Ballroom versus Follies

Ballroom versus Follies

The book Ballroom by Alice Simpson was unofficially given to me as my “Blind Date With a Book” by my assistant branch manager.  I use the word “unofficially” because I did not fill out the required dating profile and it was not presented to me in wrapping paper.  However my assistant branch manager read the blurb about the book and thought that the themes in this book were similar to the theme of Stephen Sondheim’s musical  Follies—one of my favorite musicals and one that I have had the privilege of directing locally.

Ballroom and Follies do have similar themes and I basically did enjoy the book—however I didn’t like it as much as the musical Follies.  Ballroom tells the intermingling stories of a group of strangers who are united by a desire to escape their complicated and unhappy lives, if only for a few hours each Sunday evening, in a dilapidated Manhattan dance hall on the verge of closure.  Follies brings a group of past performers in the Weismann Follies, a musical revue (based on the Ziegfeld Follies), together for a first and last reunion at the Manhattan theatre in which they performed before it is torn down and turned into a parking lot.

The characters in both the book and the play have a “lost souls” quality about them and are searching for happiness and human connection.  In both works the journey is not easy.  However in the musical, the principal characters leave the reunion somewhat shaken by what they encountered during this evening of ghosts and reminiscences—but they all leave the theatre ready to face another day.  

Follies is ultimately about survival and letting go of the past.  Ballroom is not as grittily optimistic as Follies.  Some of the journeys of the main characters end tragically and ambivalently.  It is more of an in-depth character study than Follies.  The only resolution that is truly optimistic is the journey of the younger couple:  Angel and Maria fulfill their dream of opening a new dance hall—“Club Paradiso”.  So I guess in this sense Follies and Ballroom do share the similar theme of letting go of the past and survival:  the dilapidated dance hall is closed—but a new dance hall is opened.

I certainly encourage everyone who enjoys looking at bygone eras and exploring how the ghosts of the past can successfully or unsuccessfully move people to “survive “ and/or “thrive” in the present, to see a production of Sondheim’s Follies and to read Alice Simpson’s Ballroom.

                      --submitted by David Porterfield