Following the final dress rehearsal for the Town Players of New Canaan’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, director Michael Day jumped on stage to congratulate his cast.
The Town Players of New Canaan’s summer show, the concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Follies, played last weekend to full houses and continuous rounds of applause at the opening three performances. The show continues until Saturday, August 7th at the air conditioned Powerhouse Performing Arts Center in Waveny Park, New Canaan. For tickets, call (203) 966-7371.
Vertical columns, indicating the exterior of the Weismann Theatre, frame the long black, velvet curtain backdrop while twinkle lights edge the upstage platform and descending ramps upon which the cast performs. Backed up by Stan Wietrzychowski on piano, Aron Smith on strings & brass synthesizer, Jan Shames, percussionist, and David Rodovitch on alto saxophone, clarinet, soprano & alto flute, Follies opens with the glamorous production number “Beautiful Girls” as the former follies showgirls parade onto the stage of the Weissman Theatre for the last time. Its owner, impresario Dimitri Weismann, has invited his famed troupe back for a reunion the night before his Broadway theatre is to be razed and converted into a parking lot.
For the next almost two hours the characters perform solos, duets, quartets and big chorus numbers which reflect their personal lives and their memories of the theatre. James Goldman’s script, shortened purposefully by him from the much longer original Broadway production, gives flesh, bones and thought to the characters in this “concert” version, which is not fourteen actors lined up at the front of the stage singing a series of songs, but a musical staged by Michael Day (Stamford) and choreographed by Beth Schwartz (New Canaan). The atmospheric lighting, designed by Ann Baker (West Haven), includes the use of “gobos,” which are physical templates slotted inside, or placed in front of a lighting source, used to control the shape of emitted light. “It was a fluke,” Ms. Baker explained with a smile on her face that the stage left and right patterns projected on to the blacks form the shape of a heart.
The cast includes Marta Backman (Bronxville), Jody Bayer (Danbury), Laura Blackwell (Ridgefield), Marcia Cummings Vinci (Pound Ridge), Bob Filipowich (Fairfield), Ryan Frostig(Wilton), Beth Green-Schwartz (New Canaan), James Hisey II Fairfield), Betty McCready (Stratford), Anastasia Raleigh (Trumbull), David Shimchick (Milford), David A. Sylvia (Stratford), Nancy Thode (Greenwich), and Valerie Torphy (Hungtington).
