Photographs by Nelson Bakerman
Director Matthew Warchus tells Front & Center how he discovered that Follies is more than just a great musical.
F&C: How did you get involved with this project?
Warchus: I was editing my film Simpatico in Los Angeles and Jim Carnahan was there to do some casting for Cabaret. We met to discuss project ideas and he asked if I knew Follies. I was very surprised, because what he couldn’t have known is that Follies has been perhaps the most formative show in my life as a director. I saw a production of it in London when I was twenty or twenty-one. I was blown away. I had never seen a musical which had the density and complexity of a great classical play and also the euphoria, ecstasy and delight of great musicals as well. I saw the show four times in London. So when Jim mentioned it I was amazed. I was more amazed later after I had accepted the project and there was this perception of a paradox in New York. People here seem to associate me with small-scale productions such as Art or True West, whereas in England I’m regarded as somebody who directs large-scale work: classical work mainly, but also opera. So New Yorkers were initially surprised that I would be associated with a project like Follies.
F&C: What do you mean when you say that this play has the density and complexity of a classic? How so?
Warchus: I mean that, as one would expect in a great musical, the story could be told without songs just by acting the book. It could also be told purely through the songs by removing the book. So you have one strand amplifying and enhancing the other. Also the story is psychologically authentic. The people are believable, the situation is believable, and the journey they make is detailed, true, and extreme. It is a very visceral piece of writing dealing with the emotional and psychological collapse of four people. But it’s not trivialized in any way to make it work as a musical. It’s a challenging subject dealt with scrupulously and thematically. The piece is infused with ideas of death and decay, which is very uncompromising subject matter for a musical. But Follies embraces that subject matter. It doesn’t shirk it or circumnavigate it. It dives straight into those themes and delivers an emotionally enriching evening in the way that a great classical tragedy does. Often, to make a musical work, complexity has to be compromised for the sake of delivering an appropriate punch, but somehow Follies manages to accomplish both.
F&C: How do you think its creators managed to do that?
Warchus: Probably it is quite simply due to the fact that both writers, the late James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim, wanted to work with each other. What they must have admired in each other was this psychological complexity in their work. They are both honest in their writing. Neither of them is shallow in any respect, and I think they were drawn to some meaty subject matter. I think that’s how this piece came to life. It was changed and molded by Hal Prince, the director of the original production, but each modification he suggested spurred the writers on to see it done in their own way. James Goldman is a great writer and Stephen Sondheim is a great writer — and that’s why the collaboration is so rich.
F&C: How does this version of the script differ from the
original?
Warchus: The original draft was revised when it was staged in London to create quite a different evening, really. The story was altered a lot and in some ways in London it was a less acerbic evening. It had softer edges. That’s not to say it was trivial or sanitized, because that was the production I first saw and it bowled me over. But elements from the original were upgraded, certain unnecessary things were cut, and other things were improved. A whole section of new material was added. In 1986, after the London revival, a script was created for the BBC’s radio version – and that in turn became a starting point for another version. This script was used by the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. So Follies came back to America as this third script—by and large it was a return to the original Broadway script, but it incorporated the London script’s upgrades while removing its story changes and new material.
F&C: Was James Goldman still involved with those versions?
Warchus: Yes, he did all of that work. In a sense this became the official Follies script. What we have created for Roundabout is really a fleshed-out version of the Paper Mill Playhouse version which also draws on the original script for details. I worked intensely with Steve Sondheim and James Goldman’s wife, Bobby (who was Goldman’s editor), and we tried to find the original impulses behind the script’s ideas and clarify them, sometimes by adding or removing small amounts. We really just polished and sculpted to finish the process started with the Paper Mill script.
F&C: Was Goldman’s presence missed during this process? Did you have to speculate about what he would have done or thought?
Warchus: Yes, he was invoked continually. Most of the work took place in his apartment because Bobby lives there, so his ghost was floating around.
"To a certain degree I’m trespassing on the treasured property of the New York Broadway audience, and I do feel an additional responsibility because of that."
