Going backwards

This new movie version of Stephen Sondheim’s unlikely hit musical is a so-called “proshot” — a live performance captured by a professional crew.

Filmed in June 2024 at New York City’s Hudson Theatre, Merrily We Roll Along doesn’t have the full freedom of cinema or the electric immediacy of theatre, but for those of us who couldn’t swing a Broadway visit, this is a valuable record of one of Sondheim’s most mysterious, complex and personal works, rooted in a trio of terrific performances.

With words and music by Sondheim (Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd) and a book by George Furth, this story of three friends, told in reverse chronology, was considered cold and confusing when it debuted in 1981. A critical and commercial flop, Merrily — which is about the breakup of a creative partnership — did in fact lead to a professional rupture between Sondheim and his longtime director Harold Prince.

Over the decades, though, the musical has been rejigged and reworked, and its recent Broadway iteration, starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, and directed by Maria Friedman, won four Tony Awards in 2024, including Best Revival of a Musical, making for a heck of a comeback story.

Merrily starts in 1977 at the swanky Los Angeles home of seemingly successful movie producer Frank Shepard, played by Groff, who’s known for his work on Broadway (Hamilton), as well as in movies (Frozen) and television (Mindhunter).

One of the musical’s central questions, though, is how to define success. While Frank is surrounded by rich, famous and beautiful hangers-on, he is dealing with a failed marriage (and another clearly failing) and an estranged child, with lost friendships and squandered creative talent.

Frank faces drunken digs about his money-making mediocrity from old pal Mary Flynn (Broadway veteran Mendez), a sometime novelist who is struggling financially. He freezes when someone mentions Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Charley Kringas (Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame), Frank’s one-time songwriting partner in the New York theatre world.

Asking the musical question, “How did you get to be here?” the cast then moves back in time, to trace when practical compromise became craven selling out, when professional differences became personal betrayals.

We end up where the characters began, in 1957, on the night Frank, Charley and Mary first met, young and poor and hopeful. Overlaying the poignancy of youthful dreams with the hard knowledge of where they end up, Merrily becomes an ironic, evocative examination of time, age and friendship.

Gradually we learn how Charley and Frank started collaborating on Take a Left, a satire on 1960s American politics, before getting sidetracked by more lucrative work on a popular musical.

Charley continues to advocate for ambitious but uncertain projects, while Frank gives way to the lure of Hollywood fame and fortune, a tension that culminates in the song Franklin Shepard, Inc. Charley’s talk-show meltdown about how his dear friend has somehow become a business entity, it’s a standout Sondheim patter song — and the man loved his patter songs — and in Radcliffe’s expert performance, the number is hilarious, anguished and musically intricate, all at once.

We see Frank’s relationship with his first wife, Beth (Broadway regular Katie Rose Clarke), bookended by two versions of Not a Day Goes By, one heartrending and one happy.

Sondheim explores issues of art and commerce, and the risks and rewards of the creative life. But there are also universal questions: How much of anyone’s life is predetermined and how much is choice? How much is driven by individual personality and how much is shaped by the larger forces of place and time?

The proshot process includes multiple cameras and frequent close-ups, which help to convey some of the story’s subtle emotional shades. It helps that all three members of the main cast have done both stage and film work, and can modulate their performances to suit.

Groff is the conflicted centre of the story, but Radcliffe and Mendez both deliver dramatically and musically expressive portrayals, so this three-sided friendship feels beautifully balanced and emotionally real.

And within the constraints of the live-to-film format, it all sings. Merrily contains several self-referencing jokes about crass, money-minded producers demanding “hummable” tunes (“like Funny Girl, Fiddler and Dolly combined”) and distrusting anything challenging or difficult (“I’ll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit”). Sondheim’s music here is characteristically complex, but Merrily has some very catchy tunes.

You might find yourself whistling Old Friends for days afterward.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca