MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG: 3 ½ STARS. “a treat to get a better look at the performances.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Merrily We Roll Along,” a filmed version of the Tony Award winning Broadway show starring Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe, a composer (Groff) reflects on his fracrtured relationships with his two besties, playwright Charley (Radcliffe) and novelist Mary (Mendez).
CAST: Natalie Wachen, Krystal Joy Brown, Katie Rose Clarke, Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, Max Rackenberg, Daniel Radcliffe, Reg Rogers, Jacob Keith Watson. Directed by Maria Friedman.
REVIEW: What a difference a few decades can make. A flop that lasted only two weeks on Broadway in its 1981 debut, Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Merrily We Roll Along” rebounded in 2023 in a revamped, all-star staging that won four Tony Awards and bested the previous run by 50 weeks.
It’s that vaunted production, starring Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe—who both won Tonys for their work—that comes to the big screen this week.
Filmed live in front of a Broadway audience—you hear applause and laughter but never see them—the show is a story of success and ambition told backwards.
Despite the show’s reverse chronology conceit, the story is fairly straight-ahead. When we first meet Franklin Shepard (Groff) he’s a Broadway composer turned Hollywood hotshot. During a booze fuelled party at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by hangers-on and his soon-to-be-ex-wife he is filled with longing for his estranged friends, novelist-turned-alcoholic-critic Mary Flynn (Lindsay Mendez), who has always carried a flame for Franklin and his former partner Charley Kringas (Daniel Radcliffe), the hot-headed playwright who has little use for the business part of show business.
As Franklin’s memories unfold, the story winds backwards two decades in time, from the bitter acrimony of present day to their first blush of success and the happy beginning of their friendship.
The story should end on a high note, but the beauty of the movie’s jigsaw puzzle construction is that it allows for mixed emotions at every stage. Over the course of the show Franklin’s regret shifts to bright-eyed optimism, but it is always coloured by the melancholic notion that we don’t understand the important things in life until it is too late.
Key to the success of the show, other than Sondheim songs like “Old Friends” and “Good Thing Going,” is Groff’s skillful performance. As written, Franklin is not immediately likeable, but Groff plays him as someone who we merrily rolled along through life, leaving behind a trail of broken relationships in his pursuit of success. That one character tweak transforms the character from villain to someone who becomes sympathetic as he realizes all that his ambition and artistic compromise have cost.
Mendez brings both a comic touch and heartbreaking pathos to the lovesick Mary and Radcliffe, as the neurotic Charley, bridges the gap between stage and screen, handing in a performance big enough for Broadway but intimate enough for the movies.
The beauty of a filmed adaptation of a stage bound show is the ability for the camera to pick up on the small moments that can easily be lost on stage. Mendez’s work benefits from the up-close-and-personal medium as Maria Friedman’s camera catches Mary’s subtle moments of heartbreak as they flash across her face.
But “Merrily We Roll Along” doesn’t look or feel like a traditional movie. There are close-ups and the camera moves through the space, but it feels lodged somewhere between a live show and a film. Still, while the grand overall effect of the Broadway show may get lost in the shuffle, it is a treat to get a better look at these committed performances.
