I have been ignoring my Hippodrome blog because I’ve been ignoring the Hippodrome. I’m writing a chapter for an edited collection on the depiction of women in Stephen Sondheim musicals. And I keep wanting to write about different numbers: “Rose’s Turn,” “Ladies Who Lunch,” and the one you can watch in the video above, “Who’s That Woman?” from Follies. Here’s a little snippet that will probably not appear in the final chapter, which I think is going to be about Company, the show that I have listened to and seen the most of his.
“Who’s That Woman?”, embodies many of the key themes that arise for female characters in Stephen Sondheim musicals. At the urging of Stella Deems, the aging former Weismann Girls attending their reunion all join in to recreate a musical number from their youth. They sing of the discrepancy between their glamorous appearance and the romantic disappointments hiding beneath the surface. The staged number layers even more discrepancies atop those of the lyrics: each party guest is “shadowed by her ghost-self” performing the same tap steps.[ Saunders, Annmarie T. “Follies (Review).” Theatre Journal, vol. 64, no. 1, 2012, pp. 110–12.] The audience sees a play of similarity and difference through this mirroring: the current versions of the women perform the choreography with varying degrees of skill while dressed in unique outfits that convey their personalities, while the ghostly Weismann Girls are more synchronized in their movement and uniformly dressed in theatrical costumes. The women exist across time periods, “carrying their past, present, and future selves.[ Donovan, Ryan. “‘Now You Know’: On Sondheim and Middle Age.” Studies in Musical Theatre, vol. 17, no. Sondheim from the Side, Dec. 2023, pp. 223–28. intellectdiscover.com, https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00134_1.]” They finally dance together, mirroring one another while still existing in different times. The middle-aged women call up their younger selves through nostalgia, but also through muscle memory. It’s curious,” Phyllis says after they finish, “the things our bodies won’t forget.”