Age concern | 14 September 2017

Stephen Sondheim’s Follies takes a huge leap into the past. It’s 1971 and we meet two middle-aged couples who knew each other three decades earlier at a New York music hall. The building faces demolition and the owner is throwing a party for his old dancing-girls.

Dominic Cooke’s lavish production of this vintage musical boasts 58 performers, 160 costumes and 200 production staff. Yet it’s a curiously small show that could be performed, with a few cuts, in a pub theatre. There are four main characters and a smattering of cameos. Phyllis and Ben are rich New York grandees, unhappily married. Their chums Bud and Sally are also wealthy and disappointed with life. During the war, Phyllis and Sally were Broadway hoofers, and they meet up with their former colleagues to share old memories and present frustrations.

Janie Dee (Phyllis) is a sophisticated temptress with a wicked tongue and an air of moody bitterness. By some distance, she’s the best asset here. Her husband Ben is a flabby sex pest who prefers ogling young waitresses to romancing his still-gorgeous wife. His chum Bud (Peter Forbes) is a greasy muddle. Bud keeps a 29-year-old mistress on the go and yet he professes undying love for his sixty-something spouse, Sally. OK. But why cheat on her? Sally, meanwhile, wants to rekindle an extinguished affair with Ben, but she’s unaware that he prefers teenage serving girls. When Phyllis catches the eye of a hot young barman they have a quick knee-trembler on the theatre’s cramped and rotting seats. Not very edifying. And it’s hard to care about these geriatric bed-hoppers who are desperate for one last fling before they get shunted into the care-home for ever.

Cooke’s production spends too much time warming up.