THE STORY – Three people, once the best of friends and artistic collaborators, are now in various stages of disappointment and burnout. But their story is told in reverse — each subsequent scene rolls back the years to more hopeful times, before Hollywood success corrupted their Broadway stage dreams, and fateful decisions sealed their personal and professional fates.
THE CAST – Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, Crystal Joy Brown, Katie Rose Clarke & Reg Rogers
THE TEAM – Maria Friedman (Director), Stephen Sondheim (Music & Lyrics) & George Furth (Book)
THE RUNNING TIME – 145 Minutes
It is arguably the greatest comeback in American musical theatre history. Left for dead over 40 years ago, composer Stephen Sondheim’s most notorious (and painful) flop, “Merrily We Roll Along,” was reconceived in a 2022 London production by director Maria Friedman. That production eventually returned to Broadway with a new cast in a landmark 2023 revival, earning the show four Tony Awards and the kind of ecstatic reviews Sondheim had always hoped for. Better yet, that historic production has now been brought to the screen by Friedman, a feat that in several key ways even improves on the qualities of that heralded stage show.
First of all, a personal note: In 1981, when I was eking out a living in my very first job in New York, I bought a ticket to that original production of “Merrily,” then in previews. I was excited, as I had always been a massive fan of the composer, and he was coming off one of his greatest successes, “Sweeney Todd.” But as I sat there watching the show, my jaw began to drop, and to my amazement, I muttered, “This is just awful.” I wasn’t alone, and the New York newspaper critics were even more vituperative. The show’s producers were said to be frantically fixing it, so after hearing it was quickly improving, I went back to see it and give it another chance. It was even worse. “Merrily We Roll Along” closed on Broadway after a humiliating 16 performances, a black mark that has plagued the show ever since.
For decades, stage directors have been trying to fix the show. After all, Sondheim’s score is among the most highly regarded of his career, with impossibly clever lyrics and one catchy earworm after another. The problem has always been the show’s book by George Furth, who wrote one of Sondheim’s most acclaimed musicals, the landmark “Company.” Based on the 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the story centers on a man who has lost the idealistic values of his youth and is told in reverse chronological order. But audiences hated the musical from the very first scene, a conundrum that subsequent productions had all been unable to crack. That is, until Friedman came along.
The story is simple: Franklin Shepard (Jonathan Groff), a celebrated Broadway composer turned Hollywood power broker, is hosting a fabulous party for the town’s movers and shakers when he realizes he has hit rock bottom. He is divorced from his first loving wife, his second marriage is on the rocks because of his infidelity, and, most importantly, he dearly misses his oldest and best friends: Mary Flynn (Lindsay Mendez), now an alcoholic theater critic, and Charley Kringas (Daniel Radcliffe), once his trusted writing partner and now a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who refuses to have anything to do with him.
Wracked with regret, Frank vows to give up all his material success if he could go back to the best days of their friendship and begins to recount their time together in his memory to see where it all went wrong. Both the stage production and the film are then structured as illustrations of Frank’s memories, moving backward chronologically from the trio’s acrimonious breakup to their first joyous Broadway success together, and finally to that one magical night when they first met on the roof of their apartment building.
Previous productions have centered the story on that friendship, making it, in effect, the central character in the story. But in the show’s opening scenes, that friendship hasn’t yet been explored, leaving the audience to watch a party scene populated by nothing but rich, self-satisfied assholes who aren’t worthy of our attention, much less our emotional connection. No wonder audiences turned on the show; the musical gave them no one to care about.
It was only Friedman who had the brilliant idea to shift the script’s focus from the group to Frank himself. Having him express his extreme regret at how his life had turned out and his wish that he had done things differently suddenly gives us a stake in his character that we never had before. He clearly loved his friends, so when Mary drunkenly lashes out at him in the show’s first scene or Charley excoriates him on live TV in the second, we no longer see their anger but understand their pain.
This shift makes getting Frank right much more challenging, requiring an actor to capture the character’s selfishness without losing the audience’s sympathy. Fortunately, Friedman found in Groff the perfect combination of charisma and empathy, so much so that even when Frank may be saying something unnecessarily cruel, you can understand why the character feels he needs to say it. Groff has consistently demonstrated this dimensionality in his Broadway shows such as “Spring Awakening” and “Hamilton,” and he earned a well-deserved Tony Award for his performance here.
As Mary, Lindsay Mendez makes a great partner for Groff. An acclaimed actress with an expressive face, Mendez is often cited for her brilliant comic work, but she digs into her character, loyal as a friend but secretly deeply in love with Frank. Friedman does her an enormous favor with smart cutaways to Mendez’s sadly resigned face as she watches yet another woman, and not her, become the newest object of Frank’s affection. These moments are key to understanding Mary —moments you might miss on stage —but Friedman uses her camera to ensure that every heartbreaking second hits home.
It is perhaps Radcliffe, however, who makes the most of the show’s move to film. An experienced film actor who won his first Tony Award for his work here, he knows just how much to modulate his stage performance to fit the intimacy of this very different medium. Knowing that, he includes small details about his character that might be lost if you’re on stage playing to the balcony, revealing so much in Friedman’s intelligent use of close-ups. It’s some of Radcliffe’s best film work yet.
What hasn’t changed is the beauty of Sondheim’s score. One common criticism of Sondheim’s work among theatergoers is that “you can’t hum any of his tunes.” Well, I dare you to see “Merrily We Roll Along” and not have at least one song stuck in your head as you head up the aisle. From the lively title song and the bouncy “Old Friends” to the hopeful “Our Time” and the heartbreaking “Not a Day Goes By,” these are songs that not only deepen the plot and propel the narrative but will likely move you and stay with you for days to come.
Still, no matter how skilled a filmed recording, or technically a “proshot,” as this may be, there are disadvantages that Friedman must overcome. The stage at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre, where the film was recorded over three performances in June 2024, is shallow, creating a small workspace for the actors to play in. Compare this to the deep stage used in the proshot of “Hamilton,” filmed in 2016 and recently released in theaters, which used minimal props and a darkened background that at times gave the illusion of watching a movie rather than a filmed play. “Merrily,” however, with its extensive props and time-flat backgrounds, constantly reminds viewers of its stage origins and can prevent the audience from sharing the same illusion.
Still, if Friedman’s “Merrily” did nothing else but provide a permanent recording of this landmark production for generations to come, it would be performing a service. But that Friedman took the opportunity to rethink her stage blocking for film, adding close-ups that allow her cast to flesh out their characters more fully, is an absolute gift. For the next incarnation of “Merrily,” we’ll likely have to wait for Richard Linklater’s film version, starring Paul Mescal, Beanie Feldstein, and Ben Platt, which he will shoot over the course of 20 years (a la “Boyhood“). That’s a long time to wait, so luckily, we have this “Merrily,” for all its limitations, close at hand to enjoy.
