Merrily We Roll Along (Play)

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      Sondheim Was a Critical Darling. Since His Death, He’s a Hitmaker, Too.

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      The musicals of Stephen Sondheim often struggled at the box office during his lifetime, but since his death several have become huge hits on Broadway.Stephen Sondheim, the great musical theater composer and lyricist, was widely acclaimed as a genius, but during his lifetime he had a bumpy track record at the box office, with many of his shows losing money.In death, however, his shows have flourished.A revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” — which was so unpopular when it debuted in 1981 that it closed 12 days after opening — is now the hottest ticket on Broadway. A lavish revival of “Sweeney Todd” that opened in March is already profitable, and at a time when almost everything new on Broadway is failing.Meanwhile, Sondheim’s unfinished and existentialist final work, “Here We Are,” is now the longest-running show in the brief history of the Shed, a performing arts center in Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s West Side, where luminaries like Steven Spielberg and Lin-Manuel Miranda signed up as producers to make sure no expense was spared on the Sondheim send-off.“There just seems to be an unbounded appetite for him,” said Alex Poots, the artistic director of the Shed.The posthumous Sondheim bump appears to have resulted from a confluence of factors.The big Broadway revivals feature fan-favorite talent — the “Merrily” cast includes Daniel Radcliffe of “Harry Potter” fame, while “Sweeney” is led by the celebrated baritone Josh Groban — reflecting a desire by top-tier entertainers to champion, and tackle, Sondheim’s tricky but rewarding work.The revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” with, from left, Lindsay Mendez, Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff, is one of the hottest tickets on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlso: The outpouring of praise for Sondheim upon his death, when he was hailed as a transformational creative force, seems to have spurred new interest in his work. And his shows, some of which felt challenging when they first appeared, are now more familiar, thanks to decades of stage productions and film adaptations. Plus, according to most critics, the current revivals are good.“Sondheim went from being too avant-garde to being a sure bet, like you’re doing ‘A Christmas Carol’,” said Danny Feldman, the producing artistic director of Pasadena Playhouse, a Southern California nonprofit that won this year’s Regional Theater Tony Award. The playhouse devoted the first half of 2023 to Sondheim: A production of “Sunday in the Park With George,” a show once seen as esoteric, became one its best-selling musicals ever, and a production of “A Little Night Music” was not far behind. “The interest was shocking,” Feldman said.One side effect of his popularity: Ticket prices are high. “Merrily” is facing strong demand from Sondheim lovers and Radcliffe fans, but its capacity is limited; it is playing in a theater with just 966 seats. That has made it the most expensive ticket on Broadway, with an average ticket price of $250 and a top ticket price of $649 during the week that ended Dec. 17. “Sweeney” is also pricey, with tickets that same week averaging $175 and topping out at $399. (Both shows offer lower-priced tickets, particularly after the holidays.)“We shouldn’t be criticized for being a hit and paying back investors who have taken a big punt in New York,” said the “Merrily” lead producer, Sonia Friedman. “Most shows right now are not working, and therefore when something comes along that does, let’s get the investors some money back.”In life, Sondheim was often seen as more of an artistic success than a commercial one — a critical darling with a passionate but finite fan base, leading to short runs for many of the shows whose scores he composed, especially during their first productions. A few shows, particularly “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” were hits from the start, but some musicals that are now viewed as masterpieces, including “Sweeney Todd” and “Sunday in the Park With George,” did not recoup their costs during their original productions.“It’s not like he fell out of favor and has been rediscovered. He’s always been revered and valued and prized by everybody who loves theater, but we also have to recognize that several of his shows, when they first premiered, were not understood and were not embraced,” said Jordan Roth, the producer who brought “Into the Woods” back to Broadway in the summer of 2022, seven months after Sondheim’s death. Now, Roth said, “The grip on our hearts seems to have tightened.”“Into the Woods,” a modestly scaled production, featured the pop singer Sara Bareilles and a troupe of Broadway stars. It recouped its costs and then had a five-month national tour.The original production of “Sweeney Todd” did not recoup its investment, but the current revival starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford is making a profit.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn February, seven weeks after “Into the Woods” concluded on Broadway, “Sweeney Todd” began previews. It’s a much bigger production — big cast, big orchestra — that was capitalized for up to $14.5 million. It has sold strongly from the get-go (during the week that ended Dec. 10, it grossed $1.8 million) and has already recouped its capitalization costs.“I’m sorry that I can’t call him and say look at these grosses. He definitely would have had a sarcastic statement in response, but he would have liked it secretly,” said the show’s lead producer, Jeffrey Seller. “Who doesn’t want to be affirmed by the audience?”Groban and his co-star Annaleigh Ashford are ending their runs in the show on Jan. 14; the show’s success has prompted the producers to extend the run, with Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster taking over the lead roles on Feb. 9.“It has morphed into being under the umbrella of an enormous and deserved celebration of Sondheim’s work and legacy and life,” Groban said. “All of a sudden there’s grief involved, and wanting to do him proud, and what-would-Steve-do feelings.”“Merrily,” which began previews in September, is the biggest turnabout, given that its original production is one of Broadway’s most storied flops. The current revival, capitalized for up to $13 million, has been selling out.“Of all the things he wanted, he wanted as many people as possible to be in the theater watching the shows, and he just missed it,” said Maria Friedman, the director of the “Merrily” revival and a longtime Sondheim collaborator.In November, 10 members of the company of the original ill-fated “Merrily” attended the revival and marveled at the reversal of fortunes.“It’s thrilling to see the show finally get its due,” said Gary Stevens, who was an 18-year-old in the original “Merrily” ensemble, and who is now 60 and works an executive at a chauffeuring company in Florida. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t say there was a sense of bittersweetness. We look at this revival’s success as, in some ways, our success, because the day after closing, even with how exhausted we were and how sad we were, we recorded a kick-ass album that kept that show alive, so that it became a legendary flop and cult classic that kept going and going, and now this.”Another member of the original “Merrily” cast, the actress and singer Liz Callaway, was nominated this year for a Grammy Award for a live album of Sondheim songs, one of two collections of Sondheim songs nominated in the 2024 Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album category. “I think a new generation is falling in love with Sondheim now,” she said.“Here We Are” is a little different. It is not expected to recoup its costs, or to transfer to Broadway, but both the leadership of the Shed and the commercial producer who raised money to finance the production proclaimed it a success.“It was always about honoring Steve’s legacy,” said the producer, Tom Kirdahy. “And we hope that it has another life, in London or on the road.”In London, there are also two Sondheim shows running. “Old Friends,” a revue of Sondheim songs with a cast led by Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, is in the West End. And at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a revival of Sondheim’s rarely staged “Pacific Overtures” opened earlier this month to critical praise.“For those of us who wanted to do right by him, this is a year I’ll never forget,” Groban said. “I just hope he’s smiling down.” More

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      Stephen Sondheim Belongs in the Pantheon of American Composers

