Follies

a musical in one act. Book by James Goldman. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
Produced at the Winter Garden, New York, 4 April 1971 with Alexis Smith (Phyllis), John
McMartin (Ben), Dorothy Collins (Sally) and Gene Nelson (Buddy). Produced at the Shaftesbury
Theatre, London, in a revised version, 21 July 1987 with Diana Rigg, Daniel Massey, Julia
McKenzie and David Healy.
Characters
Click on a character's name for a full description. (Available for StageAgent Pro members.)
Name
Gender Vocal Part Age Range Role Type
Sally Durant Plummer female soprano
45 60
lead
Ben Stone
male
baritone
50 65
lead
Buddy
male
baritone
48 62
lead
Roscoe
male
tenor
55 75
supporting
Young Buddy
male
tenor
19 27
supporting
Phyllis
female alto
45 60
supporting
Young Phyllis
female mezzo
16 23
supporting
Young Sally
female soprano
16 23
supporting
Young Ben
male
baritone
19 27
supporting
Emily Whitman
female mezzo
55 75
supporting
Young Heidi
female soprano
21 35
supporting
Theodore Whitman
male
baritone
55 75
supporting
Dmitri Weismann
male
spoken
60 80
cameo
Solange La Fitte
female mezzo
50 70
cameo
Stella Deems
female mezzo
50 65
cameo
Carlotta Champion
female alto
50 70
cameo
Heidi Schiller
female soprano
85 95
cameo
Hattie Walker
female
65 80
cameo
Kevin
male
spoken
25 40
cameo
Chorus
N/A
21 90
chorus
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BENJAMIN STONE - A big man on Wall Street, with a chic Manhattan wife, no children but
everything else.
YOUNG BEN - Ben thirty years earlier, in 1940, when he was dating a Follies girl.
PHYLLIS ROGERS STONE - Ben's 50-year old society wife, smart, tart, vicious and sleek.
YOUNG PHYLLIS - A showgirl in the chorus of the final edition of the Weismann Follies.
BUDDY PLUMMER - Ben's pal, now a prosperous realtor in Arizona, with wife, kids - and
a mistress.
YOUNG BUDDY - The eager young beau of a Follies chorine.
SALLY DURANT PLUMMER - Buddy's well-to-do wife, still gushy and girlish despite the
routine of married life.
YOUNG SALLY - A Follies chorine, 20 years old in 1940, and caught between Buddy and
his pal, Ben.
CARLOTTA CAMPION - A resilient motion picture star, once a vamp, then reduced to
mother r6Ies, but still hanging in there.
STELLA DEEMS - Another veteran of the final Follies.
YOUNG STELLA - The singer and dancer as she was in 1940.
HEIDI SCHILLER - A 90-year old Broadway legend, whose ringing soprano inspired the

operetta kings to produce their lushest waltzes.

YOUNG HEIDI - The celebrated soprano in her heyday.
HATTIE WALKER - After all these years, still a Broadway Baby.
EMILY WHITMAN - The female half of a cheerful song and dance team.
THEODORE WHITMAN - Emily's husband.
SOLANGE LAFITTE - A Broadway Parisienne.
ROSCOE - The Follies' famous tenor whose golden tones saluted Mr. Weismann's exquisite
taste in feminine pulchritude.
DIMITRI WEISMANN - An impresario who flourished between the wars and whose name
became a byword for style and opulence.
KEVIN - A easily-seduceable waiter.

OTHER GUESTS and PERFORMERS, STAGE MANAGER, WAITERS, WAITRESSES,

PHOTOGRAPHERS, SHOWGIRLS, etc.

Orchestration
REED I - Piccolo, Flute, Alto Flute, Soprano Sax, Alto Sax, Clarinet, Eb Clarinet
REED II - Piccolo, Flute, Alto Sax, Clarinet
REED III - Flute, Tenor Sax, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet
REED IV - Oboe, Cor Anglais, Tenor Sax, Clarinet
REED V - Flute, Baritone Sax, Clarinet, Bassoon
HORN
3 TRUMPETS
3 TROMBONES
PERCUSSION
HARP
PIANO
GUITAR
STRINGS

Argumento
Un grupo de actores y cantantes que antao, en el periodo de entreguerras, haban trabajado juntos
en el espectculo musical denominado "Weismann's Follies (rplica del Ziegfeld Follies) vuelven a
reunirse en el teatro en el que trabajaban y que ahora est a punto de ser demolido. De entre los
congregados destacan dos parejas: Buddy y Sally Durant Plummer y Benjamin y Phyllis Rogers
Stone. Sally y Phyllis eran bailarinas en la poca del Follies. Con el devenir de los aos, ambas
parejas se han vuelto profundamente infelices en sus respectivos matrimonios.
Buddy, viajero empedernido, ha comenzado una relacin con una chica que conoci en un viaje de
negocios. Sally, por su parte, sigue enamorada de Ben, como tantos aos atrs. Pero Ben est
demasiado preocupado por la depresin de Phyllips para pensar en nada ms.
Las bailarinas recorren la vieja historia del teatro, con nmeros de la poca, y el espritu presente de
los que en en su da habitaron el lugar.

