A Conversation with Cameron Menzies
on Follies at Northern Ireland Opera
As Artistic Director of Northern Ireland Opera, Cameron Menzies has built a reputation for bold programming and imaginative productions that speak to both operatic tradition and contemporary life. Following the company’s acclaimed Into the Woods in 2022, Menzies is now deep in preparations for Follies, which runs from 13-20 September this year.
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It’s great to meet you. We’re speaking a few months out from Follies opening in Belfast. Where are you right now in the process of putting this production together?
We announced Follies in December last year, and the show’s going on in September 2025. We’ve done all the auditions: about four days in London, and the same here in Belfast. Such amazing people applied to be considered for these roles. Really fabulous actors, and from all generations, which is one of the amazing things about this show. You really need that range.
So yes, we’re still casting. We have our major leads in place. I say “leads,” though it’s such an ensemble piece that it’s hard to use that word. But we have our key people, which is great. Now it’s just about working through a few more roles that still need filling, especially within that older 1971 group.
We’re also putting the orchestra together. There’ll be about 35 players in the pit: lots of brass, lots of percussion, and there are some really amazing reed parts in this score. But casting-wise, we’re bringing in people from all over the UK, and that’s a big logistical puzzle. Once you get all of that in place, then you can start looking at the creative side of things more, which is the fun part.
In casting Follies, are your choices for the younger characters informed at all by their older counterparts? Does it feel almost like a two-step process to find the older characters and their younger selves?
Honestly, we went into the process completely open-minded in terms of how it’s all going to fall. The casting linchpins were obviously Sally and Phyllis to start with, because so much of the central spine of the piece is around those two women and their husbands. And there’s a clear chronology here: Sally says she’s 49, which feeds into the themes of the piece. Turning 50 is a big psychological shift for a lot of people, and it means something different in 2025 than it did in 1971. So for me, it wasn’t about finding someone who is 49. It’s about the right energy and those particular qualities. It needs to be believable, of course, but more importantly, it needs to feel right. Once we had Sally and Phyllis in place, that helped us a lot with the rest of the 1971 cast.
And then, yes, we could look at their younger counterparts. You do need to believe that those younger people could plausibly become their older selves, whether it’s a physical similarity, or a vocal quality, or some intangible thread. There has to be something you can link across those thirty years. And their ages are very specific. Hattie’s meant to be in her seventies. I love that it says that Carlotta claims to be 66. There’s a lot of great play around age and perception. But it does create a framework. If Sally’s 49, the others need to make sense in relation to that.
We’ve been absolutely spoiled for choice with the actors who came out to be seen. We’ve been very, very lucky in how we’ve been able to look at this. But yeah, it’s been a really interesting casting process—because, unlike other shows where you can reinterpret things more freely, this is actually quite rigid. Stella has to be able to tap dance. You need to believe she led those massive Follies numbers 30 years ago. That comes with a very specific skillset, so the casting has to be quite exact.
With something like Into the Woods, which we did in 2022, there’s a lot more leeway. You can have wildly different takes on the Witch or Little Red. But Follies is much stricter in that regard.
That’s fascinating. And speaking of Into the Woods, that was such a successful production for you. Was the plan always to follow it with another Sondheim? And when did you land on Follies? Because the setting seems absolutely perfect…
Yeah, absolutely. The opera house here is begging for Follies. For people who haven’t seen it, it’s the most beautiful Frank Matcham theatre. It’s got gold elephants hanging off the balconies. It’s stunning. And the way we’re going to use it in Follies, it really becomes another actor in the piece.
After Into the Woods, I knew I wanted to do another Sondheim. And Follies is a piece I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. I feel deeply connected to that world—vaudeville, music hall, all of it. Even though the majority of my work now is in opera, my background isn’t. It’s much more musical theatre, more vaudeville, lots of different things.
And the way these women are written is just beautiful. What interests me in 2025 is that the piece is structured around their voices, their thoughts, their understanding of the world. That’s rare. A lot of stories are told through a male lens. But with Follies, it’s about bringing these women back into the spotlight—literally and emotionally. They’ve been out of it for thirty years, and they come back for one night.
And I think right now, there’s something important about remembering the good times. Whether you’re from the theatre or not, everyone understands what it means to revisit a part of your past. It could be your football team, your high school, your church group—it doesn’t matter. That feeling of “Have I aged more than them?” or “Who’s done well, and who hasn’t?”… That’s universal. So yes, the music’s amazing, and the story is powerful, but it’s that human core that makes me want to do Follies. It looks back in order to see where you are now, and that’s a theme everyone can relate to.
I’d love to know a little more about that variety of genres you mentioned as being part of your background and previous work.
