This memory lane glitters and grizzles

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

From left, Devon Guard as Phyllis Stone, Bob Frederick as Benjamin Stone, Helen Berger as the Showgirl, Cathy Foy as Sally Durant Plummer and Peter Kamealoha Clark as Buddy Plummer star in a local production that's impressive and psychologically dark. Diamond Head Theatre 'Follies' 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays through June 8 Diamond Head Theatre $40-$10 733-0274

It's set during the 1970s in a grand old Broadway theater that is scheduled for demolition the following morning. Producer Dimitri Weissman marks the event by hosting a reunion party for all the showgirls who graced his stage between the two world wars.

The parallel to Florenz Ziegfeld is unmistakable, but the title does double duty: it evokes the staged Follies, but it also underscores the character foibles that plagued some of the starring showgirls.

Act 1 is full-on reminiscence. The showgirls enter the theater and don sashes that identify the years of their stardom. They parade, pageant style, down the suicidal staircase that all beauty contestants must traverse. They indulge in memories of personal triumph, backed up by ghostly images of their youthful selves.

Act 2's production numbers illustrate 40 years of the Follies' evolution and expose personal follies as well.

Four people, now mature married couples, are the center of the drama. Sally and Buddy are just folks. He's now a salesman and she's an empty-nester housewife. Phyllis and Ben are affluent New Yorkers. He's something big at the United Nations, and she's a professional party-giver with $30,000 worth of Regency silverware in her dining room.

But three decades earlier, Sally and Phyllis were starving showgirls and the boys were stage-door johnnies. Sally had a thing for Ben, but he dropped her and married Phyllis. Tonight, the infatuated Sally has come all the way from Phoenix to see if the flame still burns.

Cathy Foy revels in the complex role of Sally, looking like a blonde Jane Wyman and acting like June Allyson on too many stimulants. Sally's excited, but her penchant to break into schoolgirl giggles suggests a deeper pathology.

Devon Guard is bitterly self-controlled as the self-made Phyllis, realistic about her disappointing marriage to Ben. Peter Clark delivers a likeable good-old-Buddy, and Bob Frederick's Ben is a mixture of contradictions.

Foy and Frederick have the best voices, with Foy wringing the right feeling from "In Buddy's Eyes" and "Losing My Mind." Frederick's big number "Live, Laugh, Love" is a glitzy dance routine in which the character gets lost in the precision choreography.

Clark's solo moment comes in a raucous vaudeville masking of inner feeling, "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues," while Guard dances "The Story of Lucy and Jessie" and hisses with menace in the accusatory "Could I Leave You?"

The show offers fine moments to the supporting players as well, featuring Nanilisa Pascua on "Who's That Woman," Sharon Crimin on "Broadway Baby," and Louise South and Carla Waterfield on "One More Kiss." Wisa D'Orso does justice to the show-stopping survivalist anthem "I'm Still Here."

Production elements are first rate. Direction and choreography by John Rampage make the big-cast show feel both grand and intimate. Staging of the memory scenes is especially effective as Sally and Ben drop in and out of love, backed up in pantomime by Kirsten Dixon and Jimi Wheeler as their younger selves.

Costumes by Karen Wolfe make the young showgirls stunning and their aging counterparts glittering and elegant. Headpieces by Bill Doherty are imaginative ceiling-scrapers and Wally White's sagging proscenium set looks like it has been deteriorating at DHT for decades. Donald Yap's musical direction is the delicious glue that holds everything together.

The show has a way of lulling its audience away from reality for a couple of hours, but ultimately, the central couples must go out into the new dawn. The conclusion offers some hope, but instead of a big-bang ending, it delivers the inevitable thud of a wrecking ball. The show's dark undercurrents may ultimately be disquieting to the casual theatergoer.