dance behind the veterans at the party, then move into line
with them so that the two groups can dance together. At the
end, the veterans are in the same positions where they began,
but now each is paired with her own younger self.^7
Since the actual performers of the veteran roles are them-
selves veterans of show business (Mary McCarty was Stella in
the original production, with Dorothy Collins, Alexis Smith,
Ethel Barrymore Colt, Yvonne DeCarlo, Helon Blount, and
Sheila Smith as Stella’s backup chorus line), there is a nostalgic
realism to having the real old-girl troupers bring off the num-
ber while they are pretending to be old-girl troupers bringing
off the number. A layer of extra attention is called for by
the casting—Mary McCarty really can do this song and dance,
which is supposed to be Stella’s doing, and the same can be said
for Dorothy Collins, Alexis Smith, and the others. Call this the
foreground layer—the casting of Mary McCarty and company
fronts the diegetic performance Stella and company give at the
Weissman party.
The ghosts of Stella and the other veterans now can be seen
as the background layer, and the result is a number enveloped
by two layers of performance. The ghostly younger selves of
the chorus girls in the background are present not because they
are at the Weissman party but because they are summoned
from some Follies of memory by the performance of this num-
ber. They are a function of the performance. They are from out
of the blue. But they are imitating the Weissman girls at the
party, dancing their every step behind them, so they belong to a
diegetic moment.
Now look at the foreground layer—Mary McCarty, Alexis
Smith, Dorothy Collins, the actresses who are playing Stella
and the other Weissman girls. These celebrity actresses add a
patina of their presence to the roles they play. “That’s Dorothy
Collins!” one is always thinking. “That’s Yvonne DeCarlo? I
thought she was dead” (which is virtually a line Yvonne DeCarlo
WHAT KIND OF DRAMA IS THIS? 189
(^7) Sondheim originally meant to have five veterans and six younger selves, to
indicate that one of the veterans had died, but the numbers were evened in re-
hearsals. See Chapin, Everything Was Possible, pp. 39–40.