Showtime

What: Follies: In Concert

Where: Shaw Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

When: Sept. 27 and Oct. 4

Tickets: 1-800-511-7429. Limited seats available

Follies will break your heart. It will rip your guts out and leave you wasted on the floor. It's that kind of musical.

Since it was first produced on Broadway in 1971, this sometimes dark, always passionate look at life, love and the soul of musical theatre has scorched audiences with the white heat of its pain. It may be about Wiseman's Follies and a reunion of old showgirls in a theatre about to feel the whack of the wrecker's ball, but it's really about the death of idealism.

It's about marriages gone sour. It's about love that was wasted. And always there is a sense of the aching truth that separates fantasy from reality.

Musically it's brilliant, filled with pastiche numbers that suggest the glory of Gershwin, the exuberance of Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson and the sheer shock of wit that permeates anything by Cole Porter.

The score has always been revered. Blame the show's failure on James Goldman's astringent script.

Audiences didn't like the darkness, the ambiguous conclusion and the weight of desperation that underscored Follies' nostalgic heartbeat. It was like taking your memories and crushing them with an awful moment of truth.

Well, whatever its problems, Follies is a fantastic musical, buoyed by the strength and heart of Stephen Sondheim's electrifying score.

And the good news is, it's been given a riveting concert production by the Shaw Festival that is ripe with passion.

Musical director Paul Sportelli's control of a huge orchestra, as well as the dynamics of Sondheim's incredible score, is thrilling. So is Valerie Moore's imaginative, taut direction that makes you burrow inside Follies' desperate story.

Add to this a cast of ensemble genius and you have the must-see show of the year.

There are so many delights it's difficult to know where to begin. Gabrielle Jones singing the socks off that bittersweet anthem, Broadway Baby, Glynis Ranney reducing you to a puddle with that ultimate torch song, I'm Losing My Mind, George Masswohl hurling spit and regret with The Road You Didn't Take, and Jay Turvey setting off alarm bells with The Right Girl. All are stunning.

Then there's Goldie Semple, standing centre stage, feet planted, eyes fringed with fear and determination, stopping the show cold with I'm Still Here.

Every nanosecond of this astounding production is thrilling theatre. Oh yes, the ending has been softened. I prefer the tougher, less-comfortable stand. And yes, a few notes have been altered for the actor-singers. Who cares?

Follies is not just a great musical, it's great art.

One day someone will have the courage to do a fully staged production. Until then, there's Follies: In Concert. See it.

Showtime

What: Dead Certain

Where: Staircase Theatre, 27 Dundurn St. N.

When: Sept. 18 to 20

Tickets: blackboxfire.com

Dead Certain needs Final Curtain

If you have guns in a psychological thriller, they'd better look real. More importantly, when they fire, the sound had better be live and loud, not a distant, creaky recording.

This lack of verisimilitude says a lot about Blackbox Fire's earnest but troubled production of Marcus Lloyd's derivative little drama, Dead Certain. It's a mediocre affair.

A former dancer, now trapped in a wheelchair, hires a handsome actor on the pretext he's to help her with her play. Nothing, of course, is as it seems.

Actors A.J. Haygarth and Alicia Micallef do what they can under Jared Lenover's surface direction. Neither suggests more than the obvious as melodrama holds sway.

It's good to have Blackbox Fire on the local scene. It's a young, sincere troupe. But contrary to what they say in the program, they are not a professional theatre company.

And so far, the plays they have chosen have been less than brilliant. There are better scripts than Dead Certain. I'm quite sure of that.

Gary Smith has written on theatre and dance for The Hamilton Spectator for more than 25 years.