Everything Was Possible

by Ted Chapin

  The Wednesday note session was as pleasant as possible. Tonight all the Boston critics would be in attendance, so the creative staff did their best to appear cheerful. Michael gave Ethel Barrymore Colt a new line before the song “Who’s That Woman?”: “I can’t tap-dance; I never could.” Ethel smiled oddly and said, “I know someone is trying to tell me something.” A decision was made to repeat a section of “Too Many Mornings” when the curtain rises on the second act, to help get back into the story. Michael asked Hal to give a pep talk on energy, and Hal promptly fell to the ground in mock exhaustion. It was a nice moment of levity. Hal then called for a final run-through, without costumes or orchestra, just to make certain all the small changes that had been made over the past few days were smooth and clean. He said that this was one of his traditions, and that it always helped put a company in the right frame of mind for the opening performance. He explained that he didn’t want to stop, but that if he needed to, he would blow on a new small shrill police whistle that someone had given him, and he held it up for the company to see.

  The run-through went off without a hitch, although with performances that were not at peak level. Hal didn’t use his whistle once. When it was over, he gathered the company onstage. He had no notes; he just wanted to wish them well. This wasn’t a time for gushing; everyone knew that tonight mattered. He was straightforward and businesslike. He told them to go out there and enjoy the performance.

  Backstage now looked like a real opening night. Telegrams were posted on the company callboard, many from friends of the company, but also from cast members of Company and Fiddler on the Roof in New York. Of course, theatrical tradition dictates that you never actually wish actors well, so instead you wish them the opposite, “Break a leg!” being the most traditional comment. Steve Sondheim, who had accidentally kicked a piece of the set one night at Feller’s and had broken his toe, wrote simply: “Good luck. Break a toe.”

  The portion of the New York contingent necessary to a Boston opening was up in force. First and foremost: press agent Mary Bryant, who was scurrying around making certain everyone was being taken care of. While all the critics needed to have prime locations, it was known that some preferred certain seats, and it was in everyone’s best interests to see that those requests were fulfilled. There was also a little gentle skulduggery at work. When Company played in Boston, Variety had sent a reviewer who, according to rumor, had once worked for Hal but had been fired. He certainly had it in for the show, and concluded his nasty out-of-town review with this: “As it stands now, [Company] is for ladies’ matinees, homos, and misogynists.” A different critic was being sent by Variety to review Follies, but Mary nonetheless seated him way off to one side and behind a pillar. It turned out that he liked the show and wrote quite a favorable review despite his seat location. You never can tell.

  Not surprisingly, the performance was the best so far. Mary Bryant spent the better part of the first act cursing some unknown audience member who was, annoyingly, clapping at everything. At intermission, word started to spread about which critics seemed to be liking the show. Kevin Kelly liked what he saw, it was rumored. He had been an early champion of Company, so it was assumed that he would also go for Follies. Pat Collins, a television critic for WBZ-TV, had hated Company, so she was all but written off. Elliot Norton, dean of American critics, had been too long at the game to let on to anyone what he was thinking. He sat with a poker face. They were the three critics who were of most interest.

  Michael made his way to a neighborhood bar for most of the first act. When he returned he ran into Steve in the lobby. “Are you going to watch the second act?” “No,” Michael replied, “I’ve already seen it and I’m sure I’ll see it again.”

  Before the end of the performance, Hal and Michael were already backstage, standing at the stage managers’ desk at stage right. They watched the curtain calls as their cast received a warm response from the audience—with the reaction beginning to fit a pattern. The first big cheer was for Ethel Shutta. There was a moderate uptick for Yvonne, a nice cheer for Dorothy, and the, by now, largest reaction for Alexis. Once all the solo bows had been taken, there was a company bow, and the curtain was brought in, passing in front of everyone’s face with what looked like an inch of space to spare, effectively muffling all the cheering from out front. Then when the curtain went up again, the cheers could be heard again. A nod to the conductor, who nodded back, another company call, and the curtain was lowered once again. As soon as the final curtain was lowered (it’s the stage manager’s decision how many calls to have), Hal and Michael rushed out onstage and hugged as many cast members as they could grab. There was a general sense of euphoria. Another milestone had passed.

