Books, Arts & Manners: Follies in Loveland

Every Thirties musical you never saw—at least every one I never saw—seems to haunt Follies, Harold Prince’s lavish musical destined to go on for years at New York’s Winter Garden. Can one be nostalgic for what one’s never known? Logically, no; in fact, of course, yes. It’s all there: Busby Berkeley-like extravaganza; Ziegfeld-type chicks (oops, anachronism: girls!) in costumes suitable for the harem of Kubla Khan of Xanadu, of blessed memory; you name it. But it’s not all there, in fact it’s all a great specter of those overstuffed pulchritude displays coupled with an almost orientally convoluted story of domestic unbliss. And it’s one hell of a show, worth—shudder—the inflated prices they charge on Broadway these days, wage-price freeze notwithstanding.

Follies’ story is a mess. Dimitri Weismann (for you, Flo Ziegfeld) invites all his old Weismann girls and their hubbies back to the Weismann Theater for one last bash before the building comes down to be replaced by what Manhattan needs most, another parking lot. So back they troop, his girls, plump or wizened or over-bleached or a bit pathetic but in any case, a long shot from being chorus cuties anymore. They’re all there, the lovelies from 1918, 1923, 1938, and especially, two from 1941, Sally Durant Plummer, played by Dorothy Collins, and Phyllis Rogers Stone, alluringly, bitchingly done by Alexis Smith, who looks like Pat Nixon with more glamor.

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David Brudnoy

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Every Thirties musical you never saw—at least every one I never saw—seems to haunt Follies, Harold Prince’s lavish musical destined to go on for years at New York’s Winter Garden. Can one be nostalgic for what one’s never known? Logically, no; in fact, of course, yes. It’s all there: Busby Berkeley-like extravaganza; Ziegfeld-type chicks (oops, anachronism: girls!) in costumes suitable for the harem of Kubla Khan of Xanadu, of blessed memory; you name it. But it’s not all there, in fact it’s all a great specter of those overstuffed pulchritude displays coupled with an almost orientally convoluted story of domestic unbliss. And it’s one hell of a show, worth—shudder—the inflated prices they charge on Broadway these days, wage-price freeze notwithstanding.

Follies’ story is a mess. Dimitri Weismann (for you, Flo Ziegfeld) invites all his old Weismann girls and their hubbies back to the Weismann Theater for one last bash before the building comes down to be replaced by what Manhattan needs most, another parking lot. So back they troop, his girls, plump or wizened or over-bleached or a bit pathetic but in any case, a long shot from being chorus cuties anymore. They’re all there, the lovelies from 1918, 1923, 1938, and especially, two from 1941, Sally Durant Plummer, played by Dorothy Collins, and Phyllis Rogers Stone, alluringly, bitchingly done by Alexis Smith, who looks like Pat Nixon with more glamor.