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IAN: Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along"... [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-30

..began as a straight play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart (1934). I’ve never seen either version performed live, but found the play problematic when I read it years ago, and can understand why Sondheim’s updated musical version wasn’t a hit on Broadway (1981). For one thing, it’s kind of a downer. That’s not a deal-breaker in any art form, of course. But telegraphing the ending by beginning with the bummer ending and working backwards to the hopeful beginning — while a worthy artistic endeavor — isn’t the best way to engage an audience.

To say the least. Because this was the show that ended the Sondheim-Hal Prince collaboration. Merrily ran a whole 16 performances.

But it’s worth looking at, not least because...Sondheim. Even when his shows are less than completely successful, there is much in them to enjoy. Or as Richard Brody put it in The New Yorker,

“Merrily We Roll Along,” of course, turned out to be the “Ishtar” of Broadway: it suffered from gossipy reports of a troubled production and, as a result, was received with hostility by critics, and it closed after only sixteen performances, only to come back, years later, as a rediscovered classic. www.newyorker.com/...

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The premise is simple enough: Three friends in idealistic youth grow apart, and into people they couldn’t have imagined back then. But the story is told in reverse, so we first see them in their disillusioned middle age (1976), and watch as they go backwards in time to that youth in the 1950s.

The music is superb. The source material was always problematic.

“Not A Day Goes By” (Bernadette Peters)

The show tells the story of how three friends' lives and friendship change over the course of 20 years; it focuses particularly on Franklin Shepard, a talented composer of musicals who, over those 20 years, abandons his friends and songwriting career to become a producer of Hollywood movies. Like the play on which it is based, the show's story moves in reverse chronology, beginning in 1976 at the friends' lowest moment and ending in 1957, at their youthful best. en.wikipedia.org/...

“Old Friends Part 1: LIke It Was” (Cast Album)

I was essentially trained by Oscar Hammerstein to think of songs as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically. Stephen Sondheim

“Franklin Shepard Inc” Menier Chocolate Factory, 2013

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. Stephen Sondheim

“Our Time” (BBC Proms)

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That’s what makes theatre live. That’s why it persists. Stephen Sondheim

“Bobby and Jackie and Jack” (Cast Album)

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YouTube has the complete Menier Chocolate Factory production (London, 2013) and it is excellent. [2:16:56]

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/30/2150225/-IAN-Stephen-Sondheim-s-Merrily-We-Roll-Along

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