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      “You know, I had the idealistic notion, when I was 20, that I was going into the theater,” Stephen Sondheim once said. “I wasn’t; I was going into show business, and I was a fool to think otherwise.”It was a remark characteristic of Sondheim, the titan of musical theater whose decades’ worth of credits as a composer and lyricist included “West Side Story,” “Company” and “Into the Woods.” Here he was as many had seen him in interviews over the years: unsentimental and a bit flip, self-effacing to the point of selling himself short.Because among musical theater artists of his generation, Sondheim, who died in 2021 at 91, was arguably the most artistic — challenging, unusual, incapable of superficiality in a medium often dismissed as superficial. He was, perhaps to his disappointment, not the best businessman, with shows that rarely lasted long on Broadway. And his work was better for it.Sondheim has always had a dedicated fan base, but right now his musicals are true hot tickets with substantial real estate on New York stages. Recently, it was possible to take in four Sondheim shows in a single weekend: “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Sweeney Todd” on Broadway, “The Frogs” in a starry concert presentation by MasterVoices, and “Here We Are,” his unfinished final work, completed and in its premiere run at the Shed.From left, Lindsay Mendez, Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe in “Merrily We Roll Along” on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTogether, they form a portrait that helps in considering Sondheim’s place among American composers. I say American because Broadway, alongside jazz, is the most homegrown of this country’s music, and his work constantly pushed the art form further. Where so many of his colleagues have operated within standard structures, he, even in writing a 32-bar song, seemed to always ask, “What else is possible?”It’s also important to consider Sondheim as a distinctly American composer because his writing reflects a creative mind repeatedly fixated on the idea of his homeland, with an ambivalence by turns affectionate and acerbic. It’s there in his lyric contribution to “Gypsy,” arguably the Great American Musical, which the musicologist Raymond Knapp has described as “a version of the American dream that leads, as if inevitably, to striptease.” And it continues, with an unconventional patriotism in “Assassins” and a revealing journey across state lines and years in “Road Show.”In that sense, Sondheim is not only one of the finest American composers, but also one of the most essential.“He and Lenny are at the top of that list,” Paul Gemignani, Sondheim’s longtime music director, said, referring also to Leonard Bernstein. “Most Broadway composers are writing pop tunes. Steve never wrote a pop tune. ‘Send in the Clowns’ got lucky.”Sondheim seemed fated to create musical theater at a higher level than his colleagues. Like Bernstein, he was pedigreed: His mentor, for lyric writing, was Oscar Hammerstein II, of Rodgers and Hammerstein; for composition, the modernist Milton Babbitt. Yet he emulated neither.In an interview with the Sondheim Review, Sondheim said that he was trained by Hammerstein “to think of songs as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically.” But he thought of them in more classical terms: “sonata form — statement, development and recapitulation.”And while Sondheim composed with the spirit of an avant-gardist, he was more of a postmodernist than Babbitt, though he described Babbitt as a closet songwriter who admired Kern and Arlen as much as Mozart and Schoenberg.“The first hour of each of our weekly sessions would be devoted to analyzing a song like ‘All the Things That You Are,’” Sondheim recalled, “the next three to the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, always concentrating on the tautness of the structures, the leanness and frugality of the musical ideas.” Genre didn’t matter; craft did, which is why one of their most influential lessons entailed how a Bach fugue built, as Babbitt put it, an entire cathedral from a four-note theme. Sondheim would later do the same in the score of “Anyone Can Whistle.”As a university student, Sondheim wrote some juvenilia as a lyricist-composer — most intriguingly, fragments of a “Mary Poppins” musical that predates the Disney movie by over a decade. But, after a false start, his first professional credit was as the lyricist on “West Side Story.” “Gypsy” followed, with music by Jule Styne, but it wasn’t until “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” that Broadway saw its first show with both music and lyrics by Sondheim.He was often asked which came first, the music or the lyrics. The most accurate answer is probably sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both, but with a deference to clarity of text. Like Wagner, who wrote the librettos of his operas, Sondheim wanted his lyrics to be heard and understood; his vocal lines resemble those of Janacek and Debussy, whose dramas unfurl with the rhythm of speech.Hal Prince, left, and Sondheim in 1988.Kyle Ericksen/Getty ImagesSondheim’s most prolific, and ambitious, period began with the concept musical “Company” (1970) and his collaborations with the eminent producer and director Hal Prince. Gemignani said that, together, they “never compromised on bringing their ideas to life.” It was during this period that Sondheim emerged as a postmodernist in the vein of John Adams, with a deep well of references presented with a wink or sincerity, but above all with dramaturgical purpose.That might be why “Follies,” from 1971, has been called a “post-musical musical.” Its score abounds in pastiche — what is “Losing My Mind” if not a Gershwin tune from an alternate universe? — and artful irony, such as dissonances that betray the darker truth of “The Road You Didn’t Take.”For “Pacific Overtures” (1976), Sondheim took a similar approach to Puccini in “Turandot,” by putting authentic sounds — in this case, Kabuki music — through his own idiomatic prism. But, like Puccini, he suggests rather than represents, unable to escape a Western perspective while purportedly telling a story from a Japanese point of view. It’s a contradiction that doesn’t serve the musical as well as the more globalist style of “Someone in a Tree,” a song that brought a simplistic American Minimalism to Broadway.Inspired by the spareness of Japanese visual art, Sondheim composed an analogue in a song that does little more than develop a single chord, over and over. As Philip Glass and Steve Reich were applying a world-music sensibility to the classical sphere, Sondheim wrote his own kind of repetitive phase music. “It’s not insignificant that when I met Steve Reich,” Sondheim later wrote, “he told me how much he loved this show.”He was on culturally surer ground with “A Little Night Music” (1973), in which the idea of variation is applied to waltz-like melodies in three. He wrote that his favorite form was the theme and variations, and that he respected Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” This musical came closer to that piece than anything else Sondheim wrote, with a hint of Sibelius.“The Frogs,” presented by MasterVoices, at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center in November.Erin Baiano for The New York TimesSondheim’s sound, like that of any good postmodernist, was both consistent and chameleonic, never more so than in “Sweeney,” which displays his genius and misguided musical beliefs in equal measure.Aside from “Passion” (1994), it is Sondheim’s most operatic work in sensibility and craft, yet he bristled at the idea of “Sweeney” being called an opera or an operetta and once wrote that “when ‘Porgy and Bess’ was performed on Broadway, it was a musical; when it was performed at Glyndebourne and Covent Garden, it was an opera.” (That’s not true. It was always an opera, and played on Broadway at a time when many operas did.)All told, “Sweeney” is a hybrid of music theater, one that brings in yet another medium: cinema. Sondheim believed that, with all due respect, “John Williams is responsible for “Jaws,” not Steven Spielberg.” His score for “Sweeney” is similarly rich with edge-of-your-seat underscoring, while the lyrics are both ingenious and inherently melodic. Sondheim was proud of the opening line of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” and rightfully so: “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd” sets a mood of theatrical artifice and anachronism, with a piercing consonance in the T’s as unsettling as Nabokov’s “tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth” in “Lolita.”Josh Groban, left, and Annaleigh Ashford in “Sweeney Todd” on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHere, it must be said, that the sound of Sondheim would not be such without a crucial collaborator: Jonathan Tunick, his orchestrator to