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Merrily We Roll Along [PS Classics]
Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along has had phrases like "troubled," "misbegotten" and "fascinating-but-unworkable" attached to it for so long that one might think that at some point they officially changed the title to Sondheim's Fascinating-But-Unworkable Merrily We Roll Along. It is now just as officially time to retire that sentiment, with this past February's production at City Center Encores! serving as Exhibit A and the resulting PS Classics two-disc cast recording serving as Exhibit B. (I originally labeled the recording "Exhibit 1," but changed it to "B" to avoid confusing readers. Any true Sondheimite knows, however, that A is 1 and 1 is 2.)
Merrily We Roll Along has been rewritten more times than Candide, I suppose. Or maybe not. (These two musicals make an interesting pair, don't you think?) At any rate, Merrily We Roll Along has undergone wholesale changes since it folded after an ignominious 16 performances back in November 1981. And even before. It became clear at the very first preview that the show was — well, fascinating but unworkable. Sondheim, Furth and director Hal Prince tried to rework it, with constant and in some cases severe changes throughout the previews (which eventually grew to an almost but not quite record-setting 52).
But there is only so much you can do, fixin'-wise, when the production is up and running. If the problems extend to the production concept and the set, and the casting, you are stuck sticking band-aids on an iceberg. If you know what I mean. Merrily failed despite all rescue attempts, leaving a figurative hole in the spirit of the authors. The original cast album, recorded just after the closing, was at once a balm and an ache; how could something that sounds this good turn out this bad?
Sondheim rebounded in 1984 with a new librettist/director, James Lapine. The pair created the Pulitzer-winning Sunday in the Park with George which — not coincidentally — underwent an extended public workshop at Playwrights Horizons, some nine months prior to the Broadway production. At the start of the workshop, Sunday wasn't quite ready; they only managed to get to the second act for the final three of twenty-five performances. Which is to say that if Sunday had opened cold — with audiences bringing Broadway expectations and paying Broadway prices at the first preview, like at Merrily — they might have also found themselves in the proverbial soup.
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Photo by Martha Swope |
Merrily came to Encores! as the first offering of this past season, with James Lapine once again directing. This was the first major production since the death of Furth in 2008, as a result of which Lapine might have felt more free to adapt the script. (Concert versions by definition require adaptation of the libretto; in this case, Lapine seems to have not only whittled things down but done some rewriting.) For whatever reasons, this Merrily We Roll Along — for the first time in my experience, at least — worked. No excuses required, no recap necessary of the long, not-so-merry road the show had rolled along for 25 years. Here was a production which entertained, which told a story that left you something to think about, and which practically smote you over the head with the richness of Sondheim's score. Yes, the same score we'd been hearing since 1985, but even so.
photo by Martha Swope |
The performances are very good. Standing out is Celia-Keenan Bolger, who stepped into the role of Mary Flynn between the Off-Broadway and Broadway stints of Peter and the Starcatcher. (The 2012 Tony nominee Keenan-Bolger is wonderful as Molly — the only girl — in the play presently at the Atkinson, and the show is wonderful, too; take this as a plug in passing.) Here, as Mary, Keenan-Bolger is no child; she is as caustic and brittle as Dorothy Parker, after whom Kaufman & Hart patterned the role in the original, 1934 play version of Merrily. From her very first lines in "That Frank," this Mary commands attention while always shining the spotlight back on her old friend (and his shortcomings). Lin-Manuel Miranda, the author/star of In the Heights, might seem like a non-ideal choice for Frank's pal-and-lyricist Charley, a role which was so definitively created by Lonny Price. So much for type casting; Miranda is swell. He manages that breakdown-in-song called "Franklin Shepard, Inc." with aplomb, and is especially touching in "Good Thing Going" and "Opening Doors."
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Photo by Joan Marcus |
Orchestrator Jonathan Tunick has been on hand since the original production, but the orchestration situation has always been problematic. As new songs — and revised versions of old songs — came along, Tunick duly orchestrated them; but subsequent productions, in non-Broadway sized venues, used orchestras with considerably fewer players than the original. So all the musical changes over the years have been orchestrated for smaller orchestras. How do you do Merrily at City Center with 23 pieces when a considerable part of the show is orchestrated for only 13?
By reorchestrating all the "new" stuff for the same 23. Fortunately, Tunick is very much around and — as anyone who listens to this new recording will hear — writing as skillfully as ever. (Tunick doesn't look like he's 74, nor does he write like he's 74.) When starting the assignment, though, he realized that the original charts for the show — which are excellent, as attested to by the original 1981 cast album — had an underlying flaw. In a fascinating liner note, he explains that Merrily was described to him when he started work as "a lighthearted, ingenuous romp, like a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movie." This, in itself, indicates just how unworkable and unfixable the original concept was; by the time the creators realized the true nature of the show, it was too late to make the sort of changes that were necessary.
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photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN |
(Those of us you who know the original recording note-for-note might be startled by the final fanfare at the end of the overture. That clam — the high note that the trumpet player muffs — is gone. Imagine, we actually hear it now without the error and it sounds like something is missing!)
The glory of Merrily We Roll Along, though, is in Sondheim's score. While I've always found the existing cast albums endlessly interesting, this new one adds another element. The songs are not just good/enjoyable/intriguing/you-name-it; they are impressive. One after another. The big group numbers, like "That Frank," "Now You Know," "It's a Hit," "Opening Doors," "Our Time." And the smaller numbers, "Like It Was," "Franklin Shepard, Inc.," "Old Friends, "Growing Up," "Good Thing Going."
We are so used to considering Merrily We Roll Along fascinating-but-unworkable — and so used to being overwhelmed by the glories of Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd — that we overlook the brilliance of the writing here. Listen to "Not a Day Goes By," which in this version is introduced by Beth, Frank's first wife. This is not a song of enduring love; it is a devastating cry of pain. The song is heard again — later in the show, but earlier in the story — at Frank and Beth's wedding. The celebratory love duet is punctured by a third voice, Mary's unrequited anguish of longing. (Is this stronger on the new recording because of Keenan-Bolger?) In any event, "Not a Day Goes By" is a remarkable piece of dramatic writing by the composer/lyricist.
We can thank PS Classics for recording this production, and for spreading it over two discs. This allows 89 minutes-worth, instead of the 67 on the Broadway album. All the music plus enough dialogue to give us a better sense of the motivations for the songs. But we could go on and on. Let's just say Merrily We Roll Along now takes its rightful place on the Sondheim shelf.
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(Steven Suskin is author of "Show Tunes" as well as "The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations," "Second Act Trouble," the "Broadway Yearbook" series and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He also pens Playbill.com's Book Shelf and DVD Shelf columns. He can be reached at [email protected].)