Canciones
Beautiful Girls Roscoe y la compagnia
Don't Look at Me Sally y Ben
Waiting for the Girls Upstairs Ben, Sally, Phyllis y Buddy, Ben joven, Sally joven, Phyllis
joven y Buddy joven
Rain on the Roof Emily y Theodore
Ah, Paris! Solange
Broadway Baby Hattie
The Road You Didn't Take Ben
Bolero d'Amour Vincent y Vanessa
In Buddy's Eyes Sally
Who's That Woman? Stella y la compaa
I'm Still Here Carlotta
Too Many Mornings Ben y Sally
The Right Girl Buddy
One More Kiss Heidi y Heidi joven
Could I Leave You? Phyllis
Loveland Compaa
You're Gonna Love Tomorrow / Love Will See Us Through Phyllis y Buddy, Ben joven,
Sally joven, Phyllis joven y Buddy joven
The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues Buddy, Margie, Sally
Losing My Mind Sally
The Story of Lucy and Jessie Phyllis y la compaa
Live, Laugh, Love Ben y la compaia
Final Compaa

Story
It is 1970 and on the stage of the Weismann Theatre, New York, the eponymous Dimitri Weismann
has gathered together the surviving players of his lavish pre-war Follies, from the silver screen
goddess Carlotta Campion to the most nondescript chorine, for a first and last reunion: an invitation
"to glamorize the old days, stumble through a song or two and lie about ourselves" -before the
theatre is demolished to make way for a parking lot. As Roscoe serenades those Beautiful Girls, the
now-elderly ing6nues and matronly starlets, veterans of a more innocent age of entertainment,
descend the famous Follies staircase one last time. For Sally and Phyllis, both now married to their
respective stage-door Johnnies, Buddy and Ben, the theatre seems haunted by their younger selves,
the giddy hopefuls of 1940. Don't Look At Me, Sally babbles to Ben as they meet for the first time
in years. But they're both glad they came.
Once the party gets under way it isn't long before the regulars are gleefully dusting off their old
acts: Theodore and Emily Whitman recall their sweetly naive duct, Rain on the Roof: Solange
purrs her way through the fake Gallic sophistication of Ah, Paree!; and Hattie proclaims again that
she's, indestructibly, a Broadway Baby. For Ben and Buddy, too, the memories of three decades
come flooding back - all those hours after the show Waiting for the Girls Upstairs in their
dressing rooms - but for Ben these memories awake old regrets as he looks back at a lifetime of lost
opportunities (The Road You Didn't Take). Sally tells Ben about her life with Buddy in Arizona cooking, flower-arranging, trips to the mall, but In Buddy's Eyes, she knows, she's still his
princess. Yesterday, though, tells another story: young Sally and young Ben pledging their love.
And, in the haze of nostalgia, the past seems to be seeping into the present. As Stella leads the 1940
Follies girls through "the mirror number" (Who's That Woman), shadowy wraiths of their younger

selves mimic their movements. For Sally and Buddy, Phyllis and Ben, the resurrection of their
distant pasts only serves to point out the inadequacies of their marriages. Only Carlotta seems
relaxed and philosophical about the old days: good times, bum times, she's grateful just to have got
through it, and confidently declares I'm Still Here. Seeing Sally again, Ben realises he's spent Too
Many Mornings dreaming of her. If you don't kiss me, " Sally tells him, I think I'm going to die."
Young Phyllis, Ben, Sally and Buddy taunt their disillusioned older selves with the failed promises
of youth. Ben tells Sally that he no longer loves her, that for him "all of it was over years ago". For
Buddy, life is all about findingThe Right Girl and he has, sort of. a 23-year old called Margie. But
you can't turn the clock back: as Heidi Schiller reminds us in an eerie operetta waltz, all dreams are
a sweet mistake and eventually we have to face reality: all we can hope for is One More Kiss - and
a brief glimpse of those dreams.
Phyllis, having successfully seduced Kevin, one of the waiters, is by now wondering Could I
Leave You and live without Ben, without his sneered jokes, his loveless love-making, his dreary
big-shots from the UN. Ben, goaded, starts to argue with Phyllis, and soon Sally and Buddy,
together with their younger selves, join in. They all shout hysterically at each other, screaming out
all the bitterness that has, until now, been more or less repressed. At the height of the confrontation
the orchestra suddenly swells and Loveland calls, luring them back to a playground of
overwhelming optimism, where skies are ever blue. On the drab stage of the derelict theatre
Loveland rises - the apotheosis of a Weismann Follies set, a fabulous wedding cake reaching for the
stars, an enchanted citadel where the two couples can re-visit their individual follies. The young
sweethearts Ben and Phyllis promise each other that You're Gonna Love Tomorrow, and for
young Sally and Buddy, nothing is so certain but that Love Will See Us Through. Afterwards,
though, Buddy's The-God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me-Blues begin to get him down, as he scuttles
frantically between mistress and wife, while poor miserable Sally moans in a smouldering torch
number that she's Losing My Mind. Phyllis raunchily sings The Story of Lucy and Jessie (Lucy
being Phyllis and Jessie being Sally), telling us that if only juicy but drab Lucy and dressy but cold
Jessie could only combine then I could tell you someone who would finally feel just fine." Lastly
Ben takes the stage with Live, Love, Laugh, singing of how clever and adept he is at everything but his song gradually starts to go wrong. He forget his lines, the tune, the dance steps and finally, in
his mind, all the past evening's traumatic experiences are regurgitated in one terrifying mass. Panicstricken, he rushes off, screaming out his wife's name and we return sharply to reality.
Having exorcised the ghosts of their pasts the two couples depart Dimitri Weismann's reunion;
they'll have to find out whether anything's really changed in their lives. They've come a long way
from those days waiting around for the girls upstairs, but they're still here.