F&C: People seem to have strong impressions of the original production even though it was done thirty years ago. It has been written about a lot and has taken on almost legendary proportions. Did that have an influence on your rehearsal process?
Warchus: First of all, it is now a classic, which it obviously wasn’t when it was originally done. To a certain extent, when it was done in London, it wasn’t yet a classic either. When you approach something that is now such a landmark, you do feel an extra responsibility and anxiety. It’s a bit like when I directed Hamlet. Everyone has an opinion about Hamlet, too, but because so many productions are done there’s less pressure on each individual one. So there is a sense of taking on a mantle, and that does create pressure. There is also an additional pressure on this production in that I’m working out of my home country. To a certain degree I’m trespassing on the treasured property of the New York Broadway audience, and I do feel an additional responsibility because of that as well. But when it comes down to it, those kinds of pressures are abstract, really. The job I have to do is always a very simple job, which is going into a rehearsal room, in a private environment with a group of people, and doing the best work we can possibly do.
F&C: What kind of discoveries or choices have you made so far? What, at this point, do you think we can expect?
Warchus: What we knew, before we even started rehearsal, is that we are doing this show in the Belasco Theatre and it is being produced by the Roundabout — so there are two big differences from the original production straight away. Yes, there are 43 people in it (not including the band) and it is a musical that contains great extravagance and extremes. Nevertheless, I hope that being in a smaller theatre and being produced by a company with a reputation for serious investigation into works of theatre will mean that the acting side of this production will be seen at its most favorable, its strongest. Also the spectacle will be unusually powerful because it’s in a smaller theatre, in a more confined space. So potentially this production will be more emotionally potent and visceral than the original production was able to be.
F&C: Sondheim’s score draws on many different musical theatre styles, with various musical numbers fashioned after a particular period or genre. How does that inspire you or influence the choices you make?
Warchus: It affects Kathleen Marshall much more, because it means the choreography she is developing for each number is influenced by the style it is fashioned after. From my point of view it only affected the casting, in that we tried to find somebody who’s somehow got the spirit of that number about them. The brilliance of the score is, in one way, that while it’s a pastiche, each number has another trajectory to it. At the end no character is the same as when they started singing. It’s not only the book songs; the show numbers (which are the pastiche numbers) are also just as dramatic as the scenes surrounding them.
F&C: What about Sondheim’s work do you find particularly striking?
Warchus: His emotion. I think he’s a very, very emotional writer, and there’s an overpowering sense of yearning in his writing, and of frustrated idealism, melancholy, and pain. It’s a strange cocktail, capable of communicating pain and great, great euphoria and joy at the same time. So there is an interesting, twisted weave of beauty and pain in a lot of his writing. Many of these things could describe Goldman’s writing as well. He writes in a romantic style but it has a lot of grit and pain in it, so you get the sense of a divided person. Both of these men feel like a turbulent personality in their work, which is very artistic and very inspiring.
F&C: What are you enjoying most about rehearsal?
Warchus: I’m enjoying everything about this rehearsal process. It’s almost unseemly. The actors’ ability is very, very high. In particular it is inspiring to work with the older cast members. They carry such history with them. It’s a real privilege even just to talk with each of them for a few minutes. The invocation of the past, the lost past, is very important to this piece. We are spending quite a bit of time in rehearsals talking about it, and I love that. If the artists playing the older characters enjoy doing the show, it’ll be a real delight to have given them that opportunity.
F&C: Rumor has it that the Belasco Theatre is haunted by its namesake, David Belasco. Do you believe in ghosts? How do you feel about directing this musical with him looking over your shoulder?
Warchus: Well, one of the things I love about the Belasco Theatre is that it feels as though it’s haunted. I think it’s a great place to do a show. I don’t know much about David Belasco himself, except that he was an early pioneer of environmental productions in America—for many of his productions in that theatre, the design extended out into the auditorium. That creates an environment, which of course is exactly how to do Follies, to make the whole theatre one environment. So I think he would very much approve of the choice. I think I do believe in ghosts, so I hope he has a good time. Mainly, though, I believe in the tangibility of history, and that’s what is exciting about being in the theatre.
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