2025 DENVER GAZETTE TRUE WEST AWARDS: DAY 22

Directors assemble a huge cast of seasoned and starting performers for historic, first local run at Sondheim’s ‘Follies’

The Vintage Theatre in Aurora pulled something off in June the likes of which we hadn’t quite seen on any local theater stage in more than 20 years.

Back in 2004, the Arvada Center gathered 30 of the area’s best actresses for a massive production of Clare Boothe Luce’s play “The Women,” a 1936 society satire that grew into something much greater than just another local stage play. It became an event. A thing. The buzz was everywhere.

If you were a follower of local theater at the time, you recognized the significance of the moment: This was a happening never to be repeated and therefore not to be missed. Unlike TV and film, there is no rewinding in live theater. So if you snoozed, you loosed. (You know what I mean.)

Fast-forward to last summer at Vintage, where longtime Artistic Director Bernie Cardell was undertaking the unthinkable: A homegrown staging of both his personal favorite musical and Stephen Sondheim’s biggest flop: “Follies,” both an economic disaster on Broadway in 1971 – and, over time and a lot of critical reconsideration, an artistic triumph. (Two things can be true.)

A couple of things you have to understand: No one stages “Follies,” which bowed on Broadway with a company of 47 actors. No one in Colorado has (that I can find a record of) in its 53-year existence. (In 2014, Opera Fort Collins put on a one-night sing-through of the score.) Pretty much the only way Sondheim fans get to see songs from “Follies” is to see other Sondheim musicals that borrow songs from “Follies” (“Like, say, “A Little Night Music,” “Putting it Together” and “Side by Side by Sondheim.”)

But, what a score: This is where Sondheim intended for you to hear a gut-scraper like “Losing My Mind,” a show-stopper like “Broadway Baby” and a gloriously defiant anthem like “I’m Still Here.”

Another thing you need to know: Vintage is a prolific theater company. No one presents more homegrown theater titles every year. Not even the mighty Denver Center Theatre Company. But Vintage is not made of money. Budget-wise, Vintage would be the shoestring to, say, the Denver Center’s big-boy belt.

“Follies,” in full production, comes with immense production costs, from payroll to multiple scenic settings to lavish costumes. And there’s this: The story is dark. Like, quintessentially 1970s-era American musicals dark. It’s about a group of aging showgirls who are reuniting at their decaying old theater before it’s demolished. Through the interwoven stories of two couples (and their ghosts), you’re in for an evening of confrontation, regret, delusion, bitter truths, emotional breakdowns – you know the Sondheim drill.

Which is to say: “Follies,” in 2025, is a tough sell. Which is why Cardell did it the only way Vintage ever could possibly pull it off: “As Follies in Concert.” But not just as a one-off special event. As two full weekends of performances. And he could have pulled off more, but part of the  miracle of his production was putting together (yes, I said it) the most intriguing and nostalgic ensemble since “The Women.” If only for two weeks.

There were 19 actors in this iteration, ranging in age from 25 to 89. All told, they have logged more than 1,000 years on this Earth and delivered innumerable indelible moments on our stages. The oldest was Joey Wishnia, one of three Colorado Theatre Guild Lifetime Achievement Award winners in the cast. This was a who’s-who of both “up-and-comers” and “still-doing-its” – take Deb Persoff, who at this very moment is performing in Vintage’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (through Jan. 11) at age 79.

When Persoff reshuffled the roof each night with “I’m Still Standing,” it just landed differently, and with greater impact. The narrator uses the country’s historic troubles as a metaphor for scrappy survival. But with Persoff singing it, the song comes off as personal roadmap of a life lived and overcome.

“With that song, I was able to sing words that I would like to say every day of my life,” Persoff said. “I’m saying to you: ‘Don’t turn away, because look, I’m still here. I’m in this room. I’ve got a lot to tell you – and a lot more stories yet to come.’”

I asked what it meant to Persoff to have the opportunity to bring the house down with that song night after night.

“Boy, that’s the definition of full gratitude, isn’t it?” she said.

There was something downright bad*ss about watching veteran Colorado theater dames like Persoff and Sue Leiser – the two carryovers from “The Women” in 2004 – owning their space and this moment. For Leiser, (who hadn’t appeared in a local theater production in 10 years but came back for this project because she recognized the historic significance of this opportunity, it doesn’t get any better than performing the brassy “Broadway Baby” at age 85, in your full power.

And she pulled off a delicious and wholly not subtle nightly act of artistic rebellion in the process. While the staging was for the most part fully performed (only without sets and other production values), the actors were allowed to carry their scripts in binders if necessary, both as a concession to age and the limitations of a three-week rehearsal period.

As the audience applauded her song each night, Leiser, inspired by a popular social media meme of last summer, held up the back of her binder for all to read a message no one required reading glasses to make out. It said, in capital letters: “I may be old, but I got to see the world before it went to (bleep).”

That’s Leiser, having her moment at 85. Personally, I think the surviving members of the Silent Generation have earned the right to be heard. And sassy.

