Sense of Occasion by Harold Prince

Author:Harold Prince
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: memoir;theatre
Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
Published: 2017-10-04T16:49:50+00:00

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In addition to creating four alter egos—young people for our middle-aged principals—we decided to do the same for each character in the show and mirror them with their earlier youthful counterparts. Everyone had a doppelganger, and this led to one of its high points: the mirror number, in which Michael Bennett brilliantly choreographed the principals and wiped them away with their youthful selves dancing in the Follies in costumes covered in small mirrors. And all of this tap dancing on a raked stage (1–12”—whatever that means!—permitted by Actors Equity). It was a triumph of staging in my opinion, as stunning as any choreography I have ever seen.

There was one touchy period in rehearsal when Alexis Smith asked whether I would not stage “Could I Leave You?” because she preferred that Michael Bennett do it. Obviously, she thought it should be choreographed. I had my doubts. They went away and worked for a couple of days and then presented it to Steve and me. They had decided to have Phyllis (Alexis) break down and throw her arms around Ben’s legs. He tried to get away and dragged her across the floor—an idea of Alexis, I suspect. Steve and I hated it because it was more silent film than our Follies. So, though I was co-director, I was also producer and I exercised that authority and took over the staging of the number. To put it mildly, it made things awkward and unsettling for a couple of days, but “Could I Leave You?” remained as I staged it. This illustrates the difference between choreography and staging in character. Undoubtedly, Michael Bennett knew how to do the latter—he certainly proved that in A Chorus Line. But before Follies and since, I have always carved out staging of character numbers to be my responsibility, avoiding choreography, which can cost character.

We cast Follies using the example of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. We wanted the leads to be close to the characters they were playing, because it would help us persuade the audience that the people onstage were reliving their earlier celebrity, which is gone for them. We cast three movie stars—Alexis Smith, Gene Nelson, and Yvonne De Carlo—and Dorothy Collins, who had been a TV star on Your Hit Parade. De Carlo, a former Hollywood star, was, after all, as her character sings, still here. Gene Nelson, who had been in Hollywood musicals but had not been as prominent as Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, was playing close to himself also. Dorothy Collins and her character had much in common: she had been hurt by her childhood, and I used that. Her first husband, Raymond Scott, had presented her as an early teenager and later married her.

Only John McMartin was playing a character not connected to his history. He was one of my favorite actors (I’ve worked with him often), and I cast him because the central fulcrum of the show for me was his character’s story, about facing the road you didn’t take.

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