  In the back of the house I ran into a woman I knew, a friend of the family. I had no idea she was seeing the show, or why she was there. I didn’t even know she was a theatergoer. But, naturally, when I saw her coming up the aisle, I greeted her, and asked, “So, how did you like the show?” “Get rid of the football hero in De Carlo’s number, cut Gene Nelson’s dance because it’s just too long, and tighten up the beginning. Then it’ll be fine.” I guess that’s why producers bring shows to Boston.

  Tonight there was an official opening night party. It was being thrown by Capitol Records, which would be making the original-cast album. There had been a lot of interest expressed by various record companies for the album of the show, and Capitol had won the bidding. Hal was upset with the way Columbia had promoted their album of Company. He wanted them to commit specific money for promotion if they were to do Follies, and they refused. So the show went to Capitol, which had been the label for Forum. They were pleased to have another Steve Sondheim/Hal Prince show for their catalogue, although Steve wasn’t altogether happy with the choice. They had taken over Charlie’s Saloon, a small English pub on Newbury Street, and, typical of all opening night parties, the place was too small for the number of people invited. Executives from Capitol Records were circulating and greeting everyone. Interestingly, the one person from Capitol who wasn’t there was the producer of the album itself, Richard C. Jones. He would be coming to see the show in a few days, but I was curious as to why he wasn’t there now. Once he showed up the reason became clear: he was engaged in a tug of war with his bosses. He felt the show deserved and needed two discs, but the company was adamantly opposed to it. There were very few cast albums of more than one LP, and all the departments at Capitol felt that a two-disc set would cut into the sales potential enormously, although they were more than happy to squeeze as much Follies onto one LP as possible. In the end, Dick Jones lost the fight. The Follies original-cast album did indeed come out on one LP, truncated, and the unfortunate result of a variety of technical glitches on the day it was recorded. To add insult to injury, the show that beat out Follies for the Tony in the Best Musical category, Two Gentlemen of Verona, had a two-LP cast album, albeit on a smaller label.

  Chorus girls and showgirls at the Boston opening night party.

  Enough eye makeup? Margot Travers, Rita O’Connor; Ursula Machsmeyer

  (hidden), Suzanne Briggs, Linda Perkins, Suzanne Rogers, Kathie Dalton.

  Everyone in the cast showed up at the party, as did anyone connected with the show, including visiting family and friends. The drinks flowed and the food was quickly devoured. The standard groupings held forth: Hal and Judy sat with Steve and John Guare. Michael Bennett was at a table with several of his gorgeous dancers, all of whom had dolled themselves up for the party. Alexis was joined by her husband and a few California friends; Dorothy sat with her smaller retinue of family. Mary McCarty gathered with some of the older members of the company; I sat at a table with Yvonne and her agent, Ruth Webb, who had flown up from New York.

  Of course the moment everyone waits for at an opening night party is when the reviews come out. It’s a weird feeling when all the critics have seen the show but you have no clue as to what they thought. Tradition dictates that if a major review is good, the crowd
is hushed and the producer reads it aloud. This was 1971, and the routine remained what it had been for decades: all the press see the show on opening night, rush back to their offices, and pound out a review for inclusion in the late edition of the morning paper. The television reviewers, a new phenomenon, rush back to their stations and prepare to go on as part of the eleven-o’clock news. At the party, the show’s press team finds a room with a TV and a telephone, there to await word from the newspapers, and sometimes, rarely, from the critics themselves. If the news is not good, chances are the party will keep going until most of the guests catch on to what’s happening and the party winds down in a hurry.

  Hal Prince reads the rave review from Samuel Hirsch.