this day. (The scores of all four shows I recently attended were arranged by him.) Sondheim composed at his piano, then sang through while accompanying himself; from there, Tunick teased out the textures of his playing into entire instrumental ensembles.In an interview, Tunick said that you can’t overthink the process. “I was able to tell a great deal, not only from the actual notes but from the way he played them,” he added, “the way he phrased, the way he attacked a chord.” He described the transformation as, more than anything, “Dionysian.” At its fullest, the arrangement on Broadway now, the “Sweeney” score abounds in colorful flourishes and bone-rattling horror, the fluttering in the winds in one song as delicate as the low brasses are chilling at the start of “Epiphany.”If “Sweeney” reflects a worldview, a pretty dismal one, that speaks to America only allegorically, a more direct view of the country emerges in later works. “Merrily” comments obliquely on the period of history it covers, with the space-age promise of Sputnik giving way to cynical neoliberalism. And American themes are even more overt in the shows that brought Sondheim back together with John Weidman, the book writer of “Pacific Overtures”: “Assassins” (1990) and “Road Show,” a troubled musical that went through multiple revisions and titles before premiering in its final form in 2008. Both shows are flawed — “Road Show” structurally, and “Assassins” for its disturbing pageant of mental illness — but reflect the promise and tragedy of the American dream.“Assassins” goes so far as to propose “Another National Anthem,” which reads as a litany of disenfranchisement from a cast of characters who all feel let down by a system that was supposed to work for them; it’s not far from the complaints that fueled distrust of government today and the rise of Donald J. Trump.Micaela Diamond, left, and fellow cast members in the premiere run of “Here We Are” at the Shed.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMore barbed yet is “Here We Are,” in its sendup of elitism and the privilege of both apathy and revolt. For better and worse, the score has a valedictory spirit, recalling earlier work without quoting it exactly, and the lyrics contain satirical observations that wouldn’t be out of place in “Company.”My generation of theater fans came of age loving “Into the Woods,” which, because of its enduring popularity as theater for children, will remain onstage far into the future. But the Sondheim works most likely to last, from a purely musical perspective, are those that least readily show their age, and happen to be classical-leaning and postmodern: “Follies” is timelessly Broadway; “A Little Night Music,” universally elegant; “Sweeney,” perennially effective.Gemignani called “Sweeney” Sondheim’s “Porgy and Bess.” Like that show, it has played in Broadway theaters and opera houses alike. And like that show, it’s the masterpiece of a great American composer. More

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      Best Theater of 2023

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      Many of the plays and musicals that resonated this year deftly married elements of drama and comedy.Jesse Green’s Best Theater | Unforgettable ExperiencesJESSE GREENYear of the DramedyIf 2023 was a tragedy in the world, on New York stages it was a dramedy year, highlighted not only by serious plays with great jokes, but also by flat-out comedies with dark underpinnings. And though not all 10 shows (and various bonuses) on my mostly chronological list below fit that mongrel category, even the gravest of them seem to have gotten the memo that theater should not be a bore or a drag. It should thrill you into thought or, as the case may be, solace.‘Love’ by Alexander ZeldinOn the cold February night I saw “Love,” New York City was teeming with people in need of warm places to be. That was also the case inside the Park Avenue Armory, which had been reconfigured to represent a temporary facility for people without homes. Its residents included an unemployed man in his 50s, his barely-holding-on mother, a pregnant woman, two refugees — and us. Seated adjacent to the facility’s dingy common room, we became, in the playwright’s own staging, fellow residents. But if the others eyed us like we might steal a precious sandwich, we could blithely leave when the play was over. Or not so blithely: Even heading home, with my heart retuned to tiny heartbreaks instead of huge ones, I had to wonder why it was easier to engage the subject of homelessness inside the Armory than on Park Avenue. (Read our review of “Love” and our interview with Zeldin.)‘A Doll’s House’ by Henrik IbsenA chair and a door — and a riveting star — were all it took to make a nearly 150-year-old drama set in Norway come fully alive in New York City today. True, the chair rotated mysteriously for 20 minutes before the dialogue began. Nor did it hurt that the star sitting on it, like an angry bird in a giant cuckoo clock, was Jessica Chastain. And yes, the famous door through which her Nora walked out of her marriage and into a new life was a staging marvel in Jamie Lloyd’s surgically precise Broadway production. But finer than all that was the chilling fact that Ibsen’s text, as adapted by Amy Herzog, sounded as if it had been written yesterday — and could still be transpiring in real life tomorrow. (Read our review of “A Doll’s House” and our interview with Chastain.)‘How to Defend Yourself’ by Liliana PadillaAfter a classmate is raped by fraternity bros, two sorority sisters organize a self-defense club. And though they aren’t great teachers, a great deal is learned by the other young women (and two would-be male allies) who attend intermittently over the course of several weeks. The New York Theater Workshop audience, too, learned a great deal, as the questions bedeviling so many relationships — the complexity of consent and the meaning of control — played out before us in this perfectly timed hot-button play. But what gave the production its poetic gravitas was a gasp-inducing coda, gorgeously staged by the playwright along with Rachel Chavkin and Steph Paul, in which the culture of sexual violence was traced to a source you could never again regard as innocent. (Read our review of “How to Defend Yourself.”)‘Primary Trust’ by Eboni BoothIt’s sometimes true that an actor is great in a not-great play. But it seemed to me that William Jackson Harper, giving one of the year’s best performances, both dignified and deep, achieved it because of — not despite — the material, quiet and apparently whimsical though it was. In this Roundabout Theater Company production, directed by Knud Adams, he played a lonely clerk in a ragged suburb whose best friend turns out to be imaginary but whose sadness is all too real. Twee as that sounds, the glory of both the writing and acting was in letting us experience the character’s sadness and, even more, the hard work behind his efforts to stay afloat in a painful world. (Read our review of “Primary Trust” and our interview with Harper.)‘The Comeuppance’ by Branden Jacobs-JenkinsBranden Jacobs-Jenkins updated the reunion genre with his haunting Off Broadway play “The Comeuppance.” The cast included, from left, Bobby Moreno, Brittany Bradford, Shannon Tyo and Susannah Flood.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs in many reunion dramas, the 20-years-later get-together of some Catholic school classmates in this compelling, sometimes terrifying new play included an uninvited guest. Well, really two, if you count the supernatural one: a psychopomp, or collector of souls of the recently dead. The struggle for maturity that’s the stuff of such stories, though hilariously enacted in Eric Ting’s staging for the Signature Theater, became something existential in this bigger, chillier “Big Chill,” as “the age of poor choices seeking their consequences” pointed toward the ultimate graduation. (Read our review of “The Comeuppance.”)‘Just for Us’ by Alex Edelman“A Jew walks into a Nazi bar” might have been the start of a standup routine for the comedian Alex Edelman. Instead, the story of his infiltrating a white supremacist meeting in Queens became an urgent one-man Broadway show, one of the most thoughtful (and troubling) explorations of antisemitism in a year that offered too much relevant material. Despite its three-jokes-per-minute, rabbi-on-Ritalin aesthetic — the show was directed by Adam Brace, with Alex Timbers as creative consultant — it eventually revealed itself as a consideration of the central Jewish value of empathy. Is it unconditional? Do even the hateful deserve it? Do we? (Read our review of “Just for Us” and our interview with Edelman.)‘Infinite Life’ by Annie BakerOne of the characters is reading George Eliot, another a self-help book, another a mystery. But the real mystery is how a story about women reading, sleeping, chatting and dealing with pain became one of the most compelling plays of the year, in James Macdonald’s production for Atlantic Theater Company. Of course, unlikely setups for powerful drama are an Annie Baker trademark, but in considering the uses of suffering (if any) and of desire (if any) she took her technique to what must surely be its logical and triumphant limit — until next time. (Read our review of “Infinite Life” and our conversation with the cast.)‘Purlie Victorious’ by Ossie DavisOssie Davis’s 1961 play, “Purlie Victorious,” has received a blazing and hilarious revival starring, from left, Billy Eugene Jones, Kara Young, Leslie Odom Jr., Jay O. Sanders and Noah Robbins.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOssie Davis’s 1961 comedy is about two thefts: one petty and one — the theft of the freedom of generations of Black Americans — definitely not. Welding the hilarious farce of the first to a sense of fierce outrage over the second was a risk Davis pulled off beautifully, as this season’s nigh-perfect revival, unaccountably its first on Broadway, demonstrated. Directed by Kenny Leon, it also gave its stars great, rangy roles to chew: Leslie Odom Jr. as the wolfish Purlie, a preacher who becomes, in essence, a prosecutor; and Kara Young, usually seen in dramas, as a daffy yokel finding the sweet spot where Lucille Ball meets Moms Mabley. (Read our review of “Purlie Victorious” and our interview with Odom and Young.)‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’ by Jocelyn BiohOn a blistering day in the summer of 2019, at a salon in Harlem, five women style the braids, cornrows, twists and bobs of seven customers. Their workplace cross talk and byplay are both hilarious, making this Manhattan Theater Club production, directed by Whitney White, a kind of “Cheers” for today and a comic highlight of the season. But as in Jocelyn Bioh’s earlier plays, which cleverly weave African concerns into familiar American forms, this one built its welcome laughs on the back of a serious subject: the great opportunities and grave perils of immigration. (Read our review of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and our look at the wigs used in the production.)‘Stereophonic’ by David AdjmiFive musicians not unlike the members of Fleetwood Mac circa 1976 come together with two engineers to make what will turn out to be an epochal album. In the process, they unmake themselves. And though “Stereophonic,” in Daniel Aukin’s thrilling production for Playwrights Horizons, delivers enormous pleasure from that soap opera setup — and the spot-on songs by Will Butler — it’s a much deeper work than other behind-the-scenes, making-of dramedies. Under cover of jokes and the expert polyphony of the overlapping dialogue, David Adjmi leads us to a story about the disaster of maleness, and thus of mating, behind the pop-rock revolution of the period. Spoiler alert: The revolution is ongoing. (Read our review of “Stereophonic” and our interview with Adjmi.)Sondheim foreverMost of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals were marginal financial successes or outright flops in their original productions. But in this second post-Sondheim year, it’s been hit after hit. First, in the spring, came Thomas Kail’s ravishingly sung, deeply emotional and strangely hilarious Broadway revival of “Sweeney Todd,” starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. (Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster take over in February.) This was no “Teeny Todd” but the huge, real thing. Then, in the fall, came the gleaming Broadway transfer of “Merrily We Roll Along” from New York Theater Workshop. After what seemed like zillions of attempts by many hands to fix that 1981 show, the director Maria Friedman figured it out, locating its long-lost core in Jonathan Groff’s mesmerizing, furious performance. (He’d make a great Sweeney.) Finally, and least expectedly, “Here We Are,” Sondheim’s final effort, left incomplete at his death in November 2021, showed up at the Shed with a clever book by David Ives and an impossibly chic production directed by Joe Mantello. Its wit, its openness to everything and its ageless invention (one song rhymes “Lamborghinis” with “vodkatinis”) made “Here We Are” a worthy send-off to Sondheim — and, like “Sweeney” and “Merrily,” a tough ticket despite jaw-dropping prices. It’s almost as if we don’t want him gone. (Read our reviews of “Sweeney Todd,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Here We Are.”)Also notedShows you don’t love may yet feature indelible performances. Among them this year, for me, were Dianne Wiest as Meryl Kowalski, larcenous scene stealer and would-be star, in “Scene Partners”; Miriam Silverman as Mavis, a hipster in her own mind, in “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”; Jordan Donica as Lancelot, a lion ripping huge bites of dramatic flesh (and song) with his teeth, in “Camelot”; and Jodie Comer as Tessa Ensler, a ferocious barrister victimized by the law, in “Prima Facie.” … There are also shows you love so much you can hardly imagine them recast — until they brilliantly are. Case in point this year was Ruthie Ann Miles as a crafty, heartbroken Margaret in the Encores! production of “The Light in the Piazza.” … A successful recasting of another type was David Korins’s transformation of the Broadway Theater into a Studio 54-era disco for “Here Lies Love,” which gave audiences a literally moving experience. Moving in more emotional terms was the score’s final song, “God Draws Straight,” which transformed the show into something with heart after 90 minutes of irony. … The book of the Barry Manilow-Bruce Sussman musical “Harmony,” about a German singing group undone by antisemitism in the 1930s, felt discordant. But the vocal arrangements, by Manilow and John O’Neill, were sublime. … And though there’s not much competition for the best flying transportation on Broadway, if there were, the winner, totally retiring memories of the “Miss Saigon” helicopter and the title character of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” would be the DeLorean DMC in “Back to the Future.” It was a special effect that, for once, was special, in an otherwise Chevy Nova kind of show.Unforgettable ExperiencesSongs sung by Jennifer Simard, center, and Tess Soltau, left, and Amy Hillner Larsen in “Once Upon a One More Time” were among our favorite stage moments this year.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPower ballad No. 1“Independently Owned” is the “Shucked” showstopper that helped Alex Newell snag a Tony Award, but my favorite number in the show is the wronged-man solo, “Somebody Will,” which revealed the adorably doofy Andrew Durand as a full-throated, tears-in-your-beer balladeer. The musical’s composers, Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, are already reliable country music hit makers; Nashville should give this one a spin, too. SCOTT HELLERPower ballad No. 2Jennifer Simard + high diva attitude + zombified dancers + a killer arrangement of “Toxic” = reason alone to have seen “Once Upon a One More Time” during its too-brief Broadway run. All praise to the show’s marketing team (and YouTube) for allowing us to watch it many more times. SCOTT HELLERExit Nora, into the worldNora Helmer walking out on her controlling husband and their little ones was shocking behavior — and jolting drama — in 1879, when Henrik Ibsen’s classic was new. Her famous door slam doesn’t carry the same charge now. Yet the director Jamie Lloyd found an equally jaw-dropping exit for Jessica Chastain’s Nora in his austerely chic Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House.” At the Hudson Theater, Soutra Gilmour’s set hid a surprise in plain sight. During the climactic moment, a giant load-in door in the upstage wall slowly rose like a curtain onto West 45th Street, which pulsated with color and life. Then Nora stepped through the opening, into the world, no slam required. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESA collective flinch at ‘Jaja’s’Michael Oloyede, center, as a scoundrelly husband who wheedles his wife, played by Nana Mensah, left, out of her money in Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhether exchanging knowing looks or exploiting one another’s weaknesses, the stylists and salon-goers in Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” shared the sort of synergy inherent to a single living organism. The most vivid example: when a trifling husband (played by Michael Oloyede) asked God to strike him down in an obvious lie to his wife (Nana Mensah). Like a startled squid in water, the women recoiled in unison expecting the lord to do as he was told. It was darkly comedic proof of a fierce, collective instinct. NAVEEN KUMARLittle Man, high-flying kicksHow vicariously cathartic to watch a boy nicknamed Little Man beat down bullies in “Poor Yella Rednecks,” at Manhattan Theater Club. But what really made the brawl memorable is that Little Man is portrayed by a puppet (mostly handled by Jon Norman Schneider), allowing for the kind of gravity-defying flying kicks and slow-motion strikes that gives the show a hilariously cartoonish vibe. But it somehow also imbues Little Man with humanity. Credit the playwright, Qui Nguyen, who also designed the fight choreography. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIApocalyptic clownerySome of this year’s best clowning took place in the scorched, postapocalyptic world of Samuel Beckett’s bleakly funny “Endgame,” in a first-rate staging by the Irish Repertory Theater. Its cramped, brick-laden set featured a troupe of four splendidly paired-off character actors whose commitment to the absurdity underlined the play’s futility: Bill Irwin and his wildly swinging limbs were the perfect foil to John Douglas Thompson’s straight man, whose petty commands bellowed through the narrow space with a tyrannical boom; and, popping out of trash cans to reminisce on better times, Joe Grifasi and Patrice Johnson Chevannes brought a sweet, humble nostalgia to the tragic folly. JUAN A. RAMÍREZAn unforced revelationAnne E. Thompson’s understated performance as Dani, a rookie cop patrolling the boonies, crept up slowly like a colt finding her hind legs. In one of several hairpin turns in Rebecca Gilman’s “Swing State” at the Minetta Lane Theater, a conversation that began as a distress call from Ryan, Dani’s former high school classmate (Bubba Weiler), softened into a sweet flirtation before she elicited a confession as easily as picking a flower. (I was not the only one who gasped.) Often the most unassuming character onstage is the one to watch. NAVEEN KUMARAn actress is going to actIn “The Seagull/Woodstock, NY,” Thomas Bradshaw’s Chekhov adaptation, Parker Posey’s portrayal of Irene deftly toed the line between satire, affection and melancholia. But what I remember most is the laugh, which Posey’s Irene used as a weapon to defuse someone’s plastic-surgery joke, deploying it with performative archness — as if Irene watched herself laugh. Yet it still felt natural. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIFool’s errandA seemingly innocuous remark — “Maybe I’ll take the dog for a walk” — grows into a terrifying incantation near the end of “The Best We Could (a family tragedy),” Emily Feldman’s stealth gut punch of a play, for Manhattan Theater Club. From the start we learn of the bond between Frank Wood, as an unemployed scientist and unhappy family man, and his late, loyal canine companion. A cross-country journey with his daughter (Aya Cash) to adopt a replacement certainly has its bumps. But only in the final minutes do we realize, under Daniel Aukin’s sure-handed direction and in Wood’s tremulous performance, where this road trip has been going. SCOTT HELLERA self-defense dream balletEvery element in New York Theater Workshop’s production of “How to Defend Yourself,” Liliana Padilla’s exploration of the fuzziness of consent, came together in its final sequence: a sort of dream ballet rewinding from a college kegger to a pool party to a young child’s playground birthday. The stunningly lit scene seemed to play in slow motion, peeling back years of learned social behaviors to evoke the both terrifying and exciting possibilities of tenderness, sex, danger, and passion. JUAN A. RAMÍREZMidnight snack, Take 1Will Brill and Marin Ireland in “Uncle Vanya,” staged by Jack Serio in a private loft in Manhattan.Emilio MadridIt sounds slightly deranged to credit Anton Chekhov with having written one of the best scenes of sexual and romantic tension in the canon, but he did: in “Uncle Vanya,” whose Sonya and Astrov have a middle-of-the-night tête-à-tête over cheese in the dining room, exchanging confidences, igniting hopes. Her hopes, mainly, because she’s the hardworking young farmer with the yearslong crush on him, and he’s the heavy-drinking doctor who doesn’t think of her that way. But in Jack Serio’s staging in a Manhattan loft, Marin Ireland’s Sonya and Will Brill’s Astrov touched off the audience’s hopes, too, even if we knew they’d come to nothing. Heads bent close in the candlelight, speaking sotto voce, they made an almost rom-com pair. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESMidnight snack, Take 2In Simon Stephens’s “Vanya,” a funny, sexy tragicomedy that ran in London’s West End this fall, Andrew Scott performed all the parts. He gave a beautifully calibrated, split-focus tension to the yearning chat between Sonia and the tree-planting doctor she adores, whom Stephens has renamed Michael. On the one hand, Scott as the nervous Sonia, for whom the conversation is a treasured memory in the making; on the other, Scott as the sozzled Michael, careless enough to call her “my love,” in Scott’s irresistible Irish lilt. “You have the gentlest voice,” Sonia tells him. And sure, hers is very similar. Still, it’s true. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESPinch-hitter no moreI can’t say I knew the name Joy Woods back in April, so when she was announced as a last minute-replacement on the roster of singers for the annual Miscast benefit concert, I felt a little let down. Not any more! Her quiet-storm medley of “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from “My Fair Lady” (arranged by Will Van Dyke) was the evening’s revelation, keeping her fully in step with a starry lineup that included Ben Platt, LaChanze and Josh Groban. Now her name seems to be on everyone’s lips, with roles in “Little Shop of Horrors,” “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” and, next spring, “The Notebook” on Broadway. SCOTT HELLERExpert scene chewingTwo actors really went to town in their utter rejection of verisimilitude this year, single-handedly spicing up their respective Broadway shows. In “The Cottage,” Alex Moffat delivered a gonzo Expressionist-by-way-of-Plastic Man performance in which merely lighting up a cigarette became a full-fledged event. In “Back to the Future: The Musical,” Hugh Coles was a standout as George McFly, taking what Crispin Glover did in the original movie and amping it up into an arch marvel of manic stylization. In “Put Your Mind to It,” he paradoxically suggested George’s stiff demeanor with loose limbs that defied the laws of biomechanics. ELISABETH VINCENTELLIPurring Rodgers & Hart renditionsElizabeth Stanley, so skilled at bringing out a pop song’s emotional core, exposed the giddy carnal drive behind “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” in a gala presentation of “Pal Joey” at New York City Center. In full bedroom afterglow, her devil-may-care performance peppered scatting and swinging jazz vocals through the song’s racier lyrics. (The ones thanking god she can be oversexed again.) Also voluptuous was Aisha Jackson’s aching “My Funny Valentine,” made into a torch anthem through Daryl Waters’s despairing orchestrations. Jackson richly moaned through love’s irresistible betrayal, revealing an erotic trembling in the Rodgers & Hart classic. JUAN A. RAMÍREZThe jukebox hits a wicked note“Once Upon a One More Time,” a fairy-tale mash-up powered by the hits of Britney Spears and skin-deep feminism, delivered the form’s most profane needle drop. Cinderella (Briga Heelan) was slumped over the hearth, with her haughty stepsisters (Amy Hillner Larsen and Tess Soltau) glowering down at her, when rapid-fire beats blared through the Marquis Theater. “You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti?” Their command was obvious: “You better work, bitch.” NAVEEN KUMAR More

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      Review: ‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ Finally Found in the Dark

