I always thought the idea of telling a story in reverse chronological order was a relatively recent one—from Harold Pinter’s play “Betrayal” in 1978, to be exact. But I’ve just discovered that over a century ago, in 1923, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart did it in their play “Merrily We Roll Along.” It starts with the smashing success of a playwright (the main character), and then goes backward in time through each act, showing through this remarkable reversed time scheme how the playwright sacrificed his ideals, friendships, and loved ones in order to reach that point. It’s a bitter sort of comedy, which to Stephen Sondheim, the top name in musical theater of the 1960s and ‘70s, looked like an artistic opportunity. With his friend George Furth trimming and changing the original play to fit the times, Sondheim’s musical Merrily We Roll Along debuted in 1981. Now the main character was a composer, like Sondheim himself, and the songs, with his characteristic harmonies employing dissonance and twisted “chromatic” effects, express wistful, humorous, and dark emotional states and insights to tell a tale of three friends who suffer the strains involved in the search for fame and success.
The occasion for my learning all this is the recent film Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Maria Friedman from her Tony-winning Broadway revival. She’d previously filmed the same show in its 2013 London production, which got good reviews. The difference here is that there’s a potentially wider audience because one of the stars is Daniel Radcliffe, with instant name recognition from having played Harry Potter.
The main character, the composer, is Franklin Shepard, played and sung wonderfully by Jonathan Groff. Radcliffe is his lyricist, Charlie Kringas. The third figure in the trio of old friends is Mary Flynn, played by the superb Lindsay Mendez. Daniel Radcliffe, you should know, has become a fine actor, and a fairly good singer, by putting in years of hard work. He’s left his child actor persona behind. He’s now a very smart and compelling performer, but of course is still mostly known for those wizard movies.
This is a film of the Broadway stage show, with an audience—it’s what they now call a “proshot,” which means it was made with multiple cameras, and close-ups to make the theatrical experience as cinematically smooth as possible. You get the best of both worlds—the excitement of live theater and the intimacy of film.
The lyrics are multilayered and ambiguous as usual with Sondheim. In the early number “That Frank,” the euphoria of Franklin Shepard’s success, with extravagant praise from the company, is undercut by Mary’s cynical inebriated wisecracks. Radcliffe shines in the song “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” where he explains how his friend’s fame has transformed him into a distant and difficult artistic partner. There’s a later song called “It’s a Hit!” where the creative people backstage forget about their supposed modesty when their musical becomes a big success.
The ironic thing is that Merrily We Roll Along was not originally a hit. It was a flop in its 1981 production, and only later got the appreciation and the revivals it deserves. For fans of Stephen Sondheim musicals, like me, Merrily We Roll Along, the movie, is a treat.