My background’s always been varied musically. These days I do mostly opera, but musical theatre has always been in my life. I directed the 50th anniversary of Hair in Australia. It’s in my blood. And I think a lot of that comes from my love of vaudeville. I love those early theatre stories—in Australia, but also here. The old Hippodrome in Belfast used to sit right next to the Opera House, and in the Victorian era, people stayed here for months. They could make fortunes. I love that kind of history, and that music. And you can feel all of that threaded through Sondheim—especially in Follies.
And there’s a cliché, with some truth to it, that Sondheim can be a kind of gateway drug between musical theatre and opera, in both directions. I’d love to hear more about how you’ve found his work lands with audiences and creatives who are more familiar with the world of opera.
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. And I think lots of writing has been done on it—what’s an opera, what’s music theatre, what’s operetta? For me, the bedrock is that they’re all storytelling through music, which is what I care about. The genre doesn’t really worry me so much. For me, Sondheim is music theatre. It’s certainly not Eugene Onegin, and it’s certainly not The Marriage of Figaro.
But in terms of musical construct, they’re not dissimilar. The Magic Flute has dialogue and music, as does this. There’s recitative, there’s underscore—and many operatic scores have recit. So I think it’s about how they operate and play out. In this piece especially—and I think he does it in all his work—there’s a decision to be made, and it’s a musical director’s and a director’s decision: is the music accompaniment to the text, or is it an emotional bed that the text sits on?
Some songs in Follies are songs being performed on stage in the theatre, and some are internal moments. So for me, something like “Broadway Baby” is a song—it’s accompaniment to text. But then when you get into their breakdowns, like “Losing My Mind,” that feels to me more like an emotional bed the text sits on, almost like an aria. If it were a play, “Losing My Mind” would be an internal moment. And it’s tricky in Follies because those moments are played out publicly, as a theatrical device. But musically, it’s talking about something deeper.
For me, there are moments in Sondheim where the characters hear the music. Hattie absolutely hears the accompaniment to “Broadway Baby,” but I don’t think Sally hears the accompaniment to “Losing My Mind.” I think it’s an emotional bed she’s in, thinking through that moment. She might be performing it in her head, but I feel like it’s an emotional construct that helps the lyrics live. And when Sally arrives and she’s nervous and says, “Don’t look at me,” she’s not hearing that music. That’s just her walking into a space, caught in a human push and pull—you desperately want to do something, but you’re also worried about doing it.
For me, Sondheim does everything within a show so perfectly. He sets up a rule and then breaks it so smoothly that you have to work those moments through. And I don’t think it’s a fluke. I think they’re deliberate gear changes, and that’s how I musically think through this piece. What I care about most is whether the emotional chord is actually there with the audience, and whether the story is told through music. That, for me, is the peak of all our forms.
In some ways it comes back to casting too, doesn’t it? In this show especially, you might choose to go in a very operatic direction for certain characters, and stay firmly in the world of acting-through-song for others.
Well, that’s exactly right. And what’s so great about this—and what I find fascinating—is that we have really gone down more of the musical theatre actor-singer route. I feel like Heidi needs to sit in her own world. Heidi is from another era. Her peak in the Follies was around 1918, so really just the start of jazz, operetta, Viennese waltz—the popular music of the day. Heidi has to sit in a very different sonic world to the rest of them, so we’ve gone operatic in those two roles (the older and the younger version), because I think those voices need to stand absolutely alone. They shouldn’t sound like musical theatre at all.
It’s also what they used to do in the actual Follies. One was the comic, one was the operatic singer, one was the tapper, one was the great ballad singer. It adheres to that beautifully.
Finally, in Belfast, you’re wonderfully accessible both from the States and from the rest of Europe. If someone is reading this, thinking of traveling to see Follies, what would you say to encourage that person to come to this specific production?
I think what’s really interesting about all the work we do in Northern Ireland is that we are the biggest producers of work here. We produce the biggest shows in Northern Ireland that are built, created, rehearsed, and premiered here. That brings its own special energy, and people who’ve traveled to see our shows talk about that a lot.
We haven’t announced the cast for Follies yet, but I can say that every single person is making their debut in these roles, and they’re people audiences will definitely know. So I think the casting will be a real draw as well. And, of course, we’re doing the full orchestration.
What people will find in our Follies is a real willingness to make you feel something. My desire is for it to be as authentic as we can make it. We’ve sourced a lot of vintage clothes from 1971 for the leading ladies that are absolutely of the era. I want it to feel like 1971 has stepped into the room. And then when we flash back to 1941, it’s not an attempt at being traditionally period, but the theatre really will be used as part of our set.
To find out more about Northern Ireland Opera’s upcoming production of Follies, and to purchase tickets, simply click here.
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