Stephen Sondheim's 1971 musical "Follies" was a long-running show which failed to win back its investment. It has been performed dozens of times all over the world, yet prior to this 1985 Lincoln Center Concert had never been completely recorded. While the concert does not fully tell the story of the original show, it did, for the first time, fully capture the glorious score on the recording. Broadway veterans Barbara Cook, Mandy Pantinkan, George Hearn, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Elaine Stritch were joined by film and TV stars Carol Burnett and Lee Remick (both of whom had stage experience as well) to give full life to the magic that is Sondheim.
They first take us behind the scenes in a rehearsal hall where we are introduced to the performers (also including Lilianne Montevecchi, Erie Mills, among others), then to the actual place where it will come alive in front of a sold-out audience. There are bits of the performer's real personalities coming out (particularly Elaine Stritch's) as the rehearsal moves onto opening night of the concert. Shots of Herbert Ross (the director) are interspersed with the music. The sequences of the concert are abbreviated for time, but most of the numbers (particularly Phyllis Newman's production number "Who's That Woman?") are fairly intact. No one can stop a show like Stritch can (as proved by her recent one-woman show), and she gets the largest round of applause with her entrance. Her performance of "Broadway Baby" (abbreviated here a bit, but heard completely on the concert recording and her own one-woman show CD) is equivalent in power to her earlier Sondheim showstopper "The Ladies Who Lunch" (from "Company"); If you saw her one-woman show (which I did), you get a glimpse of the delightfully eccentric and witty woman she naturally is. When she tells a joke about 90 somethings getting a divorce or makes a crack at Phyllis Newman, it simply becomes the type of theater stuff that legends are made of.
While there have been several recordings of "Follies" since this (the Paper Mill Playhouse recording includes songs cut before the 1971 production, plus some of this cast as well), this is one that will go down in legends. "Follies", as I have seen twice on stage, is a hard show to produce for several reasons. The 2001 Broadway Revival got mixed reviews for its lack of production design, but was filled with magnificent performances, while a recent Los Angeles All-Star cast could not do justice even with the many names among the cast. So with a movie version of the film not available (or likely to be done), this record of what the show is about is a more than average alternative.