But every member of this cast has either a developing or firmly established place in local theater history. Perhaps you recognize some of the names:

• Joe Barnard
• Nicole Cherecwich
• Jan Cleveland
• Bradley Davis
• Max Deems
• Sharon Dwinnell
• Melissa Fike
• Jim Hitzke
• Traci Kern
• Sue Leiser
• Mary McGroary
• Brian Merz-Hutchinson
• Deborah Persoff
• Lars Preece
• Marcia Ragonetti
• Jeremy Rill
• Susie Roelofsz
• Megan Schraeder
• Ellen Shamas-Brandt
• Joey Wishnia

“That is a group of people who have been working in this town – some of them for decades  – but they had never been all in one room together,” said Cardell, who assembled his cast entirely by invitation. Why no auditions? “I recognized this as a special opportunity to honor people I have looked up to for years,” he said. “They are the elders of our community who are often overlooked.”

Cardell knew who he wanted, and he went after them. He started with the aforementioned elders, and as each one said yes, others signed on. In no time, he had his dream cast. Eight of them were new to the Vintage Theatre stage.

The name perhaps most essential to pulling off this production is not listed above. That’s 24-year-old (at the time) Caleb Wenger, the music director of a show written 31 years before his birth. I just find it irresistibly adorable that the young man tasked with teaching this group of veteran performers some of the most difficult music ever written was the youngest person in the room. So, did the old gals razz him, I asked?

“I think there was definitely a sense of humor around my age,” Wenger said with guileless diplomacy. “But I was really honored by how generous and kind they were. They could have been flippant with me, but they were all very honoring and respectful. And I felt like I was able to honor their experience and their vision in return.”

Still: “Sondheim is no joke. This probably required the highest amount of practice and preparation for a show that I’ve done,” said Wenger, himself an accomplished musical performer at the Town Hall Arts Center, Candlelight Dinner Playhouse and elsewhere.

“These performers are just so experienced and seasoned that I think if you give them the freedom to play with things and let them bring what they envision to the character, you’re going to end up with something good. Honestly, it was more about getting out of the way and just being a flexible and collaborative accompanist.”

Yes, and … I am on the record (many times) suggesting that Sondheim was a cruel genius who wrote music never intended for mere mortals to sing. Cardell smartly loaded his ensemble with Sondheim ringers like Rill and Kern and Roelofsz, but this was a multigenerational cast that would need some accommodation for the realities of aging. Wenger found ways to help each actor sound their best.

“We did have some performers whose voices were a little out of practice, so we were very flexible when it came to keys and things like that,” Wenger said. “But the most important thing to me to remember was that each song is a story, like its own play. I was there to help them tell their story the best way possible. And I think you could see that in the show.

“When you heard Deb Persoff tell her character’s story, you kind of felt that she was telling her own story. And I think Sue Leiser’s take on ‘Broadway Baby’ was one of the most realistic and honest versions of that song that you can find, because anyone could see that the person singing that song is a Broadway baby. And she still is.”

Cardell has had a hand in somewhere approaching 200 plays and musicals as a Denver theatermaker. This one goes in the vault as one of his favorites.

“I didn’t know if people would feel as excited about the show as I was, and it turned out that they were just as excited, if not more,” he said. “And I think the most special part of it was just the level of heart in that room, from rehearsal to performance. People were just loving what they were doing on the stage. There was a glow about this one that you don’t get with every show.”

Note: The Denver Gazette True West Awards, now in their 25th and final year, began as the Denver Post Ovation Awards in 2001. Denver Gazette Senior Arts Journalist John Moore celebrates the Colorado theater community throughout December by revisiting 30 good stories from the past year without categories or nominations.

Vintage Theatre/Coming up

Through Dec. 31: “Who’s Holiday”

• Through Jan. 11: “The Mystrery of Edwin Drood”

• Jan. 9-Feb. 15: “The Shark is Broken”

• Feb. 20-March 29: “9 to 5: The Musical”

• Info: vintagetheatre.org

More True West Awards coverage

• 2025 True West Awards, Day 1: Matt Zambrano

• Day 2: Rattlebrain is tying up ‘Santa’s Big Red Sack’

• Day 3: Mission Possible: Phamaly alumni make national impact

• Day 4: Jeff Campbell invites you to join him on the dark side

• Day 5: Cleo Parker Robinson is flying high at 77

• Day 6: Mirror images: Leslie O’Carroll and Olivia Wilson

• Day 7: Philip Sneed will exit Arvada Center on a high

• Day 8: Ed Reinhardt’s magic stage run ends after 27 years

• Day 9: Costume Designer Nikki Harrison

• Day 10: DU’s tech interns getting the job done

• Day 11: Husbands, wives keep home fire burning

• Day 12: Denver School of the Arts’ Drama Dash

• Day 13: Theater as a powerful response to violence

• Day 14: Elitch Theatre no longer a ghost town

• Day 15: A double play for playwright Luke Sorge

• Day 16: ‘Legally Blonde’ at the Air Force Academy? Elle, yes!

• Day 17: Kelly Van Oosbree is the cat in the hats

• Day 18: Phamaly presents a ‘Pericles’ for the neurodivergent

• Day 19: Justine Lupe and Coloradans on the national stage

• Day 20: Immersive Theatre after the end of Off-Center

• Day 21: Matt Radcliffe and theater as therapy for trauma