Every theater fan has one show—the show we love unconditionally despite all its faults. With every viewing, we hope some artistic genius will magically solve all the piece’s problems. But as we grow older, and presumably wiser, we come to realize that some shows are irrevocably broken, and we love them because of those flaws. This principle applies to people as well.
For me, and a great many others, that show is Merrily We Roll Along, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s cautionary tale of fame and fortune and requiem for youthful idealism. Every production I see—the 2002 Kennedy Center version that starred Raúl Esparza, the 2012 Encores! stint with a 20-plus-piece orchestra, the stripped-down six-person Fiasco Theater 2019 production off-Broadway—puts its own stamp on the show. (I never saw the 1981 Harold Prince–directed Broadway original, only bits and pieces in the Lonny Price doc Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened.) Maria Friedman, who directed the revival currently at New York Theatre Workshop, simply seems to accept Merrily just the way it is. No messing about. And that’s why it works so beautifully.
Surely Friedman, an actor, singer, and top-tier Sondheim interpreter, knows the show—a backward-moving chronicle of three friends, composer Franklin Shepard (Jonathan Groff), playwright Charley Kringas (Daniel Radcliffe), and novelist Mary Flynn (Lindsay Mendez)—better than any other director, which helps enormously. She played Mary in Leicester, U.K., in 1992. As director, her Merrily sold out London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, then moved to the West End; in 2017, it played Boston’s Huntington Theatre.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Merrily’s conceit, its present-to-past structure, is arguably its biggest obstacle. (Blame that on George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, whose 1934 play inspired the musical.) We meet the main characters at their absolute worst. Franklin—or Frank, as all his film-biz faux friends and hangers-on call him—is riding high on Hollywood success and free-flowing Champagne, but he’s a total narcissist who’s cheating on his wife, Gussie (Krystal Joy Brown), with, cliché of clichés, the star of his movie, Meg (Talia Robinson). Mary is an acid-tongued alcoholic and unsparing social critic: “You are all junk,” she says to a room of partygoers. “And you,” she says to Franklin, “you deserve them.” Charley has a nervous breakdown on live TV, verbally beating his former songwriting partner into a veritable pulp. None of them are at all very pleasant, and we’re supposed to stick with them for another two hours or so? Sondheim and Furth are asking a lot of us.
Friedman allows herself one directorial flourish, a framing device that sets the show up as a memory play of sorts. It’s very, very subtle, and involves only bringing Groff onstage. But it immediately casts him in a more compassionate light, and frankly, Franklin can use all the help he can get. “How did you get to be here?” sings the ensemble. “What was the moment?” We really get the feeling that he’s reflecting on it, and that draws us in, kick-starting the reverse action. Soutra Gilmour’s stunning ’70s groovy and ’60s mod costumes help move us through the decades as well.
Spring Awakening and Hamilton star Groff—who previously played a composer in William Finn’s ode to “heart and music,” A New Brain—makes for a wonderfully sympathetic Franklin Shepard. That’s not to say he lacks a dark side. His Franklin is pretty pathetic when arguing with the scorned Gussie: “Do you really not see that I’m ashamed of all this? That I am as sick of myself as you are?” We can see the sting on his face after Charley’s TV confrontation (“You’re goddamn out of my life, Charley”). And we see the hardness peel away, layer by layer—he literally crumples to the ground during his divorce from first wife Beth (Katie Rose Clarke)—eventually revealing the starry-eyed piano-pounding visionary. Seen in New York in shows such as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and The Cripple of Inishmaan, Radcliffe is superb as Charley, who’s less famous but ultimately happier, and arguably more successful, than the fast-living Franklin; his blistering “Franklin Shepard Inc.” is further proof that the film star gets better with every stage appearance. And Tony winner Mendez (Carousel) couldn’t be better as the peacemaker/referee Mary, particularly in her paean to pessimism, “Now You Know.” These three truly look like “Old Friends,” as the number goes; their breaking-through-as-artists sequence, “Opening Doors,” which Sondheim called the only autobiographical song he ever wrote, is irresistible. It’s also, contrary to what Joe (Reg Rogers) the producer says, “a tune you can hum.”
In fact, Merrily is filled with “hum-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-able” melodies, including “Not a Day Goes By,” “Good Thing Going,” and “Our Time.” I don’t have a crystal ball, but if I were a betting woman, I’d wager that you’ll be hearing those tunes, going “bum-bum-bum-di-dum,” on Broadway soon.
Merrily We Roll Along opened Dec. 12, 2022, at New York Theatre Workshop and runs through Jan. 22, 2023. Tickets and information: nytw.org
