The Musical as Drama

and a book show, a sort of experiment in the possibility of
combining the two formats.
The four main characters spend much of their time feeling
sorry for themselves in the book scenes, and one of the endur-
ing puzzles of Folliesis why it can be fascinating despite this
concentration on self-pity. Ben and Phyllis, Buddy and Sally—
the book scenes involving these four in their present-day un-
happiness are static and humorless. The four become interest-
ing because of the numbers they sing and because of their past,
which is represented by the ghostly figures of their younger
selves. The numbers add a layer of lyric time to the book, and
the book adds its own extra layer of time in the younger selves.
The younger selves have numbers too. The time of the present-
day book can yield to a flashback book scene, which itself can
yield to a number-within-the-flashback, so the discrepancies of
time are manifold. It is even possible for the present-day char-
acters to watch their younger selves performing a number, al-
though this happens rarely. When it does happen, Ben, Phyllis,
Sally, and Buddy are seeing themselves across two shifts of
time at once, a chronological shift into the past and a lyrical
shift into music. The younger selves in the number are vulner-
able, just as all performers of numbers in musicals are vulnera-
ble, but especially because they are being seen by the selves
they will become. Not that they pay it much heed. Young peo-
ple do not often notice the gaze of their own later selves. But
we notice, and the later selves notice.
One of the best numbers in Folliesis “Who’s That Woman,”
known among the Follies girls who used to perform it as the
Mirror Scene, because the performers admit that in singing
about “the saddest gal in town” they are singing about them-
selves. In most productions they look into hand mirrors. At the
Weissman party, they decide to do the number one last time.
An old trouper named Stella takes the lead as she did in her
Follies days, but she insists on being backed by the other
Weissman veterans who are on hand—six of them, including
Phyllis and Sally of the main plot. Their dancing is mirrored
by their younger selves, real chorus girls playing ghosts, identi-
cal to one another in their tap costumes. The younger selves

188 CHAPTER EIGHT