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      Jonathan Groff, supported by Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, is thrillingly fierce in the first convincing revival of the cult flop Sondheim musical.To be a fan of the work of Stephen Sondheim, as Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, is “to have one’s heart broken at regular intervals.” He meant not only that Sondheim’s songs are so often crushingly poignant but that the experience of loving them can feel unrequited. The shows they are in — he was reviewing the original production of “Merrily We Roll Along” — don’t always love you back.That was in 1981, when “Merrily,” with a problematic book by George Furth, suffered an ignominious Broadway debut of just 16 performances after 44 previews. No matter that Sondheim, responding to the story of a songwriter, had written his most conspicuously tuneful score to date, prompting pop recordings by Frank Sinatra (“Good Thing Going”) and Barbra Streisand (“Not a Day Goes By”). It was universally deemed a debacle.The debacle ended the working relationship between Sondheim and the director Harold Prince, whose five shows together in the 1970s — “Company,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “Pacific Overtures” and “Sweeney Todd” — had redefined the American musical. With “Merrily,” they thought they were taking the form even further, with a complicated backward chronology and a cast of mostly inexperienced actors who played 40-ish adults at the start and grew into themselves at the end.After the show’s death by a thousand pans, Sondheim, saying he’d rather make video games, threatened to leave the theater entirely. Luckily, that didn’t happen — and “Merrily,” too, refused to give up, instead undergoing a seemingly endless series of unsatisfactory “improvements” that only seemed to confirm the hopelessness of making it matter.But with the opening of its first Broadway revival, after 42 years in the wilderness and the death of Sondheim in 2021, “Merrily” is no longer lost. Maria Friedman’s unsparing direction and a thrillingly fierce central performance by Jonathan Groff have given the show the hard shell it lacked. Now heartbreaking in the poignant sense only, “Merrily” has been found in the dark.When we meet him after the uplift of the gleaming overture, Groff, as the composer Franklin Shepard, is alone in an empty and unappealing liminal space. (The deliberately ugly sets, perhaps uglier than necessary, are by Soutra Gilmour.) He is wearing, and will throughout the show, a solemn undertaker’s outfit — black pants, black tie, white shirt. Even as everyone else changes with the times, in vivid costumes (also by Gilmour) that mark each notch on the timeline from 1976 to 1957, Frank always remains what he was: a one-man show. “Merrily” is the funeral he throws for his own ideals.Groff, right, with Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe as friends whose relationship sours in the Sondheim-Furth musical, which is getting its first Broadway revival.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe contrast between the pleasures that music can provide and the damage obvious in Frank’s demeanor immediately frames what follows as a solo psychodrama. Yes, Charley Kringas, who writes the words, and their friend Mary Flynn, a novelist turned theater critic, are there throughout, trying to encourage his better angels and corral his worse ones. But despite high-wattage, laser-focused performances by Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, they have no effect on him; they are clearly Frank’s pawns, willing or otherwise.How he destroys Mary, and nearly Charley as well, not without their assistance, is revealed as the musical’s formerly absent spine. In the first scene, a 1976 party for “Darkness Before Dawn,” a hack hit movie Frank has produced now that he no longer writes music, Mary is dispatched with barely a blink, or drunkenly dispatches herself.In the next scene, as Charley enumerates Frank’s misplaced priorities in a 1973 television interview — Radcliffe handles the song “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” superbly — Groff’s coldblooded rage is terrifying. Collateral damage along the way includes Frank’s first wife, Beth (Katie Rose Clarke); his second, Gussie (Krystal Joy Brown); his probable third, Meg (Talia Simone Robinson); his producer, Joe (Reg Rogers); and even his adorable young son. Who but a monster would betray such a punim?“Merrily” is thus no longer, as it seemed in 1981, the story of the gradual, almost inevitable dimming of youth’s sweet illusions but rather the story of their falsity in the first place. Frank is only devoted to Mary and Charley when he doesn’t have access to anyone more useful. To think he turned into that monster is a mistake: He always was one, as Sondheim clearly understood. “That’s what everyone does,” Mary sings once the three-way friendship has collapsed. “Blames the way it is/on the way it was/On the way it never ever was.”Friedman has thrown in her lot with the coruscating insight of the songs, making a tactical decision — successful but not without consequences — to deprioritize everything else, including the score’s brassy élan. “Merrily” Kremlinologists will want to know that the version onstage at the Hudson Theater, though slightly bigger than the Off Broadway version that opened at New York Theater Workshop in December 2022, is still somewhat underscaled for Broadway. It has a cast of 19 instead of 17 and an orchestra of 13 instead of nine.In Maria Friedman’s unsparing production, our critic writes, the trajectories for the secondary characters at last make some sense.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt takes more than even those larger numbers to deliver the Golden Age thrill that is, after all, the show’s milieu. (The original orchestra had 20 players.) Other than the costumes, the minimal design is more practical than inspiring; the sound of the band (playing new orchestrations by Sondheim’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Tunick) is especially unbalanced. The choreography by Tim Jackson too often seems charades-like. Some of the solo singing could be more effective, technically and thus emotionally.And then there is, as always, the book. Friedman has apparently made her peace with Furth’s final Frankensteined version; though its pieces are coarsely sutured and don’t quite line up, at least the thing walks. If in seeking to sweeten the main story it still leans too heavily on thin satire for laughs — morning news shows, Hollywood sycophancy — the trajectories for the secondary characters, especially Beth and Gussie, who are now more than cannon fodder, at last make some sense.In this production, though, it wouldn’t matter much if they didn’t. Radcliffe’s wit and modesty, combined with Mendez’s zing and luster, provide perfect settings for what is now (as it has never been previously) the inarguably central performance. Groff, always a compelling actor, here steps up to an unmissable one. With his immense charisma turned in on itself, he seems to sweat emotion: ambition, disappointment and, most frighteningly, a terrible frozen disgust.I don’t know whether that’s what Furth intended, but Sondheim is brutally clear about the insidiousness of great talent. In Frank, it eats everything it can find, eventually including itself. “Who says ‘Lonely at the top’?” he sings amid the end-stage cynicism of his loveless Bel Air party. “I say, ‘Let it never stop.’”What a strange and daring thing for the great and greatly missed Sondheim to dramatize, and for Friedman to forefront. I’d call it heartbreaking if the result weren’t finally such a palpable hit.Merrily We Roll AlongThrough March 24 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan; merrilyonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Will Transfer to Broadway Next Fall

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      Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe, now starring in an Off Broadway revival, will lead the Broadway production as well.A starry revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” one of musical theater’s most beloved flops, will transfer to Broadway next fall, hoping to right the show’s oxymoronic reputation once and for all.The production, now midway through a sold-out run at Off Broadway’s small-scale New York Theater Workshop in the East Village, stars Daniel Radcliffe (yes, of “Harry Potter” fame) alongside two popular musical theater performers: Jonathan Groff (a Tony nominee for “Spring Awakening” and “Hamilton”) and Lindsay Mendez (a Tony winner for “Carousel”). All three will lead the Broadway cast, according to an announcement Friday; the production’s dates and the theater at which it will be staged were not specified.“Merrily,” with a much-loved score by Stephen Sondheim and an oft-bashed book by George Furth, holds a special place in musical theater lore: The original production, in 1981, was a fiasco so storied — it closed two weeks after opening — that it spawned an excellent documentary, “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened.”The show depicts, in reverse chronological order, the fracturing of a three-way friendship between a composer, a playwright and a novelist who meet in their early 20s. The musical is based on a 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.In the decades since the Broadway closing, the show has been revived and reimagined over and over and over again — Richard Linklater is now spending 20 years trying to film a version starring Ben Platt, Beanie Feldstein and Blake Jenner.This latest revival, which will be the first to reach Broadway since the original, is directed by Maria Friedman, a British actress who once starred in a “Merrily” run in England, and who has been developing her production for a decade, starting at Menier Chocolate Factory in London, followed by London’s West End (where it won the Olivier Award for best musical revival) and Huntington Theater Company in Boston.Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times and a longtime “Merrily” observer, praised the revival’s current Off Broadway production, writing “it is perhaps for the first time perfectly cast,” and concluding, “Maybe, finally, it’s a hit.” In The Washington Post, the critic Peter Marks called it “intoxicating” and “revelatory.”The lead producer of the revival will be Sonia Friedman — a prolific and powerful London-based producer who is also the sister of Maria Friedman. The producing team includes Sondheim’s widower, Jeff Romley, as well as David Babani, who is the artistic director of Menier Chocolate Factory, and Patrick Catullo. More

