‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Review: Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez Lead a Broadway Revival That’s More Art Than Commerce
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Commercial theater — theater written mostly to entertain audiences, for the purpose of making money — is the enemy in Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1981 musical, “Merrily We Roll Along,” now on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre. According to “Merrily,” it’s theater that doesn’t sacrifice its profundity to make it easy on audiences that has any real value at all. But if commercial theater is the enemy, then it’s not surprising that “Merrily We Roll Along” flopped after 16 performances on Broadway in 1981: It’s not a show written to easily entertain.
Centered on the friendship between gifted playwright Charley (Daniel Radcliffe), brilliant composer Franklin Shepard (Jonathan Groff) and critic Mary Flynn (Lindsay Mendez), “Merrily We Roll Along” begins at the end of their collective story — at a debauched party in 1976 celebrating the opening of Frank’s first Hollywood film. It’s not a fun party for those with any depth; after all, if commercial theater is the enemy, then a commercial Hollywood film is a sin punishable by the end of your longest, deepest friendships. Over the course of the next two hours and 45 minutes, the musical unfolds backwards from the party, slowly revealing the events that led to the break-up of these three artists who have loved each other since college.
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What makes the musical hard for first-time audiences is the fact that it’s like a jigsaw puzzle doled out one piece at a time, so you don’t see a complete picture until the last piece is placed and the show is over. It’s like looking back at your life at the moment of your death and finally seeing what it all meant: That revelation is there for a split second and then it’s gone. That’s why “Merrily We Roll Along” is art and not comfortably commercial theater. Ultimately, it’s about how we don’t see the big picture of our lives until it’s too late — we just merrily roll along, making choices that sometimes serve us but mostly cause us and those we love pain. And what is most painful is that we start out with so much promise in a universe of possibility — in the case of the three friends, on a Manhattan rooftop in college on the night Sputnik can be seen for the first time flying across the sky — and end up disappointed and unfulfilled.
For me, the pleasure in director Maria Friedman’s production lay not in sitting in the theater and watching the show. Despite Sondheim’s often beautiful music, Jonathan Tunick’s gorgeous orchestrations, Soutra Gilmour’s fun period costumes, all the lovely voices and mostly solid performances, I found the experience of watching that first scene very much like being a stranger at a party where everyone else knows each other and doesn’t care to invite you in. This feeling of alienation was exacerbated by the fact that the audience around me seemed to be having such a good time — right off the bat, they were clapping, cheering and bopping in their seats. (Most, I assume, knew the musical well.)
However, there is immense pleasure in putting the pieces of “Merrily” together after the fact, which is what makes it good, or even great, art. It offers the opportunity to think in depth about the dilemmas that artists face — would you or would you not compromise artistic integrity for security, fame and, maybe most important, the acceptance of an audience? Is it worth it to alienate an audience in order to present a masterful show? And is it masterful if it alienates an audience?
Both Groff and Mendez have wonderful voices and stage presence, and they’re a pleasure to watch, even when their characters are behaving badly. (During the party scene, Mary gets drunk, has a tantrum, throws pots and pans and ends up splayed on the kitchen floor. It’s a thrilling, committed performance.) However, although Mary is deeply in love with Frank throughout their friendship, we never see the moment that sparked this unrequited yearning. And that’s because Groff doesn’t give it to Mendez. It feels like a stingy omission, but one that Groff has the chops to remedy. He’s good in this role — energetic and adorable — but he could be great.
There’s also a paper villain in the story — Gussie Carnegie, played by Krystal Joy Brown, who becomes Frank’s second wife. Over the course of the musical, it’s she who continues to seduce Frank away from his friends, his family and his dreams of making art. She’s an easy, two-dimensional enemy — a Cruella Deville or Yoko Ono — and the fact that you can trace Frank’s demise to her continued presence in his life works to water down his responsibility for his decisions, which include abandoning his first wife and son and stringing along his creative partner.
Maybe in 1981, before Reagonomics made the artist’s life in New York impossible, the fact that a friend would make the choice to become a Hollywood screenwriter and eschew his old, college friends might seem unconscionable. But in 2023, you won’t find many artists hating on a friend because they made a movie or got caught up in the Hollywood scene. Because of the cultural shift that happened between the time Sondheim wrote the musical and now, both Charly and Mary’s disappointment in Frank can seem petty and codependent.
The presence of Daniel Radcliffe as Charly is perhaps the most notable choice highlighting the question of whether this “Merrily We Roll Along” functions as commercial theater or art. Radcliffe is very competent in the role — he’s believable as a driven playwright committed to the purity of his art, and he’s fun, with moments of brilliance — but he doesn’t have the kind of stage presence of seasoned Broadway actors Groff and Mendez. This dissonance is not helped by the fact that Gilmour dresses him a bit like Harry Potter, in an argyle sweater vest, high-top Converse sneakers and big glasses. It’s distracting, and makes one wonder if Radcliffe is there as the draw for Broadway audiences when the musical itself — being real art, rather than commerce — may otherwise not be.
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