Well, my editor at St. Martins - the estimable Michael Flamini - could not have disagreed with me more re: my take on the Encores! production of “Follies.” (Of course, he loved “Notes on a Scandal” too and I hated every eye-rolling unsexy moment of the film. It reminded me of some latter-day Bette Davis/Olivia Haviland piece of cinematic junk circa 1969.) Michael told me he much preferred his “Follies” chilly and cerebral. “To my mind,” he emailed me, “it’s the most fascinating piece of musical theatre created in the 20th Century because it is the one that got away.” He went on to cite his buddy Ethan Mordden, the theatre historian, who “thinks the reason the script and show seem so disjointed is that the party is not actually happening. Ethan thinks that ‘Follies’ is what is happening inside an empty, closed-up theatre as you walk by, all the memories, fantasies, etc. colliding An interesting concept. And maybe the reason we’ll never see ‘the ultimate’ production.” He went on to critique the performances - he loved Donna Murphy and Michael McGrath and especially Lucine Amara’s rendition of “One More Kiss.” He did NOT appreciate Victoria Clark’s version of “Losing My Mind” or Christine Baranski’s “I’m Still Here.” As for Baranski, I still think she was giving us an acting lesson. Instead of singing the song as an anthem of survival she showed us that surviving is not a campy nightclub act, but instead an angry act of will. But I’ll leave the last word about “Follies” to Eudora Welty. Yes, Eudora Welty. She went to see the show when it was on Broadway with my great friend, the late Frank Hains, who plays a big part in my book. Her take? As she says in Mississippi Sissy, “… the production, finally, was neither this nor that. But perhaps that was its underlying allure for me.”

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