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      Review: ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Returns, the Way It Never Was

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      Maria Friedman’s rethinking of the much-loved, much-monkeyed-with 1981 Sondheim-Furth flop gets very close to coherence, and all the way to enjoyable.Many people love something about “Merrily We Roll Along” but few people love everything.It has that brilliant Stephen Sondheim score! It has that meshuga George Furth book! It’s a comedy of misbehavior, a tragedy of cynicism, a big Broadway musical, a tiny domestic drama, a timeline in search of a story that’s never found and, anyway, doesn’t make sense. Even if it did, no one is old enough/young enough to convincingly perform roles that age in reverse from 40 to 20. And if they do, they can’t sing.What no one wants is to leave the 1981 flop alone. Though too often lifeless in its many incarnations, it is also somehow deathless, rising repeatedly from the glossy grave of its beloved original cast album — remembered more fondly than the messy if emotional original production — in hopes of a transfiguration that finally makes it work.The revival that opened on Monday at New York Theater Workshop, after earlier iterations at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London and the Huntington Theater Company in Boston, comes closer to meeting that goal than any of the many I’ve seen before. Maria Friedman’s staging brings the intelligence of the songs fully alive and justifies the baroque construction. Her framing snaps the picture almost fully into focus. And with Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez as the show’s central trio of backward-tumbling friends, it is perhaps for the first time perfectly cast.Is that enough to make it great, the way it never was?The question resonates with the material — which, being about show business, is always involved in a meta-conversation with itself. Groff plays Franklin Shepard, a hacky movie producer in 1976, trailing two wives with a third on the way, who gradually evolves (backward) into a promising theater composer in 1957. Radcliffe plays his word man, Charley Kringas, who, in a nationally televised meltdown in 1973, spectacularly splits from the oldest of his old friends. Mendez plays the third wheel, Mary Flynn, an embittered (what else?) theater critic and washed-up novelist whose fog of alcohol slowly burns away to reveal, by the final curtain, a hopeful innocent in love forever with the unavailable Frank.Groff as Franklin Shepard, who’s a hacky movie producer when the musical opens in 1976.Sara KrulwichFriedman clarifies this rangy structure from the first image, which replaces the ensemble scenes of previous productions with Frank standing completely alone in the ruins of his life. As disembodied voices sing the opening phrases of the upbeat title song we quickly understand that we will be focusing not on the triangle so much as its apex. No one else in the story, not even his besties and exes, is quite real to Frank anyway; they are props in his monodrama, and often mangled. This is going to be the story of a brilliant young man who, failing to grow up, inevitably punches down.Happily, Groff has the glamour and fury to shoulder that interpretation. No Frank I’ve seen has been so unapologetic in his solipsism, so sure he deserves a get-out-of-jail-free card to life’s every complication. And when someone crosses him, as Charley does singing “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” on that TV show, Frank is so livid, staring straight ahead as if his friend no longer exists, that you wait in terror for what will happen next. What you get, even worse, is what happens before.The laminated ironies of Furth’s timeline, lifted from a 1934 Kaufman and Hart play with the same title and a similar arc, have always seemed better integrated into Sondheim’s ingenious score than into the plot itself. The songs are structured like a musical in reverse, with reprises preceding instead of following fuller versions, and bits of accompaniment later revealing themselves as new melodies. By the time you hear “Our Time,” the exquisite hymn of hopefulness that ends the show, you will recognize that it has already been cannibalized for parts; a few of its bleached bones show up as early as the second number, “That Frank,” with much more cynical lyrics.Friedman’s staging for the first time raises the story to nearly the same level of expressiveness. The dialogue, which in most productions sounds like movie lines instead of actual speech, has been put through some sort of sanding machine that removes its polish and restores real texture. Even in the songs, phrases that can seem too perfectly crafted are now engorged with specifics that inform the actors’ delivery and thus our understanding. For “Franklin Shepard, Inc.,” Radcliffe seems to have written a Bible of back story, giving wild spins to every line that help send the song into orbit.Visually too, Friedman simplifies, reinforces and focuses what we see. Soutra Gilmour’s costumes, though changing with the years, are similar enough to immediately specify everyone in the cast. (Frank is usually in a black suit, Charley in eye-jarring argyle, Mary in busy print shmattes.) And since all the action takes place within the cold unit set representing Frank’s midcentury Bel Air house (also by Gilmour) we never wonder why we’re watching a scene, even if it nominally takes place somewhere else. We’re watching it because it’s his brain.From left: Reg Rogers and Krystal Joy Brown, with Groff, Mendez and Radcliffe.Sara KrulwichBut those fixes, however successful, are also compromises. The Bel Air house, fairly hideous and mostly blank to allow for its transformations, necessitates a lot of choral furniture-handling that works against the sleekness of the material. Though the cast, especially Mendez, is vocally splendid, the original Jonathan Tunick orchestrations, vastly reduced to nine players from 19, have undergone a radical deglamorization, making it a smart if sad choice to drop most of the brilliant overture. And if dancing doesn’t really fit Friedman’s more interior approach (the limited choreography is by Tim Jackson) the general lack of Broadway pizazz leaves the show feeling deprived of half its inheritance.With the Off Broadway run (through Jan. 22) all but sold out, and commercial producers teed up for a transfer, we may yet find out what “Merrily” can be at its best. For now, it’s just at its best so far. That means some scenes work as they never have; the Act II opener, “It’s a Hit,” which often lays an egg, is for the first time hilarious, thanks in large part to Reg Rogers as Frank and Charlie’s producer. The unlikely progress through the story of Gussie Carnegie — the producer’s secretary, then wife, then star, then ex, but in reverse — suddenly seems clear and, in Krystal Joy Brown’s fetching performance, charming if not credible.Yet at the same time, some things that used to work no longer do. The supporting characters, heavily doubled, are mostly a blur. The song “Old Friends,” which at its root is about the fatal compromises that keep people together, has a case of fake giddiness. And “Bobby and Jackie and Jack,” a comedy number about the Kennedy family that the three friends perform in a downtown club in 1960, lays the egg that “It’s a Hit” no longer does.Musicals are mysterious. Even the best are games of Whac-a-Mole: Fix one problem and another pops up. It’s therefore no small thing to say that in her effort to drag a half-living thing like “Merrily” to full life, Friedman is more than halfway there. Maybe, finally, it’s a hit.Merrily We Roll AlongThrough Jan. 22 at New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan; nytw.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      Daniel Radcliffe to Star in Off Broadway ‘Merrily’ Revival

