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To many people, the theater's backward look is not only normal but necessary, at a time when Broadway is constantly worried about its fifth season —slack. Says Veteran Director George Abbott, who worked with Sondheim on Forum: "It's so difficult to get to the Broadway theater, plus there is the cost of eating dinner out and the fear of being mugged. People have to believe they're going to see something priceless." What better show, then, than one already granted a squeal of approval? What happier tense than the past perfect? Furthermore, notes Nanette's Ruby Keeler, "people have seen everything. We almost have to go back the other way. Audiences want to come to the theater for entertainment."
True enough. But in fact there is no going back; to gaze at the rearview mirror guarantees a crash. The best of Follies indicates that the art of the theater, like all art, must renew itself by destroying tradition or by using it in fresh ways. Follies amply demonstrates that the musical—America's single greatest contribution to the history of drama—need not become the exclusive province of the antique dealer or the rock group. In style and substance it can be as flexible as a film, as immediate as a street scene. Lyrics need not be laundry lists; melody need not be cacophony or syrup. Sondheim's experiments with sonority may sound tentative to the trained ear, but they are bold charts for himself—and for future composers as well. And his words demonstrate that the great tradition of Broadway songwriting, from Berlin through Porter and Hammerstein, is still alive.
Audiences interested only in nostalgia should not see Follies now. Let them wait until it is revived in, say, the mid-1980s. Then this imperfect but glittering production will be an item of genuine nostalgia—the show that turned the American musical theater around and pointed it forward.
-Now in its 60th year, the theater was once the home of the original Ziegfeld Follies.