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Press Releases | |
May 17, 2004
"Follies" The Classic Hit Sondheim Musical Highlights Avram Summer Stage
Director Michael Disher Aims to Dazzle Audiences with Players' Innovative InterpretationContact:
Patricia Conway
631-287-8313Southampton, NY - The Setting: The Early 1970s, The Weissman Theatre in New York is ready for the wrecking ball. Before the famed theater is about to be demolished, a reunion of the Weissman showgirls is taking place. As the evening progresses, the performers relive many of their past experiences...
Come relive their experiences with The Southampton Players' musical interpretation of "Follies" this summer on Southampton College's Avram stage. The James Goldman/Stephen Sondheim musical will kick-off the College's summer activities and presentations.
"The concept behind "Follies" is one of reflection and re-evaluating one's choices in life," said Players' Director Michael Disher. Seeing the Broadway performance for the first time when he was an impressionable 16 year old, Disher has used that experience as a template for things to come in his own life. "Each leading character is forced to face undeniable foibles, inevitable truths and insurmountable regrets. Where their futures lead them remain their mysteries - and ours," he said.
The principal players, all dealing with the pain of aging, lost illusions and poor choices, are acid-tongued Phyllis and naïve Sally, former friends whose relationship is complicated by Sally's continuing love for Phyllis' husband, Ben. Sally's obsession with Ben tears away at her marriage to the philandering Buddy. The Southampton Players will, as usual, cleverly transform the theater and turn these narcissistic protagonists of "Follies" into fully rounded human beings.
Billed as surreal, sophisticated, compelling, heart-wrenching and epic in scope, "Follies" uses musical theatre as a metaphor for the collapse of American innocence and naïveté in the post-Kennedy years. Disher's directorial challenge with this production will be to reveal the true selves of the 1970s characters through a dazzling display of musical numbers and scenes to a 2004 audience. The noted Sondheim score features such Broadway standards as "I'm Still Here," "Broadway Baby," "Losing My Mind," "Could I Leave You," "Who's That Woman," and "Buddy's Blues."
"Perhaps the perspective and age of the audience governs their acceptance or denial of such a strong conceptual theatrical event," said Disher. Introducing this innovative theatrical piece to a new generation of theatre students posed a number of questions for the director: Will they get? Will they understand it? Will they appreciate it? Will they ever have this opportunity again? "I don't think I can ever surely or succinctly answer those questions, but as this generation ages and grows and involves themselves in life's many unsure predicaments, perhaps they will learn to examine their choices, accept their pasts, and live their lives free of regret," he said.
Performance times are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 5 p.m. on Sundays June 4-6, 11-13 and 18-20 in the Avram Theater. Reservations are highly recommended, as Southampton Players, one of Long Island's most widely-known theater troupes, have packed the house in the past with their popular summer musicals including "Cabaret," "A Chorus Line" and last year's "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Tickets are $15/$10 students and seniors. Call The Southampton Players Box Office at 631-287-8899. For more information on Southampton Players, go to www.southamptonplayers.com