The "Park City Follies" is known for its sharp local satire that highlights community issues and personalities. This year’s script, written by Paul Hockman and Claire Wiley, follows what long-time emcee and co-writer Tom Clyde described as a “Hallmark movie.”
“It's filled with sort of treacly romance and excitement that way; just taking a sweeter look at things,” Clyde said on KPCW’s "Local News Hour" April 13.
Director Paul Tan returns after a two-year leave during which he worked on a 48-minute Follies documentary.
“It’s become such an entity that I thought, you know, we really need to kind of capture this in a permanent form of what it is,” Tan said. “And so, when I left in ‘23 I documented that, and we're actually going to show that after the Follies as kind of like a Sundance screening, in a sense, with the Q & A.”
This is Clyde’s final year as both emcee and a member of the creative team. He said the transition has been underway for a few years, and it’s time for fresh voices. He agreed to stay one more year to be part of the 25thanniversary celebration.
“We started out as a variety show with, you know, 10 unrelated skits, and then it kind of moved into more of the consistent through line story, and then we pulled back a little bit from that to do more videos that allowed us to touch other issues and involve other people,” Clyde said. “So, with my departure may be a different format will come out of it. But you know, I guess I am hopelessly mired in the nostalgia for a Park City in the 1980s.”
Tan called Clyde the “Father of the Follies” saying there’s no replacing him or the opening monologue he’s delivered for the past two decades.
“I can't say enough about the importance of Tom in the first 25-year era of the Follies, because hopefully it goes on for another 25 and you know, we’ll sit in the front row and watch it and enjoy every minute of it,” Tan said.
Tickets to the Follies are sold out to the general public. A limited number may still be available to the Egyptian Theatre’s Pharaoh Club members and released, if available, the night of each performance.
The Follies runs April 17 through May 3, Wednesday through Sunday evenings.
