How to explain the emotional pull of Merrily We Roll Along, Stephen Sondheim’s beloved, broken, backward-moving 1981 musical? If you’ve bought a ticket to the brilliant Broadway revival—just opened at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre after a nine-week winter run at New York Theatre Workshop off-Broadway—you know: You can feel the audience collectively lean in after the first few brassy bars of the overture (oh, that overture!).
It’s a show that gives us permission to look back and wonder, as the lyric goes, “How did you get to be here?” Or, to quote another lyric in the prologue, “How can you get so far off the track?”
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★★ review here.]
In director Maria Friedman’s production, it’s Broadway composer–turned–Hollywood producer Franklin Shepard (Jonathan Groff) who’s looking back: He walks onstage alone, clutching a tattered script. Well, how did he get to be here? Suddenly, Merrily’s reverse-chronological structure—following tight-knit trio Frank, novelist-turned-critic Mary (Lindsay Mendez), and lyricist-turned-playwright Charley (Daniel Radcliffe) through various highs and lows both personal and professional—seems less like a gimmick and more like a necessity. Actually, Kaufman and Hart deserve credit (or blame) for the finish-to-start structure; their 1934 play Merrily We Roll Along served as Sondheim and librettist George Furth’s source. And now, you can thank Friedman—whose association with the show dates back to a 1992 U.K. production, where she played Mary—for finally making some sense of it.
The three friends are at their most unsympathetic when we first meet them. In 1976, Frank is hosting an A-list party—“I just figured out what the ‘A’ stands for,” Mary quips—at his sterile Bel-Air home in honor of his latest movie. He’s a sunglass-wearing, Champagne-swilling Hollywood cliché in full midlife-crisis mode, cheating on his actress wife, Gussie (Krystal Joy Brown), with the much-younger actress Meg (Talia Simone Robinson). Mary is drunk and bitter, as evidenced in her toast: “To Franklin Shepard, the producer. The man who has everything. And fat, drunk and finished, I would rather be me any day.” And our first encounter with Charley—“that driven little runt,” spits Gussie—is an infamous 1973 TV interview, where he eviscerates Frank live on-air in the tongue-twisting patter song “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” A phony, an alcoholic, and a nervous wreck—not necessarily people you want to cheer on.
Thankfully, Friedman has found three actors whose charm and genuine connection overrides their characters’ most unpalatable qualities. And since the NYTW production, their performances have only deepened. Groff (Spring Awakening, Hamilton) is perfection as the successful but hollow composer-turned-corporation Frank. Radcliffe’s “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” is an absolute marvel (don’t be surprised to see a standing ovation after that high-speed train of a song), and his unassuming delivery of “Good Thing Going” is a surprise emotional bombshell. Post–Harry Potter, Radcliffe has racked up an impressive list of stage credits ranging from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying to The Cripple of Inishmaan, and he impresses more in each appearance. And as the pal that holds the trio together, Mendez’s performance is a delicious cocktail of cynicism and hopefulness. What’s most impressive: When they sing the anthem “Old Friends,” they actually look like old friends.
If you can, see this revival with an old friend—perhaps one who’s never experienced the many joys of Merrily or heard its innumerable hummable songs. Yes, hummable.
Merrily We Roll Along opened Oct. 10, 2023, at the Hudson Theatre. Tickets and information: merrilyonbroadway.com
