"The Sun Comes Up": Follies Will Get a 2011 Cast Album | Playbill

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News "The Sun Comes Up": Follies Will Get a 2011 Cast Album A cast album for the new Broadway revival of Follies is shaping up to be the Rialto's worst-keep secret this week. Cast members have leaked the news via Tweets and Facebook postings. The record label has confirmed the news to Playbill.com.

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Bernadette Peters in Follies. Photo by Joan Marcus

Terri White (who plays Stella Deems) and Danny Burstein (who plays Buddy Plummer) are among the enthusiastic troupers sharing the news. "Got word today that we'll be doing a cast recording," Burstein wrote on Facebook. "PS Classics is producing. And they're doing it right. Two CD set. The entire score."

Playbill.com reached PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker Aug. 21 for comment. The frequent producer of Sondheim discs, including the Grammy Award-nominated A Little Night Music and Sondheim on Sondheim in 2010, confirmed that a two-disc Follies set is in the planning stages, and added that a formal announcement with full details is expected soon.

The Kennedy Center production of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's Tony Award-winning musical is now in previews at the Marquis Theatre in anticipation of a Sept. 12 opening.

Eric Schaeffer directs a cast that includes Bernadette Peters as Sally Durant Plummer, Ron Raines as Ben Stone, Elaine Paige as Carlotta Campion, Jan Maxwell as Phyllis Rogers Stone, and more.

James Moore serves as music director and conducts the 28-piece orchestra. Jonathan Tunick’s original orchestrations are being employed for the production. The original cast album severely truncated the ambitious, Tony-winning score. Follies, with songs by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman, was originally directed by Harold Prince on Broadway in 1971. Since then, it has received a legendary star-filled concert at Lincoln Center in 1985 (preserved on recording), a Roundabout revival on Broadway directed by Matthew Warchus in 2001 (not recorded), a City Center Encores! production in 2007 (not recorded) and numerous regional mountings, including a Paper Mill Playhouse engagement that featured Donna McKechnie and the late Ann Miller (preserved on a cast album). The original cast recording and a London cast recording that includes songs written for that run are also on the market.

Follies concerns a group of former "Follies" stars who return to the site of their former glory, the Weismann Theatre, which is about to be demolished. Old wounds resurface as two Follies stars (Phyllis and Sally) and their husbands (Benjamin and Buddy) reassess their lives and what could have been.

Among the show's songs are "Beautiful Girls," "Don't Look at Me," "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs," "Rain on the Roof," "Ah, Paris!," "Broadway Baby," "The Road You Didn't Take," "In Buddy's Eyes," "Who's That Woman?," "I'm Still Here," "Too Many Mornings," "The Right Girl," "One More Kiss," "Could I Leave You?," "Loveland," "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow," "Love Will See Us Through," "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues," "Losing My Mind," "The Story of Lucie and Jessie" and "Live, Laugh, Love."

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Founded in 2000 by Tommy Krasker & Philip Chaffin, and a six-time Grammy nominee (for its cast albums of Assassins, Nine: The Musical, Grey Gardens, Company, A Little Night Music and Sondheim on Sondheim), PS Classics celebrates the heritage of Broadway and American popular song through its award-winning cast recordings; solo albums by Maureen McGovern, Victoria Clark, Kate Baldwin, Jessica Molaskey and Christine Andreas (among others); and recordings drawn from rare sound archives, including "Sondheim Sings." Summer releases include studio cast albums of the Gershwins' 1930 Strike Up the Band, the long-lost Vernon Duke/Ogden Nash musical Sweet Bye and Bye, plus the live concert album of She Loves Him, Tony nominee Kate Baldwin's tribute to songwriter Sheldon Harnick. 

PS Classics' next release is the Joshua Schmidt-Jan Tranen score to A Minister's Wife, a new musical based on Bernard Shaw's Candida. Visit the label's website, www.psclassics.com.

Follow Playbill.com managing editor Kenneth Jones on Twitter @PlaybillKenneth.

 
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