Its 1981 New York premiere was a disaster but this told-in-reverse musical became a Tony award-winning hit with Daniel Radcliffe. The film version is a tear-jerking joy
I
have made enough mistakes as a critic to feel mildly chuffed when a verdict is vindicated. In 1981 I wrote excitedly about a new Stephen Sondheim musical, Merrily We Roll Along, that I had seen in preview in New York; reviled by reviewers and shunned by the public, it then closed two weeks after opening. In 2023-24 the very same musical ran for a year on Broadway, won four Tony awards and was hailed by the critics. Fortunately a live performance of that Maria Friedman production was filmed and I would urge you to catch it when it’s released in cinemas next month.
I say “the very same musical” but that is not strictly accurate. Based on a 1934 play by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart, it is still the same story, told in reverse chronological order, of dissolving relationships: a success-worshipping composer and movie producer, Franklin Shepard, looks back over his life and sees how time has eroded both his creative partnership with a dramatist, Charley, and their mutual friendship with a novelist, Mary.
But, after the show flopped in 1981, Sondheim and the writer of the book, George Furth, made various structural changes. It no longer opens with a student song written by Franklin but with a gaudy party celebrating his latest movie success. The approach to casting has also changed. The 1981 cast was made up of fresh-faced performers who started by simulating middle age and eased naturally into youth as the evening progressed. Now it is standard practice to cast mature actors as in the Friedman production where Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez straddle the years with minimal adjustments.
