“Still Rolling”
Ever since its massive flop on Broadway in 1981 (52
previews; 16 performances), Merrily We
Roll Along (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim,
book by George Furth, and
original direction by Hal Prince), has
refused to die, or like old generals, simply fade away. Sondheim is such a gigantic figure in modern musical theatre
history that even his lesser efforts inspire legions of fanboys and fangirls,
and every fan-gender in between, to shout for their revival. None more so than Merrily, whose checkered history
has made it a cult favorite. 
The show, with its numerous national and international
revivals, has undergone multiple tweaks to the book and score. New York alone has
seen a well-received Encores!
rendition in 2012, an Off-Broadway version at the York in 1994, and, now, a modestly
successful, greatly scaled-down, Off-Broadway revival directed by Noah Brody
for the Fiasco Theater at the Laura
Pels Theatre, under the aegis of the Roundabout Theatre Company. This, I must
confess, is my first experience of the show, so I won’t compare it to any of
its predecessors.
Fiasco—whose critically praised revival of Into the Woods at this same venue in
2015 I missed—has gained a quality reputation for its original rethinking of established
material, as in their Two
Gentlemen of Verona (2015), so it’s no surprise that they’d take an
unconventional approach to Merrily. Most radically, they've reduced the company from over two dozen in the 1981 show to a minuscule six, three of them playing two or three roles, with many minor characters gone with the wind. Surprisingly,
the concept mostly works, although there are several confusing moments when it doesn’t.
Sondheim, by the way, offered his help and support during
the show’s creative process.
Merrily We Roll Along is
a very loose adaptation of a well-received 1934 comedy-drama by George
S. Kaufman and Moss Hart that ran for 155 performances and was certainly not
the “flop” Martin Gottfried calls it in his More
Broadway Musicals. While remaining a story about theatre figures, the
musical version covers the years 1980-1957 instead of 1934-1916, changes the characters' names,
alters their artistic occupations (for example, the original’s playwright, Richard, becomes Frank, a composer), uses different locales, and takes many other
liberties. Interestingly, some lines from the original have
been inserted into the Fiasco version.
But, while using a roughly similar storyline, it maintains Kaufman
and Hart’s most significant innovation, showing us two decades in the lives of
its characters in reverse chronological order.
Such reverse-order plotting, which begins with the end
result of the characters’ trajectory and then returns to the events that led to
it, has become more familiar over the years, as in plays like Harold Pinter’s Betrayal.
In 1934, it was considered quite experimental for a play, in spite of its
increasing familiarity in movie flashbacks. Burns Mantle, who chose the Kaufman-Hart
play as one of the 10 best of the 1934-1935 season, wrote:
There have been dream plays in which the sleeper’s consciousness was projected through past experiences, or through fantastic imaginings. But even the recovered story employing the flashback screen method, as did Elmer Rice’s On Trial, had their beginnings in the present and came back in the end to their starting point, as by the rules of musical composition, a song or a symphony must end on the key in which it has begun.
Sondheim and Furth, however, cheat a bit by adding a
prologue of sorts, set in 1980, in which we briefly meet the three core characters. These are Franklin Shepard (Ben Steinfeld), a composer turned movie
producer, whose marriage is on the rocks; Charley Kringas (Manu Narayan), a playwright/lyricist
now in therapy, and Mary Flynn (Jessie Austrian), a wise-cracking, alcoholic
novelist turned critic (whose 1934 original was inspired by Dorothy Parker). Each
gives a capsule account of how, regardless of their apparent success, they’ve
become disillusioned, personally and professionally, concluding with each
reciting, “If I could go back to the beginning.” 
The script then takes us to a coke-snorting, booze-swilling,
Hollywood party at the home of Frank, who’s sold out on the ideals of his youth
to become a mediocre but rich movie producer. His wife, Gussie Carnegie (Emily Young), an
aging Broadway star unhappy she’s not in Frank’s new movie, is disgusted that instead
of her, it stars Frank’s young mistress, Meg (Brittany Bradford, who also plays Frank's first wife, Beth).
