Chicago Tribune Review: Chicago greats, emerging from the shadows for ‘Follies’ at the Studebaker

Veteran Chicago actors, looking fabulous, emerged Saturday night from the shadows of semi-retirement at the historic Studebaker Theater, joining such generous stars as Anthony Rapp and Stephen Wallem in a deeply emotional, one-weekend-only production of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s “Follies,” a masterful musical about the challenges of aging, the power of sweet memory and the immutability of regret.

For fans of this city’s veteran musical-theater stalwarts, the pleasures were many, not the least of which was Felicia P. Fields emerging from the rear of the Studebaker, blinking at the lights and knocking out “Broadway Baby,” not to mention hearing Susie McMonagle interpret “I’m Still Here” with the focus on vulnerability that made her a star here in shows like “Billy Elliot.”

But this was by no means all sepia-toned survivorship. Both Angela Ingersoll, who played the ever-hopeful Sally, and Michelle Duffy, as the cynical realist Phyllis, pulsed with vivacious energy, playing across from Rapp’s sardonic take on wound-tight Ben and Wallem’s deeply sad exploration of Buddy. Ingersoll, a whopping talent in her prime, flies here; her voice blended most delightfully with Rapp’s on “Too Many Mornings,” and her solo take on “Buddy’s Eyes” was a knockout.

The brilliance of “Follies” lies in how it combines the emotionally heightened landscape of a reunion (here of showpeople, but could be any reunion) with a complicated quartet whose irrevocable choices are coming home to roost in various shades of misery. If a class reunion, or something similar, has ever provoked you to make changes in life or love, or to wish you could, you’ll recognize the truth in most every Sondheim lyric.

I did wish Porchlight Music Theatre had been able to get better mics for everyone; the style of microphones on stands fits this kind of staging, for sure, but it caused some sound issues and, I think, the need to find the right mic took too much focus. But that’s really my way of saying that director Michael Weber should strive to come back to this piece, with as many of these artists as possible, and find a way to do a full staging. Along with musical director Linda Madonia, he already achieves a great deal: the younger versions of the leading characters, played by Anastasia Arnold, Teagan Early (a big emerging talent), Will Koski and John Marshall Jr., are exactly what this piece needs in their hopefulness and naiveté.

Pulling off this downtown weekend (Sunday afternoon was a near sell-out) really was a signature Porchlight achievement and the kind of show that reminds us of the fortuitousness for Chicago of the renovation of the classic Studebaker, a theater with as many stories to tell as have Sondheim and Goldman’s characters, not to mention these actors, all very much at home with Sondheim and very much still here.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic

cjones5@chicagotribune.com