'Follies': A Sondheim revival for the ages

For decades, those of us who missed the legendary "Follies" premiere in 1971 have been nostalgic for a production worthy of Stephen Sondheim's haunting and magnificent monument to musical-theater nostalgia, to roads not taken and grown-up pleasures that might have been.

Finally, we have this one -- the first staged "Follies" I've seen that wouldn't work better as just a concert of blazingly theatrical Sondheim songs without James Goldman's mawkish dialogue. This rich and wrenching revival -- first directed by Eric Schaeffer at the Kennedy Center last spring and starring, for starters, Bernadette Peters and Jan Maxwell -- seems blissfully unaware of any such problem.

Instead, Schaeffer, a head-spinning 28-piece orchestra and an enormous cast of singing, acting individuals recreate the reunion of aging showgirls with an emotional intimacy that thrives within layers of story lines and timelines and captivating faded spectacle. Even the cavernous Marquis Theatre almost seems built for humanity. (Still, try to sit close.)

It is party night before the Weismann -- i.e. Ziegfeld -- Theatre will be wrecked for a parking lot. Stars and chorines from 1918 through the '40s have returned, some with spouses, all with baggage. Ghosts of their young selves mingle hopefully between the regrets while gorgeous leggy zombies in peacock headdresses silently taunt from catwalks on the shadowy skeleton set. (Acutely observed costumes are by Gregg Barnes, surprising set is by Derek McLane.)

The main plot involves two unhappily married, marvelously portrayed couples: Peters as the former ingénue depressed in Phoenix, Danny Burstein in a breakout performance as her husband with the salesman smile, Maxwell as the follies girl who learned to be a trophy wife for Ron Raines, the self-loathing hotshot.

But star turns are for everyone. One after another, these songs shake our preconceptions about the limitations of standard musical forms -- from operetta (for richly mature diva Rosalind Elias) to vaudeville to faux-Frenchy jazz (a slinky Mary Beth Peil). The show includes arguably the world's wittiest bad-divorce song, the most raucously self-lacerating I-need-you-to-go-away blues, the savviest I'm-still-here anthem (slyly nailed by Elaine Paige) and, with "Broadway Baby" (deliciously cast against type with Jayne Houdyshell), a hymn to a sensibility beyond the tapping feet of 42nd Street.

Sondheim honors and satirizes the illusions of the American dream while pointing the direction for the musical-theater's future. Imagine a ghost-haunted variety show in nirvana.

WHAT "Follies"

WHERE Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway, Manhattan

INFO $55-$135; 877-250-2929; folliesbroadway.com

BOTTOM LINE One for the ages