As the play slips further back into the past, we discover the
background to the tragic culmination of Frank and Gussie’s aspirations via
scenes involving the dissolution of Frank’s partnership with Charley, his musical
theatre collaborator. Although the men have written highly profitable
Broadway musicals, Charley feels betrayed when Frank’s grasping for money and
fame leads him to abandon his artistic ambitions.
Time keeps sliding past, each year announced by a character, as we watch the highly promising careers and professional and personal friendships
of Charley, Frank, and Mary fall apart, develop, and begin, in that order, with the final scene set in 1957, when Mary first meets the fellows on the
rooftop of a building in which they all live. 
Obviously, showing the events in this backward order
emphasizes the irony implicit in the evolution of their lives. It also maps the difficult
path of collaboration and friendship, not to speak of the conflict between personal
ideals and the pragmatism of reality, a theme that would have had particular resonance
during the Depression, when the original was born.
Despite a lively pace that keeps things rolling for an
intermissionless hour and 45 minutes, proficient staging, and nimble
and creative choreography by Lorin Latarro (for actors who move well but aren’t
dancers), nothing can disguise the thinness of the characters. Each has one or
two dominant traits that vary little through the evening.
And, while it’s obvious how business issues drive a career-influencing
wedge between Charley and Frank, Mary’s carrying a torch for Frank (quickly mentioned
in passing) is never explored as a reason for her post-bestseller writing career
to have tanked. Overall, the characters have such solipsistic, charmless
personalities that cheering or sympathizing with them is barely an option. 
None of the performances, despite their technical adeptness
by players who seem to be more actor-singers than singer-actors, possess the
magical appeal that suggests future stardom. Steinfeld, in particular, is
miscast as a leading man, and Young’s Gussie lacks the diva-like glamour the
part demands.
Technically, the individual numbers are worthy of applause, several
demonstrating virtuosic mastery of Sondheim’s extremely difficult verbal demands.
The one that sticks most in mind is Narayan’s performance of Charley’s
ultra-complex “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” which is probably an eternal
show-stopper.
Sondheim’s tricky score, which contains such perpetually listenable
numbers as “Old Friends,” and, perhaps the show’s most oft-recorded melody, “Not
a Day Goes By,” is filled with dazzling lyrics, which the company renders with
aplomb.
Sondheim’s tunes are written to express they lyrics, which they do in devilishly clever ways. There’s even a scene where Sondheim, obviously
citing his own experience, has a producer urge Frank to write songs the
audience can hum. As this production, orchestrated by Alexander Gemignani, and performed
by an eight-member orchestra, makes clear, though, Sondheim’s melodies may not
be conventional but they catch your ear and, with each listening, grow
increasingly habit-forming. Which isn’t to deny that some aren’t top-drawer
Sondheim. 
Brody’s production takes place within Derek McLane’s
beautifully designed vision of a prop master's paradise, with tiers of shelving curving
across the stage, holding neatly packed assortments of all sorts of things for
potential theatrical use. A large upstage separation suggests either a concrete
wall or a background for scenic effects, like a shimmering
curtain. There also are alcoves for the actors to sit in and watch from when not in a
scene. Furnishings, of course, are shifted swiftly by the cast itself. Christopher
Akerlind’s lighting distinguishes one locale from the other, regardless of the general
lack of familiar markers. 
Paloma Young and Ashley Rose Horton’s costumes are attractive
but, regardless of the many changes, seem relatively period-neutral rather than
making a big effort to stress fashion differences. For a story emphasizing time
differences, the lack of more distinct, perhaps mildly satirical, fashion differences is a drawback. The
same is true for hair, male as well as female; you won’t, for example, see
mustaches, beards, and sideburns come and go. 
Screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz
(Citizen Kane) hit the nail on the head when trying to assess why even those who
liked the original play had trouble sympathizing with it. His words describe
the play, not the musical, but are still worth quoting:
Here’s this playwright who writes a play and it’s a big success. Then he writes another play and it’s a big hit, too. All his plays are big successes. All the actresses in them are in love with him, and he has a yacht and beautiful home in the country. He has a beautiful wife and two beautiful children, and he makes a million dollars. Now the problem the play propounds is this: How did the poor son of a bitch ever get in this jam. (Quoted in Scott Meredith’s George S. Kaufman and His Friends.)
Laura Pels Theatre: Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 W. 46th St., NYC
Through April 7
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