Stephen Sondheim was riding pretty high in 1971. His show Company was a year into its strong Broadway run when he opened a second show on Broadway, the ambitious Follies. Directed by Hal Prince and Michael Bennett, the show ran for over 500 performances, won 7 Tony awards, introduced several new standards to the American Songbook, and ultimately closed as a financial failure. Here is a good quality audience recording of the 2011 Kennedy Center revival [2h10m], starring Bernadette Peters, Elaine Page, and Linda Lavin.
We don’t have an official filming of the 1971 production, but here is a sort of a reproduction involving stills and film elements [1h36m]. It’s fairly complete and is surprisingly watchable. You can continue to engage with the original cast with this 1971 David Frost interview with several cast members [1h12m]. Several of the actors and production crew gathered for a pandemic panel earlier this year for Follies At 50 [2h20m]
There was a concert performance and recording made in 1985 with a mammoth cast. The documentary Follies In Concert [1h26m] shows the rehearsals and some performances from that night.
Of interest might be a collection of Sondheim’s demo recordings for the show [45m].
Michael Bennett’s involvement with co-directing and choreographing Follies led one theater scholar to examine Follies and A Chorus Line and their roles in 1970s Broadway in The Sondheim Influence: Follies, A Chorus Line, and The Concept Musical [1h5m].
The 2011 Kennedy Center production also involved a Kennedy Center “Theater Look-In” roundtable [1h] with the cast.