American Idol-winning vocalist Kelly Clarkson delighted theatre fans with her latest Kellyoke performance: "Losing My Mind" from Stephen Sondheim's Follies. Check out her cover, accompanied by Jaco Caraco on guitar, in The Kelly Clarkson Show clip above.
Follies, centering on the aging Weismann Girls who gather for a reunion at their old theatre, first opened at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre April 4, 1971, directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, with choreography by Bennett. Follies earned seven 1972 Tony Awards and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical.
The show, with music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by James Goldman, ran for over 500 performances with a cast that included Dorothy Collins, John McMartin, Alexis Smith, Gene Nelson, Yvonne De Carlo, Fifi D'Orsay, and Graciela Daniele. It has been revived on Broadway twice: first in 2001 with a production that opened 30 years and one day after the original starring Judith Ivey, Blythe Danner, Gregory Harrison, and Treat Williams, and then in 2011, starring Bernadette Peters, Jan Maxwell, Ron Raines, and Danny Burstein.
