Merrily We Roll Along

 

I rarely get to see Broadway shows ON Broadway, so I was excited when I read Maria Friedman was directing a film version of her 2023 revival of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along for a December 2025 release. I couldn't recall ever having seen a touring company or local theater production of this wonderful show, so I was thrilled.

I don't remember why I bought the '81 original cast recording of that featured Jim Walton, Ann Morrison and Lonny Price as the leads; it was probably part of my everything-Sondheim phase I was (am) in. Aside from its terrific songs, I liked the show's reverse-chronology structure that traced the dissolution of the friendship of three creative people from its ending in the late '70s to its beginning 20 years before. It's a mystery to me why critics hated it so much when it premiered in 1981.

In the film of the '23 show, Jonathan Goff plays Frank, a brilliant composer of stage and movie music who has become a high-dollar industry of sorts (Franklin Shepard Inc.); Daniel Radcliffe plays lyricist, playwright and Frank's former best friend Charley; and Lindsay Mendez is author / journalist Mary, who has hidden her amorous love for Frank for years and finds shelter in the safety of the trio (Like It Was).

When we meet these three, the enormous affection that we will eventually learn they had for one another as Old Friends doesn't exist anymore, primarily because of Frank's self-centered destructiveness and their inability to fulfill the dreams they'd sworn to see through on a rooftop in '57 (Our Time)

The tale in reverse is an interesting storytelling device that has become more common in recent years. It gives audiences so much more information about the character the deeper we get into the show than the characters know themselves. In this way, the songs they sing in reprise often have different meanings -- some ironic, some rueful, some painful, as in As the Days Go By.

This production won Tony Awards for Best Musical Revival and Best Actor and Featured Actor (Goff and Radcliffe). Both Friedman and Mendez were also nominated.

This film, one of the special Fathom Entertainment events, is not a blockbuster affair. I think it will be enjoyed most by theater geeks and folks who have wondered what Harry Potter has been doing since leaving Hogwarts.