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This month, we ferret some facts from the fellas of Broadway's Follies, Ron Raines and Danny Burstein, the respective Ben and Buddy of James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim's groundbreaking 1971 musical. The Eric Schaeffer-directed revival is currently in previews leading to a Sept. 12 opening at the Marquis Theatre.

Warning: These interviews contains some plot spoilers, if you are new to Follies.

Danny Burstein calls Ron Raines a cowboy, and the east Texas-born and raised Raines will channel Roy Rogers if you get him going about songs that feature Texas cities. I think he sang me four or five, ending with "The Streets of Laredo."

The son of an evangelical minister, Raines says he sang before he ever spoke. "My mother said they just stood me up on the pew and I'd hold a songbook and haul off and sing."

A high school production of Oklahoma! gave him the bug and sent him to — where else? — Oklahoma City, where he got a degree in vocal music and made his way eventually to NYC (first Broadway show witnessed: Pippin), where a "left turn" led him into the world of soap operas as the villainous Alan Spaulding for 15 years on "Guiding Light," until the show ended in 2009.

Raines, reflecting on the demise of the soap, conjures a Sondheim lyric from "One More Kiss" in Follies: "All things beautiful must die," he said. "Everything dies." But out of death comes life, and Raines has given new life to Follies' Ben Stone, a character he originally played over 20 years ago. The show marks Raines' first on Broadway since a run in Chicago in 2002.

Congrats on your return to Broadway.
Thanks! It's going very well. I think there's been a lot of tweaking and improvements in the show that we weren't able to address [in the late-spring Washington, DC, run at the Kennedy Center]. When we got up here and were able to go back into rehearsal, they were addressed, and I think the show is going to be much better here in New York.

	Raines and Bernadette Peters during the late-spring Kennedy Center run of Follies.
	photo by Joan Marcus

Can you talk about the nature of what some of those are?
It's just better storytelling. Making the story clearer and clearer and moments clearer. It's just tweaking, you know? You just try to make it better. That's why you go into previews. We want to get it as right as we can. It's a tremendous group of people. And when I say a group, I mean quite a group. Forty-one people on stage. Lots of principals, and it's a great thing to be a part of. I'm very honored to be working with a lot of these people. When I hear the overture every night, it just blows me away. It sets the whole haunting tone of the evening.

This is a show that you have done as far back as '88.
Yeah, I did it in Detroit with Michigan Opera Theatre, with Nancy Dussault and Juliet Prowse, and our Carlotta was Edie Adams.

Wow, that's an exciting cast.
I was too young to do Ben at that time. Although I did a pretty good job, that character stayed with me. The role stays with you, and I remember saying, "I'm just too young to play this man. I don't understand him yet," but as I lived life, and life experiences came to me…I understood him more. He's a pretty messed up guy, but an interesting character.

It's rare, I would think, for an actor to play a character he's too young to understand, and then get to revisit it at an older age…
I remember I was playing Gaylord Ravenal in Show Boat when I was 32 in 1983 and I worked it with a guy named Allan Jones who did the 1936 movie of "Show Boat" with Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan…

Oh yeah, Allan Jones, father of Jack Jones.
Yeah, he'd done Show Boat all over the place. I remember him telling me the story. He said he went into the Players' Club and saw Dennis King. (Dennis King was another leading man in the '20s and '30s. He originated The Three Musketeers and The Vagabond King…he did the '32 revival of Show Boat.) Allan said, "Hey Dennis, we understand Ravenal now, but we're too old to play him!" I understand that as an actor. Sometimes as you finally start to understand a character, either no one is producing that show or you're not getting asked to do it. It's like, "Hey, now I'm ready!" but it doesn't happen. But, you know, Ravenal, unlike Ben Stone, starts at one age and ends at another age. So you're either the old guy or the young guy; that's a different set of problems. But the point is that, yes, for some strange reason when I was starting out in my career I was always playing older guys. I was playing fathers and I was going, "Hmm, a lot of these situations, I don't quite emotionally understand yet." But the characters stay with you forever. As life happens, you observe something or you experience something in your life, emotionally, and you say, "Aha! That's what the guy was going through."

Ben Stone is a guy who has some issues. Some self-delusion. How much can you relate to the harsher aspects of the character?
He's not at peace with the past. And the past that he's not at peace with has damaged his life. What happens, I think, at this reunion, that all gets stirred up. It's stuff that's been down there…[he's had] all these affairs and [he struggles with ] all this type-A overachiever, hungry-for-power-and-fame stuff… And yet, he wonders, what if he had taken another road. …One of the great songs, "The Road You Didn't Take," that's when he starts to crack a little bit — as he starts to regurgitate and talk about it to Sally. The beginning of the song starts one place but by the time it's over, some cracks in the façade are starting to show.

I think we all think, at some point, think of the roads we didn't take.
"What if I had changed my major when I really wanted to go into medicine, but I stayed in this business," and "What if I had gone into medicine?" "What if I had moved to Colorado that one summer?" Boy, I almost did it…but I didn't. A reunion stirs up everything. You can look back and it can be very regretful or you can look back and say, "Hey, I did all right. I got off the road a couple of times but I got back to my life and what I feel life is supposed to be about." This is a very grown-up show, yet it hits even younger people. I love talking about what their point of view is. I've had people tell me that they saw the original. They say "the original," and they were probably 25-30. It made an impression on them that has been everlasting, and they have seen many other productions of Follies. There are these amazing people out there that are Follies fanatics. They say how through the years it has hit them and affected them. It's a powerful show, and I think it does cross generations.

	Raines and Bernadette Peters during the Kennedy Center run of Follies.
	photo by Joan Marcus

So for Ron Raines, what are some of the roads not taken?
I took the right road.

I love it!
I got off the path a couple of times, but I got back on. And I don't mean that just in my career. I mean that in my personal life, too. I have a fabulous marriage to Dona D. Vaughn [artistic director of opera programs at Manhattan School of Music] and we have a fantastic daughter named Charlotte that we're just mad about. We live in the greatest city in the world. My wife and I have both made a living doing what we love to do. What more can one ask for?

That didn't come without a lot of work. That wonderful line that Phyllis says to Ben at the very end of the show: "Hope doesn't grow on trees and this will be the hardest thing we ever do." In other words, it won't be easy to repair that relationship of 30 years that's been so off base. And then Ben finally gets it at the end. He finally realizes his demons, and he's just stripped to the core and melts. The only way is up. It gives you that little light of thinking, "Maybe if they really work hard. If Ben is as determined to work on this relationship as he was to have that career, after losing everything else, there may be some hope."