Anyone Can Whistle) as Phyllis and George Hearn (fresh from his Tony Award-winning performance in the musical La Cage aux Folles) as Ben were about the right age in real life, but 37-year-old Mandy Patinkin (late of Sondheim's most recent show, Sunday in the Park with George) as Buddy was too young, and veteran Broadway star and cabaret singer Barbara Cook (surprisingly making her debut in a Sondheim work) as Sally was too old at 57. No matter. All sing well and characteristically. Remick holds her own; Cook plays to Sally's emotional essence, notably in 'In Buddy's Eyes'; Patinkin is his typically bravura self (even providing his own background vocals, in tto, on 'Buddy's Blues'); and Hearn brings out Ben's superficial confidence, eventually giving way to a musical nervous breakdown in 'Live, Laugh, Love.' The show is also full of specialty numbers that give terrific showcases to the likes of Carol Burnett (an understated 'I'm Still Here'); Liliane Montevecchi (perfect casting for the Porter-like 'Ah, Paree!'); and audience favorite Elaine Stritch (a typically caustic 'Broadway Baby'). Follies in Concert might not be the definitive version of Follies, but it is a vast improvement on the original Broadway cast album, finally giving a sense of the score's quality. [Cassette and CD versions of this album added the soundtrack recording of director Alain Resnais' 1974 film Stavisky, one of Sondheim's few film scores.]

1. Overture
2. Beautiful Girls
3. Dont Look At Me
4. Waiting For The Girls Upstairs
5. Rain On The Roof
6. Ah Paree!
7. Broadway Baby
8. The Road You Didnt Take
9. In Buddys Eyes
10. Whos That Woman
11. Im Still Here
12. Too Many Mornings
13. The Right Girl
14. One More Kiss
15. Could I Leave You?
16. Loveland
17. Youre Gonna Love Tomorrow/Love Will See Us Through
18. Buddys Blues
19. Losing My Mind
20. The Story Of Lucy And Jessie
21. Live Laugh Love
22. Finale: Waiting For The Girls Upstairs And Beautiful Girls Reprises
23. Stavisky: Theme From 'Stavisky'
24. Salon At The Claridge #1
25. Arlette By Day
26. Auto Show
27. Easy Life
28. Secret Of Night
29. Erna
30. Distant Past
31. Arlette By Night
32. Airport At Biarritz
33. Trotsky At Saint Palais
34. Montalvo At Biarritz
35. Operetta
36. Arlette And Stavisky
37. Recent Past
38. Salon At The Claridge #2
39. Suite At The Claridge
40. Old House
41. Goodbye Arlette
42. Hideout At Chamonix
43. Erna Remembered
44. The Future
45. Wome