It’s hard to fathom today that the works of Stephen Sondheim, the great Broadway composer whose music could open portals into new dimensions, were almost all commercial duds.
“Follies,” his wistful show about life’s what-ifs, told from the perspective of a group of faded Broadway performers, failed to recoup in the early ‘70s. Same with “Sweeney Todd,” despite a starry cast that included Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou. Even the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Sunday in the Park With George” never made back its producers’ investment.
Perhaps Sondheim’s most painful and disappointing flop, though, was “Merrily We Roll Along.” Painful because its failure led to the end of his 12-year collaboration with the legendary director Hal Prince. And disappointing because the musical features one of Sondheim’s best scores, bursting with witty rhymes and playful counterpoint.
Thank goodness, then, for director Maria Friedman’s latest Broadway revival, which she has captured for posterity on film. Starring Tony winners Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, it’s a production that not only fixes the issues with the material, but also makes a compelling case that “Merrily” is among Sondheim’s masterpieces.
Most of the problems with the original Broadway production in 1981 laid with George Furth’s book and Prince’s cumbersome direction. Its story, inspired by the 1934 Kaufman and Hart play of the same name, is simple enough. Set over two decades, it charts the deterioration of a relationship among three friends in reverse chronological order — beginning with the end of their friendship, and ending with the beginning.
But Furth’s adaptation left audiences scratching their heads. No one could follow the story’s backward progression, nor keep track of all the secondary characters who hopped in and out of the narrative.
Prince, already dealing with tensions within his creative team, and forced to replace his leading man midway through previews, was in over his head. One of his feeble attempts to fix the show involved ditching the original costume designs during rehearsals and replacing them with T-shirts that spelled out each characters’ relationship to the show’s protagonist, Frank, a wide-eyed musical theatre composer turned Hollywood sellout.
The issues with the script and Prince’s direction were compounded by the fact that the musical’s original cast was mostly made up of teens and young adults. While they could convincingly play their characters’ younger selves, they struggled as their older, more jaded counterparts. In the end, “Merrily” shuttered on Broadway just two weeks after opening.
Sondheim and Furth, however, continued to tinker with the show. Cut to 2023 and Friedman’s revival, based on a previous UK production she directed in 2012, feels like a completely different show.
Gone is Furth’s awkward original framing device, which involved Frank (Groff) delivering a speech to a cohort of fresh-faced graduates at his old high school. Instead, Friedman’s production starts exactly where it ends: on the rooftop balcony where Frank’s friendship with Charley (Radcliffe) and Mary (Mendez) began, as he reflects on how everything went so wrong in the 20 intervening years.
Friedman’s “Merrily” is, without a doubt, a memory play. “I’ve made only one mistake in my life. But I’ve made it over, and over, and over,” says Frank early in the show. “And that’s saying ‘yes’ when I meant ‘no.’” In the scenes that follow, the production looks back at those exact forks in Frank’s life, those seemingly insignificant decisions that led to the sad, superficial existence he ends up living.
This change in how the story is framed may appear small. But it offers clarity and purpose to a narrative that once was muddled and messy.
Not to be discounted are the performances by the three leads, whose chemistry captures every peak and trough of Frank, Charley and Mary’s relationship.
Groff, navigating Sondheim’s score with tender ease, is especially astonishing as he charts Frank’s evolution. His character’s older self is a smooth-talking pleaser. But as we move back in time, to when Frank was a struggling artist working in New York City, Groff’s shoulders hunch and the pitch of his voice raises by several notes. It’s then when we realize that Frank’s Hollywood self is nothing more than a fake persona.
As Charley, Frank’s songwriting partner and closest friend, Radcliffe nails the character’s neuroticism, powering through the fiendishly difficult patter song “Franklin Shepard Inc.” with brio. It’s a performance that should silence anyone who’s doubted Radcliffe’s abilities as a stage actor.
And as Mary, a writer turned alcoholic whose love for Frank goes unrequited, Mendez transforms the underwritten role into something far more substantive — the glue that keeps the trio together. Her distinct voice, as well, with a warm, mature vibrato that slides gracefully between the notes, recalls the Broadway stars of ages past.
In the supporting role of Beth, Frank’s first wife, Katie Rose Clarke delivers an impassioned rendition of “Not a Day Goes By,” which she sings to the man whom she married but now feels like a stranger. And as Frank’s second wife, the Broadway actor Gussie, Krystal Joy Brown offers up an exceedingly sly, manipulative take on the character.
If there are any flaws that remain with “Merrily” following its significant reconstructive surgeries over the years, it’s that Furth’s book still relies far too heavily on dramatic irony for this reverse chronological story to work. Particularly in the musical’s second act, many of its contrived emotional beats only land because the audience knows how those narrative arcs are going to end.
Friedman’s cast, though, is wise not to overplay these moments even further, as some other actors I’ve seen in these roles are often tempted to do, delivering those beats with a wink and a nudge.
But this production isn’t exactly perfect either. And where it disappoints is in how Friedman’s staging is captured on film. Sam Levy’s cinematography features far too many close-ups and quick cuts. Not once do we even see the theatre’s proscenium arch in its entirety. It’s as if Friedman and Levy want to pretend that this production wasn’t originally a stage musical.
It’s all the more disappointing considering this is Friedman’s second kick at the can, having previously filmed her 2012 production of “Merrily.” But she doesn’t quite improve on that one with this latest stage recording. So what we’re left with is an older movie with a less talented cast but impeccable cinematography — and this newer version with a cast that can’t be topped, but with cinematography that doesn’t do them justice.
For “Merrily” diehards like myself, this is of course frustrating. But I guess I’ll just have to live with it. After all, as Frank, Charley and Mary find out the hard way in the show: You often can’t have everything in life.
