Comic Relief EMMC Follies presents musical revue with local color and ‘universe at peace’

On a recent night at a local rehearsal studio, the cast for Follies 2001 was singing “God Bless America.” As vocal warm-ups go, this one was passionate, patriotic, full-bodied. The sopranos went way high. The baritones slipped way low. A sense of purpose and determination infused the notes and words.

“In other times, it would just be a vocal warm-up,” said Sam Lanham, musical director for the show on Oct. 20 and 21 at the Maine Center for the Arts. “But I find myself getting goose bumps when I hear it. We’re all living on this edge right now. I know I am. It sounds clich?-ish, but ‘God Bless America’ has become our national anthem of the moment. It pulls people together.”

Uniting the community always has been the unspoken bonus of the Follies, an annual musical theater fund-raiser produced by the Eastern Maine Medical Center Auxiliary. Nonactors and professionals alike sign up to sing and dance to raise money for the hospital. The audience members cheer on the daring health care professionals who give it a go onstage, and are dazzled by the trained performers who generously donate gifts of song or dance. The point is: A good time is had by all. Thus the name “follies.”

This year’s script, “Paul Bunyan and the Aliens,” was written by Robert Libbey, director of the National Folk Festival in Bangor and a local actor. His goal was to come up with a spoofy space tale about an alien invasion in Bangor. Among the nuttier elements in the script is an ensemble of dancing Paul Bunyans. Key, of course, are the classic show tunes and pop songs that string the plot together. The style, said Libbey, is more “cruise ship” than classic musical.

“I thought since it was 2001, we needed to have a space theme,” said Libbey, who also wrote the script for Follies 1998. “I wanted to write a story about Bangor and what better image to focus on than Paul Bunyan?”

But this year’s show has been deeply and quietly affected by the events of Sept. 11. When rehearsals began a week after the terrorist attacks, Libbey, Lanham and the show’s director, Kevin Bate, agreed to make changes in the script, which originally featured a city bombing. They wanted to retain the theme of good versus evil, but they also wanted to be sensitive to world events.

“There are still good versus evil elements that may evoke parallels to recent events in the world,” said Bate, “but the lightness of the script will help balance that. It’s a crazy script, but it’s fun as well.”

For Libbey, the challenge was to keep the cornball humor that is the Follies tradition.

“In fact, I think people are more forgiving of corn during these times,” said Libbey. “They want reassurance that things will turn out all right in the end. And it does end with the universe at peace.”

The performers, many of whom have acted in other local shows together, say the songs – such as “New York, New York” and “The Circle of Life” from “The Lion King” – have taken on new, closer-to-home meaning, and the production itself is fueled by an unusual sense of mission.

“I wanted to do the show to have a good time,” said Catherine LeClair, a trained actor who is doing Follies for the first time. “But I feel it’s important for me to get out there in the community and be supportive in the way I can be.”

LeClair’s sentiments represent a strength of spirit that also has caught Bate’s eye, he said. Getting together and singing is a passion the participants all share, and the experience – 50 people, 15 musicians, four nights a week for three-plus hours – in the midst of trying times has been a catharsis for everyone involved. “This is a healing process for people as well,” said Bate, a rehabilitation supervisor at Care Development, a foster care agency in Bangor. “They’ve always done the Follies, so they are saying, ‘Let’s do it again. Let’s get back to normal.’ It has given them something positive to focus on.”

Bridget Larson, who has been in several Follies productions, noticed the invigorated commitment among co-actors this year, too.

“People have been really philanthropic about their time,” said Larson, who is a child and adolescent psychiatric and mental health nurse specialist at EMMC. “It helped fill the void that many of us had about not being able to go to New York to use our skills for others who needed attention there. I know now that we have something to contribute right here. This is helping not only my personal struggle, but it’s also helping the community.”

The larger goal of the Follies, of course, is exactly about a community effort to raise money – this year, the proceeds will benefit the neo-natal intensive care unit at EMMC. Past shows have raised as much as $50,000, and organizers worry that ticket sales may be low this year because charitable dollars are headed to national relief efforts or because people, out of fear, are staying home more.

“We all desperately need a sense of community – to laugh and share, to be entertained and inspired,” said Lanham, an attorney in Bangor and former producer for “Up With People.” “Times are very serious right now. We need to reflect upon serious times in an entertaining venue. We’ve got to have outlets to put things in perspective. We also continue to have ongoing and critical needs in our own community and we’ve got to keep attending to them.”

The Eastern Maine Medical Center Auxiliary will present “Follies 2001: ‘Paul Bunyan and the Aliens’ ” at 8 p.m. Oct. 20 and 3 p.m. Oct. 21 at the Maine Center for the Arts. For tickets, call 581-1755.