November 16, 1981—If there was any justice in the world, Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along would have been as successful as the trio of musicals that finally established him as Broadway’s great creator of musical theater at the start of the 1970s: Company, Follies and A Little Night Music. The composer-lyricist and his longtime producer-collaborator, Harold Prince, had set much of the show in the Fifties, an era when they came to maturity; they were working from a script by their Company playwright, George Furth; and the songs answered resoundingly those critics always carping that Sondheim never wrote a tuneful show.
But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to Broadway success. The critics called the show a mess, audiences stayed away (or often left without returning at intermission), and the production closed after only 16 performances.
Worse, the tensions created by the show created a fissure in the professional and personal association of Sondheim and Prince. Their friendship was strained for awhile, and it would be another 20 years before they worked together on another musical: Bounce.
In a way, the fate of Merrily might have been foretold by its source material. George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart wrote in what many theater aficionados (myself included) regard as the zenith of American theater comedy, the 1930s, a kind of American Restoration period.
But Merrily We Roll Along turned off audiences who quickly embraced two other works by these collaborators, You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner. The 1934 show wasn’t merely challenging because of its unconventional structure--a “reverse narrative” that goes back in time, a la Harold Pinter’s Betrayal--but also its unsympathetic narrator, a jaded 40-year-old playwright who has sold out his artistic vision, broken with his best friend and betrayed his wife. The show only lasted 155 performances and has never been revived on Broadway.
The same negative fallout was even more pronounced in the musical adaptation nearly 50 years later. Merrily was hardly the first musical about a heel, but the fate of that earlier landmark show, Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey, might have given Sondheim and Prince pause: It, too, became a success d’estime long after the original show tanked.
An unsympathetic lead was hardly the only problem facing Sondheim and Prince:
* The costumes turned out to be so inappropriate that Prince simply threw them out. Instead, he had characters wear T-shirts identifying themselves through their relationship to the main character, Franklin Shepard (e.g., “Best Friend,” “ex-wife”). That solution might at first have seemed cute. But it looked amateurish to Broadway audiences, who undoubtedly asked themselves why they were paying premium prices for a production whose value they couldn’t see as well as hear.
* Unlike the cast in the Kaufman-Hart play, who were largely 20-and-30-year-olds who played slightly younger and older than their real ages, Prince used actors in middle-aged makeup who, by play’s end, were revealed in their mostly teenage incarnations. But, as Sondheim noted in his collected-lyrics-with-memoirs, Finishing the Hat, such actors, no matter how talented, still find it hard to play characters considerably older than themselves.
* Instead of mounting the show out of town, Prince held tryouts on Broadway. Working the show's problems away from the Great White Way had become, by this time, too expensive. But word quickly spread, even before the production’s premiere, that there were problems.
* Both the show’s lead male actor and its choreographer ended up getting replaced.
* Sondheim and Prince faced a critical establishment ready to take them down a peg. Nearly three decades after the painful events, Sondheim chalked much of this up to jealousy: "Part of the reason for the virulent overreaction, I suspect, was that at the time Hal and I were resented as having become successful despite our maverick ventures....To have done shows like Follies, Pacific Overtures and Sweeney Todd and still be living well was not our best revenge, it was theirs."
For some time, even as late as last summer, rumors circulated that the Roundabout Theatre Co. would stage a revival of the work. As so often happens with that illustrious company, it all has proven a tease, at least so far. Instead, it looks as if next year will bring a Lapine production in February as part of the Encores! Series in Manhattan, and, out in Cincinnati a month later, one of those John Doyle productions in which the actors not only act and sing but also play instruments. (Great for the resume, I suppose, but quite exhausting, wouldn’t you say?)
There are two reasons, I think, why Sondheim refuses to write off this property. Its production insanity aside, the show reflects a crucial period in his life: 1957, when he first won acclaim for the lyrics to West Side Story on Broadway. The adventures of Franklin Shepard, Charlie Kringas and Mary Flynn represent his musical answer to Moss Hart’s Act One: the serio-comic ordeal and triumph of a theatrical neophyte.
Second, the show became his declaration of independence as a music-man maverick. As his idealistic high-school characters sing in the show’s closing hymn, “The Hills of Tomorrow,” the way ahead may be “steep,” “But for those who dare/The world is there/To change!”
But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to Broadway success. The critics called the show a mess, audiences stayed away (or often left without returning at intermission), and the production closed after only 16 performances.
Worse, the tensions created by the show created a fissure in the professional and personal association of Sondheim and Prince. Their friendship was strained for awhile, and it would be another 20 years before they worked together on another musical: Bounce.
In a way, the fate of Merrily might have been foretold by its source material. George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart wrote in what many theater aficionados (myself included) regard as the zenith of American theater comedy, the 1930s, a kind of American Restoration period.
But Merrily We Roll Along turned off audiences who quickly embraced two other works by these collaborators, You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner. The 1934 show wasn’t merely challenging because of its unconventional structure--a “reverse narrative” that goes back in time, a la Harold Pinter’s Betrayal--but also its unsympathetic narrator, a jaded 40-year-old playwright who has sold out his artistic vision, broken with his best friend and betrayed his wife. The show only lasted 155 performances and has never been revived on Broadway.
