Fifty years ago tonight at the Winter Garden Theatre, Follies opened on Broadway.

12 previews, 522 performances. A mixed reception. The winner of 7 Tony Awards but—infamously—NOT Best Musical. The loss of its entire financial investment. A frustratingly truncated original cast recording from Capitol.

The ultimate cult musical was born.

Follies has been endlessly revised, revived, picked apart, concertized, and is the subject—still—of great debate.

But I'm going to celebrate 50 years of this landmark American musical by placing my focus on the original production, its creative team, and its cast.

By 1971, there'd been a musical comedy trend toward escapist nostalgia as seen via Dames at Sea & No, No, Nanette.

Then along came Follies.

Anyway, here's my favorite shot from Gloria Swanson's photoshoot in the rubble of the Roxy Theatre (which inspired director Hal Prince)

Follies is delightfully weird. Right from the start: ghosts saunter around the stage before the guests arrive and they commingle for the evening, where we get to revisit their triumphs, regrets, love, death; the show seems to touch upon everything and leaves no one unscathed.

Follies manages to be—simultaneously—the culmination and total deconstruction of the American musical. It's a controversial benchmark and arguably the apex of the concept musical: a mix of character songs, pastiche, dance buoyed by scenes that are fragments of past and present.

James Goldman's book takes the brunt of the criticism for Follies, which plays out mostly in real-time without much of a plot. I don't think the criticisms are unwarranted but no revision has improved on the original.

Even his stage directions are literature:

This is one of my favorite parts of Goldman's book. It is so specific and so rarely done as originally written, delivered here by the divine Alexis Smith: https://twitter.com/kevinddaly/status/1253427513956528129?s=20

Less controversial is Sondheim's miraculous score, a swirling mix of pastiche and character songs (tied together by orchestrator Jonathan Tunick's magnificent instincts).

His homages to composers of a bygone era of Broadway are absolutely remarkable.

Scenic designer Boris Aronson, who was always inventive and at the peak of his game, created a transition in Follies from the Weismann Theatre into Loveland that is one of the most astonishing pieces of stagecraft I've ever seen. https://twitter.com/kevinddaly/status/904767515578036225?s=20

Florence Klotz's costumes were an eye-popping panoply of period and then-contemporary designs. Follies has never quite had showgirls like the original.

(Also, I'm obsessed with the ghost behind Ethel in the jumpsuit)

It's perhaps harder to pay tribute to Tharon Musser's lighting design but by many accounts, her work really tied much of the evening together.

I offer this staggering shot of the end of the show, where Musser finally reveals the missing wall of the Weismann Theatre.

For Dorothy Collins, Follies was a long-awaited Broadway debut. And the sunny Your Hit Parade singer found a triumph inhabiting the delusional Sally.

The role is *extremely* difficult to pull off and Collins made it look effortless. https://twitter.com/kevinddaly/status/1214257716765626369?s=20

For Alexis Smith, Follies finally gave her the stardom that had long eluded her in movies. She won a Tony for playing the glamorous and patrician Phyllis, the most likable of the show's main quartet. https://twitter.com/kevinddaly/status/1261327078185750529?s=20

Gene Nelson, a remarkable dancer in '50s film musicals, played likable if frustrated traveling salesman Buddy.

Though his character was not in the follies, choreographer Michael Bennett gave Nelson the opportunity to remind everyone what he could do.

Then there is Ben Stone, lowkey drama queen, who is the reason everyone is having a terrible night. John McMartin, a replacement for Jon Cypher, was the youngest of the quartet and revisited "The Road You Didn't Take" at Sondheim's 80th birthday concert.

And there's Yvonne De Carlo, the most famous person in the original cast. She shared a few traits with her character, Carlotta: both were movie glamour girls turned TV stars with the right hint of diva self-awareness.

Sondheim gave her "I'm Still Here" https://soundcloud.com/theatreaficionado/im-still-here-1

Here's Alexis Smith performing "Could I Leave You?" in Follies just because it's one of my favorite Sondheim songs. https://soundcloud.com/theatreaficionado/could-i-leave-you

Dorothy Collins set the bar high for "Losing My Mind" and only a few have come close to her standard.

Michael Bennett's staging for "The Story of Lucy and Jessie" is a master class in how to build a number for a star who can move.

Note: the dancers never face the audience and Phyllis doesn't make eye contact with any of them. Absolutely riveting.

No discussion of Follies is complete without "Who's That Woman?" one of the most remarkable—perhaps the greatest—production numbers in the history of musical theatre. Mary McCarty leads the ladies:

Ask me my thoughts about Follies at your own peril.

To know more about the original production of Follies, read Ted Chapin's Everything Was Possible. Then read it again. Ted worked as a gofer on the original for school credit and it's an extraordinary read.

Follies was a show that was somehow both for its time and ahead of its time. It confronted 1971 audiences about their shared reality and many of them didn't want to hear it. Yet its esteem has only grown with time, and each staging is an Event®.

Your personal reaction to Follies also changes as you get older. The next time you see a production you will respond to it differently than you did the last time. Trust me.

Follies is a theatrical gift that keeps on giving—and will give again the next time it comes to town.

Here is a most remarkable video combining four video sources, several audio recordings, plus still photographs to assemble a 96-minute document of the original production of Follies.

Not since the restoration of Judy Garland's A Star Is Born...