★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
You couldn’t buy at ticket when this starry revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” played to packed houses on Broadway from October 2023 to July 2024, picking up four Tony Awards in the process, including Best Revival of a Musical. Now you can see the show on the big screen with stars Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez when “Merrily” rolls along to a theater near you starting Dec. 5, with cameras sweeping the stage and picking up closeups and nuances you could never catch in the theater.
Intrigued? You should be. “Merrily” began its Broadway life in 1981 as an infamous flop that abruptly closed after 16 performances with only the superb Sondheim score, recorded and released as an original cast album, living on. Ironically, the musical theater legend died in 2021 at 91 and never saw the production that rescued his passion project from oblivion.
What did the trick? The story still focuses on three friends—composer Franklin Shepard (Groff), lyricist Charlie Kringas (Radcliffe) and Mary Flynn (Mendez), their college pal who secretly loves Frank and eases both boys through creative tensions that intensify when Frank becomes a Hollywood power player.
Based on the 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the story is told in reverse chronological order. When we meet the threesome in L.A., they’re older and embittered by success or lack of same. By the end they’re idealistic students ready to take on the world and sing out their plans from a rooftop.
Audiences hated the time reverse gimmick. Did you cast young actors to play older or the reverse? No matter, it was always awkward. Now, with Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez, it magically works like a charm. Director Maria Friedman decided to center the plot on Frank’s journey in order to see the effect on his friends when Hollywood shatters his already shaky value system.
The idea is inspired. And so is the casting of Groff. In past productions of “Merrily,” Frank is basically a little shit. But Groff, onstage and off, exudes a buoyant spirit, even when tamped down, we see something in him worth saving. His career best performance to date gives the audience a rooting interest. And we finally understand why Charlie and Mary refuse to completely give up on him.
You can wait around and hope, but it’s difficult to believe that ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ will ever have a more feeling and vital performance than this one.
It makes all the difference. As Groff sings “Growing Up,” he’s telling us what he needs to do. That he doesn’t do it is his tragedy and Groff lets us feel his pain.
In Sondheim’s lyrics, Frank is ironically the one trying to put a fizzier spin on things. Mary won’t do it. Her cynicism, slashingly delivered by Mendez, is corrosive when she sings:
It's called flowers wilt
It's called apples rot
It's called thieves get rich and saints get shot
It's called God don't answer prayers a lot
Okay, now you know
For Charlie, resentment over Frank’s betrayal of their “good thing going” spills out in “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” The song is a white-hot explosion of resentment towards busy-busy Frank. And Radcliffe, knowing the tune is a gold standard showstopper, delivers the definitive version:
Very sneaky how it happens
Much more sneaky than you think
Start with nothing but a song to sing
Next you're Franklin Shepard Inc.
The score is brimming over with wonders—Old Friends,” “Not a Day Goes By,” “Good Thing Going”—but the one that guts you is the one sung with indelible intimacy by three young friends on a rooftop. It’s the last song we’ll hear from them:
Feel the flow (feel the flow)
Hear what's happening
We're what's happening
Long ago, all we had was that funny feeling
Saying someday we'd send them reeling
Now it looks like we can
Someday just began
It's our heads on the block
Give us room, and start the clock
Our time, coming through
Me and you pal, me and you
You can wait around and hope, but it’s difficult to believe that “Merrily We Roll Along” will ever have a more feeling and vital performance than this one. I know the great director Richard Linklater has started shooting his own film version, starring Paul Mescal, Beanie Feldstein and Ben Platt. But he’s doing it “Boyhood” style so the actors can age naturally over 20 years. The wrap date is 2040. There’s no telling where we’ll be on that date, old friends. But right now, we get to have this time capsule version, beautifully acted and sung by Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez as a love letter to Sondheim who never got to see them. But we can, reveling in the sight and sound of them catching at dreams.