The same negative fallout was even more pronounced in the musical adaptation nearly 50 years later. Merrily was hardly the first musical about a heel, but the fate of that earlier landmark show, Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey, might have given Sondheim and Prince pause: It, too, became a success d’estime long after the original show tanked.
An unsympathetic lead was hardly the only problem facing Sondheim and Prince:
* The costumes turned out to be so inappropriate that Prince simply threw them out. Instead, he had characters wear T-shirts identifying themselves through their relationship to the main character, Franklin Shepard (e.g., “Best Friend,” “ex-wife”). That solution might at first have seemed cute. But it looked amateurish to Broadway audiences, who undoubtedly asked themselves why they were paying premium prices for a production whose value they couldn’t see as well as hear.
* Unlike the cast in the Kaufman-Hart play, who were largely 20-and-30-year-olds who played slightly younger and older than their real ages, Prince used actors in middle-aged makeup who, by play’s end, were revealed in their mostly teenage incarnations. But, as Sondheim noted in his collected-lyrics-with-memoirs, Finishing the Hat, such actors, no matter how talented, still find it hard to play characters considerably older than themselves.
* Instead of mounting the show out of town, Prince held tryouts on Broadway. Working the show's problems away from the Great White Way had become, by this time, too expensive. But word quickly spread, even before the production’s premiere, that there were problems.
* Both the show’s lead male actor and its choreographer ended up getting replaced.
* Sondheim and Prince faced a critical establishment ready to take them down a peg. Nearly three decades after the painful events, Sondheim chalked much of this up to jealousy: "Part of the reason for the virulent overreaction, I suspect, was that at the time Hal and I were resented as having become successful despite our maverick ventures....To have done shows like Follies, Pacific Overtures and Sweeney Todd and still be living well was not our best revenge, it was theirs."
(One shining light in the production debacle: the casting of 21-year-old Jason Alexander as Broadway producer Joe Josephson. Yes, the man who later embodied George Costanza can be heard warbling quite well on the original-cast album about the two male songwriting friends’ need to come up with a “hummable melody.” Sondheim, noting that someone so young could be “an old pro,” marveled, “It was as if he had been born middle-aged.” It’s enough to make me wish Alexander had spent more of the last decade on musical comedy than on his misbegotten follow-ups to Seinfeld.)
All of this was unfortunate. Problems with the show's book aside, Merrily featured a number of Sondheim's most memorable songs, frequently covered by pop and jazz artists, including "Not a Day Goes By," ""Old Friends," "Like It Was," "Now You Know," "Good Thing Going," "Opening Doors," and "Our Time." These thirty-two-bar songs featured structures that created "hooks," yet, in their reprises, could include numerous subtle, often ironic changes.
My first prolonged exposure to Sondheim, in fact, came through a cover version of "Not a Day Goes By," featured on Carly Simon's underrated Torch LP. Curious about the song, and about the history of this failed show, I went out and bought the original-cast soundtrack, and quickly became part of the Sondheim cult.
All of this was unfortunate. Problems with the show's book aside, Merrily featured a number of Sondheim's most memorable songs, frequently covered by pop and jazz artists, including "Not a Day Goes By," ""Old Friends," "Like It Was," "Now You Know," "Good Thing Going," "Opening Doors," and "Our Time." These thirty-two-bar songs featured structures that created "hooks," yet, in their reprises, could include numerous subtle, often ironic changes.
My first prolonged exposure to Sondheim, in fact, came through a cover version of "Not a Day Goes By," featured on Carly Simon's underrated Torch LP. Curious about the song, and about the history of this failed show, I went out and bought the original-cast soundtrack, and quickly became part of the Sondheim cult.
Despite the bad taste left by the production, Sondheim was determined that the show would endure in some fashion.
Four years later, James Lapine—now taking on Prince’s role as the author’s theatrical partner—directed another version of Merrily at La Jolla Playhouse featuring a revised book and some new (and some deleted) songs. Seven years later, in Leicester, England, Furth and Sondheim made changes they felt finally made the show workable, and a couple of years later, a London production won that year’s Olivier Award as Best Musical.
For some time, even as late as last summer, rumors circulated that the Roundabout Theatre Co. would stage a revival of the work. As so often happens with that illustrious company, it all has proven a tease, at least so far. Instead, it looks as if next year will bring a Lapine production in February as part of the Encores! Series in Manhattan, and, out in Cincinnati a month later, one of those John Doyle productions in which the actors not only act and sing but also play instruments. (Great for the resume, I suppose, but quite exhausting, wouldn’t you say?)
There are two reasons, I think, why Sondheim refuses to write off this property. Its production insanity aside, the show reflects a crucial period in his life: 1957, when he first won acclaim for the lyrics to West Side Story on Broadway. The adventures of Franklin Shepard, Charlie Kringas and Mary Flynn represent his musical answer to Moss Hart’s Act One: the serio-comic ordeal and triumph of a theatrical neophyte.
Second, the show became his declaration of independence as a music-man maverick. As his idealistic high-school characters sing in the show’s closing hymn, “The Hills of Tomorrow,” the way ahead may be “steep,” “But for those who dare/The world is there/To change!”
Three years after Merrily ended—temporarily—in disaster, Sondheim won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with the first show he did with Lapine, Sunday in the Park With George.
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