SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Sally: Jackie Lack

Young Sally: Rebecca Maggs
Stella: Trisha Tebbatt
Young Stella: Laura Gilbert

Carlotta: Sandra Papier
Heidi: Margaret Bunker
Young Heidi: Kate Adamson
Buddy: Mike Barker
Young Buddy: Chris Yoxall
Phyllis: Sue Yoxall
Young Phyllis: Katherine Lack
Ben: Tom Evans
Young Ben: Ben Schrodel
Solange: Lana Sauer
Weissman: Stephen Smails
Theo Whitman :Maurice Levy
Emily Whitman: Marion Laing
Hattie: Elaine Gee

Directed by Jim Snell

Additional choreography by Trisha Tebbatt

Musical Direction by Charlie Wakely

 

WOS (formerly Wembley Operatic Society) is an amateur company founded in 1937 which can boast an enviable, and unbroken, record of productions starting with G and S’s The Gondoliers and embracing almost all the major musicals written last century as well as a handful of 19^th century operettas. With such a track record one would imagine that a show as complicated as Follies would pose few problems for it.

 

The plot concerns a group of old vaudevillians who have previously performed in the Dmitri Weissman Follies (obviously he was a kind of Ziegfeld) and who has invited them back for a reunion in the old Weissman Theatre before it is knocked down to make way for that most important of monuments to the 20^th century – a car park. Old friends meet again and reminisce about what might have been and what has been. To help matters along each of the main characters is shadowed by another actor playing their younger selves. This is the matter of the first half of the show. The second half is a kind of Follies production in which everyone, young and old perform.

 

As Sondheim shows go, this is very special in that it probably contains more hit songs than any other. Starting with Beautiful Girls, a paean of joy to the chorus girls, delivered robustly by Denis Hopwood, the story begins and lives start to fall apart. After Waiting for the Girls – ah, remember the adolescent yearnings hoping she’d turn up? – performed by the two main couples, with their younger alter egos, and a deliciously outrageous Broadway Babe - Elaine Gee enjoying the excess of it – things start to turn nostalgic. Jackie Lack gave a meltingly lovely In Buddy’s Eyes, Sandra Papier delivered a powerhouse I’m Still Here, and the curtain fell on Jackie Lack and Tom Evans’s regretful Too Many Mornings.

 

After three introductory songs, the second act gives us the Follies proper, the highlights being Jackie Lack’s (she really got the best numbers, lucky girl!) pensive Losing My Mind and Mike Barker’s knockout Buddy’s Blues (not really a good song but a real showstopper).

 

What matters in a musical is not a beautiful voice but the ability to sell the song – this is why Bernstein’s own recording of West Side Story palls beside the original Broadway Cast album – and the performers here could deliver the goods. The performances were strong and the characters were totally believable. The amplification of the voices was nicely discreet. I was impressed and only have two little niggles. The band, a nonet of brass, reeds, percussion, bass and keyboard, played well under MD Charlie Wakely’s baton, but, on occasion, was too loud, but I have yet to meet a conductor who wants to tell his players to “keep it down”. Mind you, apart from one who will remain nameless, I have yet to meet a conductor who willingly says “The next round is on me!” My other point is that some of the dialogue, and there is an amount of it, in the first half occasionally lacked pizzazz. Small points overall and not enough to spoil an enjoyable evening in the theatre.

 

 

Bob Briggs