STAGE REVIEW : Veteran Cast Brings ‘Follies’ to Long Beach

Ghosts upon ghosts upon ghosts. Are you ready?

It has been almost 18 years since Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” inaugurated the Century City Shubert. It was a gala post-Broadway opening of a very expensive show that had been admired more than it had been loved, and that had had trouble sustaining itself on Broadway. It was directed by Hal Prince and Michael Bennett, with Bennett also doing the choreography, Boris Aronson designing the set (some irony here: a dilapidated grand old Broadway theater about to be torn down launching that brand new Century City palace!) and a cast that included Ethel Shutta, Dorothy Collins, Gene Nelson, Alexis Smith, John McMartin, Yvonne de Carlo and Fifi d’Orsay.

Quite a moment in time.

And here it is again--”Follies” reconstituted in more or less all of its grandeur. The Long Beach Civic Light Opera production at the Terrace Theater is directed by Fran Soeder, with Dorothy Lamour, Shani Wallis, Juliet Prowse, Harvey Evans, Ed Evanko, Karen Morrow and Denise Darcel. And those are only a few of the names that whet your appetite. There are also Yma Sumac, Susan Johnson, Billy Barnes and Jackie Joseph. Watch them play among the stunning, sumptuously garbed “ghosts” of the showgirls of yesteryear, moving like transfixed ostriches on a bleak set by Ken Holamon that delivers the resonance of a cloying past around its tattered edges. (Sets and costumes came from the San Jose Civic Light Opera; Cathleen Edwards designed the costumes; Anthony Wilson the wigs.)

Nice stuff, beautifully lit by Kim Killingsworth, in a show where the right lighting is vital. The window dressing is impressive; the action in it less so. Among the friendly warring couples, Prowse gives the most accomplished performance--singing and dancing--as the glamorous Phyllis, with Evans second as the perplexed Buddy, Evanko fitful as the tormented Ben and Wallis a little too solidly planted on Earth as the spacey Sally, married to Buddy but still in love with Ben. (Her “Losing My Mind,” one of Sondheim’s most beautiful ballads, doesn’t quite lose it enough.)

But this show, of course, is not about plot except as it counterpoints nostalgia. (James Goldman did the book which bears some analogies, in retrospect, with Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.”) “Follies” delivered isolated vignettes like fading photographs in gilded frames. The pentimento is the interweaving of the Follies performers in their younger, vibrant states (Mary Jo Mahaffey, Dan O’Grady, Tony Adelman, Beverly Ward, Gary Parry, Jody Peterson, Tracy Bardens and Leslie Beauvais). Set in 1971--there is no attempt here to update the action--it is all about intricate sets of echoes, how the past reverberates in the present and how love and insecurities die hard, if at all.

Memory and patina become crucial ingredients in a show of this kind and they are only superficially achieved here. The production knows best how to be brassy. Johnson’s sociable Stella (she walks off with “Who’s That Woman”) and Morrow’s irrepressible Carlotta (her “I’m Still Here” is the strongest solo in the show) are among the most vivid characterizations.

Lamour manages a creditable “Broadway Baby” in an otherwise game but tentative performance. Which is not a bad description of this “Follies” as a whole. You want to like it, you want to be swept up in its nostalgic yearnings, but too often it huffs where it should glide and puffs where it should purr. Too much of it is work, too little of it play.

One feels the sheer mass of the piece and not enough of its magic in a production that means well but is having trouble smarting up its pace and just hanging together. One more thing: The body miking echo is one echo one can do without. All voices reach the audience through a kind of dullish boom. It doesn’t help. Sound designer Michael Mikulka should get on it fast.

At the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center, Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m., and a special evening performance next Sunday only, 7 p.m.. Ends March 18. Tickets: $10-$32.50; (213) 432-7926, (714) 826-9371.