The Blogging "Follies" Project: First Rehearsal

It's the first afternoon of "Follies" rehearsals and music director Andrew Abrams is quite pleased with what he's heard so far, but that doesn’t mean everything is perfect.

"Danny, you either get the F or the E flat, but you never get both at the same time," he tells Daniel Graupner, who's playing Young Buddy.

A few minutes earlier, he admonished Amanda Poulson, who's playing Young Phyllis, to "Stop singing like an opera singer."

Not too long afterwards, however, Abrams tells the cast members at this rehearsal, "You're all so well-learned: I'm impressed."

Although the cast for the Four Seasons Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies" was selected in November 2007, they didn't receive their musical scores until December 16, 2007. That's when the entire cast, including guest star Tom Wopat, gathered in a UW-Madison classroom to meet each other, get the rehearsal schedule, and get their music.

"Why did the cast have to wait so long to receive their music?" I ask Four Seasons managing director, Sarah Marty. The answer has to do with rights, she explains. You usually don't receive the musical score from the organization that administers the rights to produce a musical such as "Follies" until about two months before the production will be staged.

Even though the cast members have had only three weeks to learn their songs, Marty says they should know their parts – especially the melody line – pretty well by now. Today's rehearsal, she says, is about working on vocal techniques and harmony.

In "Follies," seven of the major characters (five singers and two dancers) have on-stage alter egos – younger versions of themselves. Today's rehearsal was supposed to bring together four characters and their younger selves, but not everyone could make it. Sally (Tamara Brognano) and Young Sally (Jamie Pitt) are here. Ben's understudy (Jace Nichols) is here, but Young Ben (Beau Martin) is not. Phyllis (Marja Barger) isn't here, but Young Phyllis (Poulson) is, and so is Young Buddy (Graupner).

Pianist Joy Bauman accompanies Jace Nichols (Tom Wopat's understudy for the role of Ben) and Tamara Brognano (Sally)

From left to right: Jamie Pitt (Young Sally), Daniel Graupner (Young Buddy), and Amanda Poulson (Young Phyllis)

The rehearsal was scheduled to run from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m., but after three hours, most of the necessary work has been accomplished. Several performers have already been permitted to leave. I know that things are really winding down when Abrams begins talking about another Sondheim musical: The recent film adaptation of "Sweeney Todd," directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

"The movie was the Cliff Notes version of the show," says Abrams. "You can tell that [director] Tim Burton knows nothing about musical theater."

Abrams, however, has an extraordinary amount of knowledge about musical theater. You can be confident that when "Follies" is performed in the Wisconsin Union Theater on February 22-23, 2008, you'll be seeing much more than a Cliff Notes rendition of the musical the so-called "Butcher of Broadway" once called a "musical treasure."

Note: I'm going to be blogging the Four Seasons Theatre production of "Follies" from start to finish. In October, I blogged about the auditions for "Follies." For the next seven weeks, I'll be attending rehearsals, taking photographs, and reporting on what I see and hear. There are also scores of talented people involved in "Follies," both on stage and behinds the scenes, and I plan to write about them, as well as the behind the scenes saga of what's involved in creating a successful, professional musical theater production. If you'd like to see more photographs from the first rehearsal, please visit my Flickr photo set.