By Kristen Nevarez Schweizer

September 21, 2025

The opening of The Joan — San Diego’s newest performing arts space in Liberty Station — would never be small or safe. But for Cygnet Theatre to christen this venue with Stephen Sondheim’s Follies? That’s brass-balls brazen. Especially considering the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles flung open its doors in 1972 with the original Follies, where it flopped.

Cygnet is making a statement: this fearless house is ready to tackle nuanced stories that haunt long after the last note. And, guess what? Cygnet’s Follies has extended their run an extra week through October 19, 2025.

Follies takes place in a crumbling Broadway theater on the eve of its demolition in 1971, where former showgirls are reunited. On the surface, it’s a party — champagne, old songs, sequined dresses —but under the sparkle lies deep regret. Couples confront the lives they’ve built—or wasted. Sally Durant Plummer (Sandy Campbell) pines for Ben Stone (David S. Humphrey), the man she didn’t marry. Ben wonders if he chose prestige over passion. Sally’s husband, Buddy (Russell Garrett), knows his wife loves another. And Phyllis (Karole Foreman), Ben’s wife, saunters with sophistication but burns with bitterness. As past and present overlap, each character confronts the ghosts who they once were. In a dreamlike second act, their inner lives erupt into surreal musical numbers, forcing them to face ugly truths behind their nostalgia.

Sondheim’s world rotates between the ghosts of showgirls in their physical prime, the unhappy midlife couples—and us, the 2025 audience, projecting our own stories into the mix. The song “Live, Laugh, Love” crystallizes the generational prism. 

For context, “Live, Laugh, Love” is a phrase that originated with a 1904 poem by Bessie Anderson Stanley as a heartfelt sentiment: to live fully, laugh often, and love deeply was the measure of a life well spent. In 1971, Sondheim twisted the phrase into a brittle pastiche sung by a seemingly successful character who can no longer swallow his own swill. And now, in 2025, we can’t hear “Live, Laugh, Love” without picturing the mass-produced wall décor of Gen-X homes, (mocked mercilessly by Gen Z on TikTok.) What began as aspiration became parody became derision—and, perhaps, may become a longing for Stanley’s original sincerity. 

I planned to title this review: Live, Laugh, Longing. But sitting in the dark of The Joan, I remembered limerence—psychologist Dorothy Tennov’s term for obsessive, idealized romantic longing untethered to reality. Limerence is embodied in Sally (dressed by costume designer Elisa Benson) wearing a Monroe-esque glittering gown while singing the torchy ballad “Losing my Mind.” Sally thinks she longs for Ben, the man who got away. Yet what she aches for is not Ben himself but the imagined life she has constructed around him. Limerence feeds not on reality, but when yearning grows sharp teeth. When we don’t want a lover as much as the phantom self we imagine we could be beside them. 

Founding artistic director Sean Murray drills past rose-colored longing to upsetting limerance with surgical precision. The orchestra (led by Music Director Patrick Marion) attacks the jagged corners of Sondheim’s score. Musically, it swings from tinny vaudeville to twelve-tone dissonance, never letting you settle. Mentally, it asks you to stare down your own myths. 

Curating a cast of actors who sing (rather than a choir of pretty vocalists) lets the audience feel the exhaustion, the fragility, and the sharp beauty of these songs as both mask and mirror. It is not easy listening, and it is not easy watching. But that is the point. We are not meant to leave humming; we are meant to leave unsettled enough to question the stories we tell ourselves.

Murray’s choice to mix established San Diego stars with rising local talent roots the production firmly in San Diego soil. To get there, Cygnet invested in a massive cast. Thespian veteran Daniel S. Humphrey, playing Ben Stone, is a standout—not just for his commanding presence, but for how his career mirrors Cygnet’s evolution. In the post-show talk back, he and Sandy Campbell reflected on the honor of having performed in all three of Cygnet’s prior venues.

At the other end of the experience spectrum, newcomer Nio Russell shines as Young Phyllis. With a sensational voice and a smile that fills The Joan’s generous stage, Russell proves herself a talent to watch. Her presence (and all the twenty-something ensemble members I’m used to seeing in community theaters) amplified the hopeful ache of coming-of-age. Their inclusion also proves Cygnet is growing from a local theater company into a city institution.

Anise Ritchie, who plays Solange LaFitte, reflected during a post-show talk-back:

“When the cast walked onto the stage for the first time, knowing they are the first cast to perform on this stage, we were overwhelmed. Someday, it is our ghosts that will haunt this theater.”

The remark landed like an epilogue.

Here’s my hot take: I don’t think Follies works the first time you see it. The show is so fragmented, so tonally unenjoyable, that on a single viewing, it can feel incoherent. You leave baffled—impressed but bewildered, like you’ve just paid to watch something beautiful break apart.

It’s only the second time (or arriving with Sondheim’s other works in mind) that Follies sinks in. Then, the ghosts feel less like a gimmick and more like inevitability. Sondheim’s score feels less random and more like a psychological map. In short: the first time, you feel the cutting pain, but only see the glittering lights. The second time, you can witness, feel, and grieve the glass shattering while reaching to touch what lies behind it.

I think Cygnet’s bold choice to stage Follies as The Joan’s debut is a tone setter. It invites the city not for casual applause, but for engagement. To be haunted. To return for more. And my answer is: She’s sincere, so I’m here.

Follies
Cygnet Theatre
The Joan’s Joseph Clayes III Theater
September 10 – October 19, 2025
Book by James Goldman
Lyrics and Music by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by Sean Murray
Musical Direction by Patrick Marion
Choreography by Katie Banville

P.S. On the other hand, Cygnet is doing The SpongeBob Musical in the summer of 2026. As a theatre nerd who repeatedly watched the grainy 1985 of Mandy Patinkin’s Buddy’s Blues…. and also has kids, I appreciate Cygnet’s smart, diverse 21st Season for using their main stage to serve thoughtful audiences, the next generation of thespians, and everyone in between.