Northampton’s beautiful Royal Theatre – officially re-opening last night after a £15million refurbishment for both it and the adjoining modern Derngate that makes the public spaces for both seamlessly one – was launched in a wittily ironic gesture by a new production of Sondheim and Goldman’s 1971 musical about the closing and demolition of an old theatre, Follies.
The show, which delicately pastiches musical forms of the past to deliver a knock-out emotional punch of its own about the unravelling of personal relationships as past and present collide, has long become a nostalgic cult in its own right: as we grow older with the show (and its themes of love, loss and professional and personal compromise resonant all the louder), it has taken on any number of layers that are impossible to separate from the show itself. It is a defining masterpiece of the genre, and I can only marvel anew at how each new production brings out new and piercing revelations.
Since there was a West End clash last night with the opening of another exercise in double nostalgia, Dirty Dancing – refracting the 60s from the perspective of 80s when the original film was first released – I went the night before to Follies, but seeing these shows back-to-back proved, if nothing else, that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Next to the dense layers of Follies, Dirty Dancing merely provides a surface facsimile of its source and period.
Yet Dirty Dancing is clearly the crowd-pleaser that Follies will never be: it already commands an advance box office of £12m, reportedly the largest in West End history. And just it was to be welcomed last week that there was room in London for both the riotous laughs of Spamalot and the earnest, revealing truths of Caroline, or Change, so I hope that there is room in a vibrant musical theatre for the likes of Follies and Dirty Dancing. But I also fear that the success of Dirty Dancing could finally send off original musicals forever. It’s bad enough that they musicals are almost always based on pre-existing film titles nowadays, but at least they have original scores. Now we’ve got an old film and jukebox score, a double familiarity to spread content.
