"Follies" is in a class of its own. It is safe to say that no Broadway musical has ever attempted its grandeur of vision, the size of its presence. This being so, it cannot be compared in any "good, better, best" sense with any musical in the past. So, if it does not always work, and it doesn't always, one is nonetheless aware that this is happening in a new-found dimension. Like a girl you love but do not always like, "Follies" is very great though it is not always good.

It is about age and an age, the glory of the past and the follies in letting nostalgia make that past seem more glorious (memory's compromise with reality), the truth of growing old and the acceptance of that truth. This is the general—philosophical—point of the show and it is often too sentimental….

Ghosts are the...