Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies (Applause Books) by Ted Chapin Read Free Book Online Page B

musical aspects of the production, he was kind of the stage manager for all things musical. A bespectacled, silver-haired somewhat patrician figure with one curiously wandering eye, he didn’t fit anyone’s cliché of a Broadway musical director or conductor. He looked and acted like a banker in shirtsleeves. He had been in charge of the music for the Harold Prince musicals for years, starting with The Pajama Game in 1954, with the exception, for some reason, of Fiddler on the Roof. He was remarkable in his calm, soothing manner, which built confidence in all types of performers—actors, singers, dancers, old salts, young whippersnappers. He commanded respect. Until everyone learned what they had to learn, his patience knew no bounds, but once they were supposed to know their stuff, he could be rather sharp. As rehearsals progressed, he helped the performers deliver the material in a way acceptable to the composer, the director, and the choreographer. He also had to coordinate all the musical aspects of the production: the dance and vocal arrangements, the orchestrations, the music copyists, and, finally, the musicians in the orchestra and the onstage band. He had a couple of rehearsal pianists to help, beginning with David Baker, a fairly well-known composer and arranger in his own right. It’s interesting that musicians are willing to help their comrades without concern for perceived position of hierarchy, provided, however, that the “gig” interests them.
    Hal Hastings took over the smallest room. Because there were only a few people hanging around, he would come and find his next victim as if he were a doctor calling a patient in from the waiting room—“Next!” Alexis was ushered in first to learn “Losing My Mind,” a Helen Morgan—like torch song that was one of the first songs finished for the Follies sequence. Sondheim’s original idea was that it would be a double torch song, sung by both Sally and Phyllis, who would start at either end of a chorus line, slowly working their way toward the middle. Everyone in the chorus would have masks of Ben, since he was the object of both women’s affection. That idea was discarded in favor of a Jerome Kern–like song for Sally to sing while seated on a swing that would swing out over the audience. That left “Losing My Mind” for Phyllis alone, but another song—“The World’s Full of Boys (Girls)”—was being played around with for her as well. Giving “Losing My Mind” to the character of Phyllis was to emerge as a mistake before too long, but Alexis struggled her way through. At one point she turned to Hal Hastings and said, “Are you helping me here? Aren’t you playing a little something extra for me—like the tune?” By the end of the day, all four principals had been taken through “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs,” one of the first songs written for the show.
    The Follies sequence that ends the show was still in a formative stage. Following the words “STILL TO BE WRITTEN” on the last page of the script was this description: “What follows is a capsule Follies—costume parades, comedy routines, specialty acts—traditional and accurate in all ways but one. Sets, costumes, music, movement; all this is faithful to the past. What’s different and unusual about it is the content, what it’s all about.”
    The idea was clear: the four lead characters—two ex-Follies girls and their then stage-door Johnnies (now husbands)—having been pushed past the emotional breaking point by the realization of the bleakness of their present lives, perform a modern-day “Follies.” They would, in essence, become performers in a fantasy Follies whose content was inspired by everything the entire play was about—traditions from the old days, psychological realizations from the events of the play itself, disappointments about the present, hopes from the past, lies listened to, lies ignored. It would be almost hallucinatory, and the transition into it