A snowless snow globe and Tom Clyde imagined as an 8 year old doing his monologue before barn animals on the family farm. I think those were my highlights.
We may never see either again, one with luck and the other only in hopes that his retirement from the “Park City Follies” is as real as an Eagles’ farewell tour.
I will confess that musicals and slapstick don’t hold me, even while enjoying the enthusiastic numbers and sly digs among the banana peels. Add points, I guess, for getting through with those even past a genre I don’t readily grasp.
We, The Park Record news bunch, tallied up a list of possible targets for spoof over dinner at the Spur before we went to Friday’s show together. Let’s see, we predicted: lack of snow, maybe Dakota Pacific though that was bigger news last year, Sundance leaving, Olympics coming, senior center, Kouri Richins even though that’s not funny, the provisional municipalities the Legislature has been trying to seed.
All those got greater or lesser nods this year.
I either didn’t hear or overlooked anything about Bonanza Park, the tight mayor’s race, Clark Ranch at the crux of open space and affordable housing, or the schools other than noting in passing that Treasure Mountain Junior High got torn down.
Not even Flamingo Island, which I personally was sure would find a home in the show. Or, a stunner for being passed over, the 11th hour push to turn the 5-Acre-Site at the busy corner of Kearns and Bonanza into a park and outdoor music venue. That joke tells itself.
The Egyptian Theatre’s 100th year made it. Of course, that. The very spine of the story, such as that was, was based on the old theater. Basically, a local girl straight out of a Hallmark movie moves to the big city, well OK, Salt Lake City, to work for Fukota Pacific and is sent home to ruin the Egyptian so that Fukota can buy the place cheap and thereby own everything in Park City. Songs and silliness ensue.
I had heard rumors of the cast and Egyptian staff not being great fans of one another by the end of last year’s show. Maybe this was a combination of making up and some pent-up shots at the venerable host of the “Follies.” Anyway, it allowed for the insertion of potguts into the story.
I was familiar from a past work stop with the “Truckee Follies,” which began in 1981. It’s maybe a more burlesque version of the show Park City’s humorists put on, even with whatever that was with the gay-tinged fashion cops. Park City’s show has proven far more popular, this year selling out every night for better than a couple of weeks, compared to the older cousin’s four-night run this year. Both require a ton of effort and rehearsal among their volunteers.
The main attraction for each is how these shows lampoon their community knowingly for locals. Visitors probably shouldn’t expect to understand, or be interested.
I tried to explain to three women at the bar from Florida what the “Follies” were all about. They agreed the show sounded fun and all, while their side eye with each other conclusively ruled out that particular entertainment in terms of next stops for the evening. It was sold out anyway, which I knew I didn’t need to mention.
Myself, I went for Tom Clyde and was not disappointed. His monologue, delivered dry and deadpan as Garrison Keillor, was sharp, pointed and guffaw funny as I imagine since he really was 8 years old.
And poignant. It’s been 25 years since he and Meeche White founded the “Follies.” He said this is his last. I don’t want to believe him, honestly. I want his era to live on while second homes spot and then fill in everything the water hasn’t flooded of the old canyon between his home in Woodland and the ski hills that metastasized across Park City on toward Heber.
I’m not a big fan of the show as staged, admittedly, and this is only my flaw in relation to absurdist community theater and musicals in general. I’m not a fan of the professional variety, either, truth to tell and this is a nonfiction space. I know I’m missing something essential in my makeup. So please don’t take my failure to fully appreciate the form as criticism. I have no standing anyway.
I just love the thought of it, the concept of these “Follies” taking stock of the past year, the enthusiasm among cast and audience, and that we have it in the first place. Almost no one does. Truckee, Park City, maybe Durango, but Durango isn’t a ski town.
Truckee and Park City share the usual traffic, high-priced homes, restaurants where you and I cannot afford to eat, along with ready access to several ski mountains, one owned by Vail Resorts. They’re also the two friendliest ski towns — hell, any towns — I have run across.
Maybe in part that’s due to each having a “Follies.” There might be more to that fact than we think. At best, the show pokes the right sort of fun at ourselves to bolster our moods or at least sharpen our humor.
At worst, well, it’s still fun.
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.