New York City Theater

This is turning into a big year of musical revivals - A CHORUS LINE, LES MIZ, COMPANY, THE APPLE TREE, 110 IN THE SHADE, maybe THE WIZ- but I think it's fair to say that the one to top them all will the City Center Encores! concert revival (with full orchestrations, of course) of Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece FOLLIES.

Encores received quite a bit of criticism a few months ago when it was first announced that it would launch a concert of FOLLIES. Sure, we all love FOLLIES, but Encores was created for the purpose of doing full concert revivals of musicals that would not otherwise merit full-scale Broadway revivals. As it happens, FOLLIES was revived by Roundabout just a few years ago and it is revived CONSTANTLY by regional theaters. However, what most of these new revivals cannot do is replicate the full orchestrations and sound of the original production (the revival had a pitifully small 15 person pit). That revival was also off in direction and casting in dozens of ways.

And in any case, I myself, and others, can admit that we'd much rather see a good concert of FOLLIES than a concert of a sub-par forgotten musical from the 1960s.

And so, here is the casting that has been announced as of the moment...

Christine Baranski - Carlotta Campion ("I'm Still Here")
Philip Bosco - Dimitri Weismann
Victoria Clark - Sally Durant Plummer ("Buddy's Eyes," Losing My Mind")
Michael McGrath - Buddy Plummer ("Buddy's Blues")
Donna Murphy (!!) - Phyllis Rogers Stone ("Could I Leave You")
Joanne Worley - Stella Deems ("Who's That Woman)
Benjamin Stone - TBA (Brian Stokes Mitchell?)
Lucine Amara - Heidi Schiller
Leena Chopra - Young Heidi
Yvonne Constant - Solange Lafitte
Robert Fitch - Theodore Whitman
Diane J. Findlay - Sandra Cranes
Arthur Rubin - Roscoe
Dorothy Stanley - Dee Dee West
Gerry Vichi - Max Deems."