  At an opportune moment, Hal called for quiet. “Well,” he said, “that TV blonde loved us!” Cheers erupted. That was precisely the opposite of what was expected. “If she loved us, we may be in trouble!” Laughter rippled through the room and the party continued. Then Hal hushed the crowd once again and read a review out loud. It was not, surprisingly, by any of the major critics—it was by Samuel Hirsch, from the less important Boston Herald Traveler, but was enthusiastic and intelligent. Hal read it in its entirety. It began:

  There’s a magic feeling [that] comes over you when a new musical opens and lets you know all’s well within the first few minutes. You sense it’s going to be a special evening because the talents of the men and women who conceived it and who put it all together and are playing it with sure skill and good taste let you know immediately that you’re watching something extraordinary take place. . . . It happened last night at the Colonial Theatre, where Harold Prince’s new musical opened, a show called Follies, and it has a magnificently complicated and sophisticated book by James Goldman, sensational and rueful sentimental lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim, and brilliant choreography by Michael Bennett. These men are at the top of their talents—and in superb form. This is a smashing show.

  That was the kind of reaction everyone was hoping for. Later on, Hirsch acknowledged that there was some tightening and pruning to be done, and that “there’s an overstatement here that needs to be brought under control before the Technicolor fantasy style [of Loveland] works properly.” He called the black and white ghost figures “effective because the tall show girls are like living scenery,” and said that the joint staging by Michael and Hal “boldly and brilliantly and with exquisite taste binds the fabric of this superb musical together in what surely must be their masterpiece.” At one point Hirsch described John McMartin’s voice as weak, but it was too late for Hal to stop. He was on a roll. “Well, sorry, John,” he said, and he went on. Hirsch’s comments showed that he “got” the show. He ended by saying, “Follies is going to change our musical theater the way Oklahoma! ushered in the new American lyric theater.” A big cheer erupted.

  The party crowd continued to celebrate in a jolly mood. “The other reviews haven’t come out yet,” was the excuse offered to those who asked, and the fact that one critic in a prominent Boston newspaper had liked the show was encouragement enough for the moment. Anyway, it would be rare for a producer to read more than one review to an opening night party. So what if the one he chose to read wasn’t from the expected source? And, to tell the truth, it wasn’t all love and sunshine in the room for critic Samuel Hirsch. As Fifi D’Orsay left the party, she walked past the table where I was sitting, where she could be heard to say, to anyone who would listen, “And that man Hirsch, he didn’t even mention me.” No, he didn’t, and the fact that he did mention Ethel Shutta and Mary McCarty must have annoyed her. Out she went.

  The next morning, the reviews proved to be decidedly mixed. Kevin Kelly, as some at the party had feared (Hal’s not reading the Globe’s review couldn’t have been a good thing), didn’t like Follies. The man who had been arguably the earliest and most influential champion of Company and its collaborators acknowledged none of the innovations of Follies. This time out he simply didn’t get the show. (Interestingly, although Kelly had been quite enthusiastic about Company, Steve said that he felt he actually hadn’t gotten that show, either.) He seemed to fumble over his own words as he tried to express his inability to figure out why he was so unaffected by the show. “At the moment in its pre-Broadway tryout at the Colonial, Follies is in trouble. Intrinsic in its fascinating format (and the format is fascinating) is a difficult problem, a series of promises made and, if anything, only partially kept.” He understood that the lead characters’ “life is a pretty bleak routine,” and that “there is certainly a predictability to Goldman’s final outcome.” Dorothy Collins gave “the truest musical performance of all, and she’s dramatically credible as well.” He felt that “since there are so many persons of passing interest in the plot it takes a while to sort them out and know them.” He longed “for the past to rise up and claim the stage”; but when the Follies numbers come, “they turn out to be surprisingly repetitive.” He concluded by saying that “it has the makings of a solidly entertaining musical, and that’s what a Boston tryout is all about.” Solidly entertaining? That’s the kind of comment one might expect to hear about Hello, Dolly! But Follies? And from the man who said that Company was “destined to become a classic”?

  Elliot Norton, whose comments were always taken seriously, was very direct: “When it sings and dances, Harold Prince’s new Follies is generally exuberant and exhilarating, ingenious and extraordinary entertainment. When it talks, however, when its four principals thrash out the follies of their love lives, it is bitter and shallow.” That was the harshest public comment yet about the book. Norton respected the style of the musical numbers, saying there were “any number of wonderful songs . . . by Stephen Sondheim, in a sustained burst of inspiration.” The dances “are grand, too . . . Bennett has marshaled his dancers, young and old, in patterns that reflect the old styles and make them live in new glory, with skill and wit. Some numbers are slick, some hilarious. Some are ingeniously tied into the story of the former ‘Follies’ girls and their boys.” He had nice words for the old-timers—“It is one of the sights of the season to see Ethel Shutta, who sang once with the great bands, belting out a new song about a ‘Broadway Baby’ ”—and felt that while the four principal actors “act, sing, and dance faultlessly in roles that are not attractive,” he called Alexis Smith “a revelation: coolly beautiful, entirely at home with the barbed lines, bitter but believable—and wonderful in the song-and-dance numbers.”

  The “blonde from TV,” Pat Collins, called the show “beautifully staged, a dazzling and fine musical. Spectacular!” It was good enough to be used in the newspaper ads in the coming weeks.

  Some of the other reviews had interesting takes on the show. The Christian Science Monitor’s Roderick Nordell said, “If No, No, Nanette was nostalgia imported from the innocent past, Follies is nostalgia reconstituted with the sophisticated wit of the present.” His reservation was for the book and the leading characters: “Too much time is spent on these characters without telling us enough about them. . . . The deficiency . . . is that the central characters in James Goldman’s script are not fresh or interesting enough for the innovations around them. They are like two couples left over from Mr. Prince’s Company, dissatisfied with their marriages, failing to find themselves through ‘playing around.’ ”

  Boston After Dark‘s review, by Larry Stark, was titled “Fantastic Follies,” and although he had some concerns about the show’s length and the quality of the songs (“there is a sort of nostalgic sadness—the same sort of sadness that is evoked when grandparents or an old maiden aunt does a stiff-limbed polka at a wedding”), he felt that Prince “will be hailed for making another significant advance beyond Company in the field of the ‘new’ musical.”

  Steve Vineberg in the Justice observed: “Follies, in a pre-Broadway run at the Colonial, may be the most frustrating show I have ever seen. In some ways it is the most mature musical in about five years; in some ways it is awkward and overproduced. But whatever else it may be
, Follies is arresting; it is provocative; it provides food for thought. And I firmly believe that what is good and important in the play and production is almost too good to be true, even when half buried by the banal dialogue and endless repetition.”

  The critics are nothing if not unpredictable. They all saw the same show, yet their opinions were so different. As an example of how their observations can vary, here is what some had to say about Yvonne De Carlo and the song that the creative forces already knew was going to be replaced: “[she makes] a happy evening’s entertainment out of ‘Can That Boy Fox Trot ”’ (Elliot Norton). “Yvonne De Carlo amiably essays a complicated number that’s a lark because she’s doing it, though it still needs work” (Roderick Nordell). “Yvonne De Carlo has a good time with a showy number called ‘Can That Boy Fox Trot!’ ” (Samuel Hirsch). “[Sondheim] has written a fiendishly difficult number for Yvonne De Carlo . . . [who] is simply unable to master Sondheim’s involved lyrics and, for that matter, I doubt if Callas could” (Kevin Kelly). Callas? Was she ever known for performing intricate lyrics? I don’t think so. As it turned out, the Boston critics of 1971, taken as a group, proved to be a pretty good indicator of the overall critical reaction this show would continue to get over the next thirty years. The ones who liked it loved it and got it. The ones who didn’t care for it dismissed it and never saw beyond the details. What was odd about Boston was that the “enlightened” critic missed the point and obviously didn’t enjoy much of anything about the evening, while both a fairly standard newspaper critic and a cheerful blond television reporter got it.