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      A new production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” is to be staged late this year by the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop in the East Village.The actor Daniel Radcliffe will star in an Off Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” a Stephen Sondheim musical that famously flopped on Broadway but in the decades since has become an oft-produced and beloved show.The new production, directed by Maria Friedman, is sure to be a tough ticket to get, given Radcliffe’s celebrity and the size of the venue: It is to be staged late this year by the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop at its 199-seat main stage in the East Village.Sondheim, in an interview days before his death last November, said he was looking forward to the production. Friedman, a British musical theater star with a long history of performing in Sondheim musicals, first directed “Merrily” at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London in 2012; that production, hailed by The Guardian with a five-star review, transferred to London’s West End in 2013, and Friedman then directed a run at the Huntington Theater in Boston in 2017.“Merrily” is an unusual show, written in reverse chronological order, about a trio of artists whose close friendship, and shared dreams, unravel over the years. The musical, featuring songs by Sondheim and a book by George Furth, ran on Broadway in 1981; it closed 12 days after opening. The abbreviated Broadway run was the subject of a well-received 2016 documentary film, “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened”; Richard Linklater is now spending 20 years making a film adaptation of the musical starring Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein.Ben Brantley, then the co-chief theater critic for The New York Times, called “Merrily” “the much-loved problem child of Sondheim’s musicals.” He saw Friedman’s production in London, where he called it “heart-clutching,” and in Boston, where he deemed it “transcendent.” The show, with an admired score and a critiqued book that builds toward a rooftop moment where the three main characters meet, has been repeatedly rethought; Jesse Green, the current Times chief theater critic, once described himself as “someone who’d gladly patronize a dedicated ‘Merrily’ repertory theater, perhaps on that rooftop, running nothing but reworked versions in perpetuity.”New York Theater Workshop, best known as the birthplace of “Rent,” said Monday that its production of “Merrily” would run in “late 2022”; it did not announce dates. Radcliffe will play Charley Kringas, a lyricist and playwright; the theater did not announce other cast members.The cast of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” Radcliffe, center, starred in the 2011 Broadway revival.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRadcliffe, who vaulted to fame by portraying Harry Potter on film, has starred in several Broadway and Off Broadway plays; he also starred in a 2011 Broadway revival of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”The “Merrily” production is the final show chosen by James C. Nicola, who has been the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop since 1988, and who is planning to step down in June. Nicola saw the original production on Broadway, and in the decades since, he said, the show “eerily, uncannily, has managed to entwine itself into my own life.”“I had never before heard or read any work of art that seemed to understand me — in fact, all of us Boomers in that precise moment of our lives,” he said by email. “‘Merrily We Roll Along’ is once again magically finding its way into my life.” More

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      Interest in Stephen Sondheim's Music, Books and Shows Soar After His Death

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      Fans have been streaming his music, buying his books, and trying to get in to see his shows, with a new revival of “Company” opening this week on Broadway.Streams of Stephen Sondheim’s music are up more than 500 percent. New York’s Drama Book Shop sold out the first volume of his collected lyrics. And close to 5,000 people have been entering a lottery to win tickets to weekend performances for a sold-out run of “Assassins.”In the days since the unexpected death of one of the most important writers in the history of musical theater, interest in his work has surged.“There’s even greater demand to see the work of Sondheim, and we’ve been feeling the benefit,” said Chris Harper, a lead producer of the revival of “Company,” one of Sondheim’s most acclaimed musicals, which opens on Broadway on Thursday. “What has also been pretty extraordinary to watch is that audiences are listening much more intently, and it feels like a much richer and deeper experience.”Sondheim died, unexpectedly, on Nov. 26, at the age of 91; the cause of death was cardiovascular disease, according to his death certificate. Broadway theaters decided to dim their lights Wednesday night for one minute in his honor.Sondheim’s popularity had its peaks and valleys during his lifetime, and many of his shows were not commercially successful. But much of his work is now frequently performed, and his importance to the art form is undisputed; on Sunday he was hailed by President Biden, who said, “Stephen was in a class of his own as a composer and a lyricist.”The evidence of a spike in appetite for work by Sondheim is everywhere.Look, for example, to the Off Broadway revival of “Assassins,” directed by John Doyle and now running at the Classic Stage Company in Lower Manhattan. The production was fully sold out before Sondheim’s death, but now the number of people regularly entering a digital lottery hoping to score $15 tickets is ballooning. And the roughly 5,000 people seeking tickets to weekend shows face long odds: the theater seats just 196 people..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“We’re definitely seeing an uptick in interest since his passing,” said Phil Haas, the nonprofit’s director of marketing and communications. “It’s hard to judge the exact amount, because the show is sold out and has been sold out for some time, but we have seen increased numbers of people joining our lottery, more people waiting on the cancellation line, and people waiting for longer.”Then there is the Drama Book Shop, a specialty store in Midtown that stocks scripts and other theater-related publications. Needless to say, Sondheim was always popular there, but now, even more so.“We almost immediately sold out, and had to reorder, ‘Finishing the Hat,’” said Pete Milano, who oversees the store’s operations, referring to the first volume of Sondheim’s collected lyrics. After Sondheim’s death, the store assembled much of its Sondheim material for a display near the entrance, and now the second volume of Sondheim’s lyrics, “Look, I Made a Hat,” is selling strongly, as are the texts for the musicals he co-authored..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“It’s not just one, but across the board, which was nice to see,” Milano said. “Plus, a lot of people are talking about him when they come in.”Online, streams of Sondheim’s music soared 523 percent in the U.S. during the week after his death, according to MRC Data, a tracking service that powers the Billboard charts.Sondheim was cheered last month when he attended the first preview of the new revival of “Company,” which opens Thursday.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAt the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, a new display of Sondheim memorabilia — letters he wrote to prominent artists as well as set models and sketches from some of his shows — was mounted in response to his death. And on Instagram, a new account called @sondheimletters has sprung up to collect and display letters Sondheim wrote to fans as well as collaborators.The “Company” opening, for a re-gendered production directed by Marianne Elliott that stars Katrina Lenk and Patti LuPone, is proving to be a hot ticket — among those expected to attend are Meryl Streep and Lin-Manuel Miranda.And there are other productions of Sondheim shows in the works. The Encores! program at New York City Center had already announced it was planning a two-week run of “Into the Woods” next May, with public school students and older adults joining Sara Bareilles, Christian Borle, Heather Hedley and Ashley Park in the cast; last week Encores! announced that the production will now be dedicated to Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics. “I’ve been hearing from some of the performers that are in it, who are weeping as they relisten to his music and prepare for their roles,” said the Encores! artistic director, Lear deBessonet, who is directing the “Into the Woods” production. “This is a moment of grace, to celebrate Steve and all he brought to this world.”MasterVoices, a New York based chorus, is planning a concert version of the rarely staged “Anyone Can Whistle” in March at Carnegie Hall, starring Vanessa Williams. Barrington Stage Company, in the Berkshires, announced Tuesday that it would produce “A Little Night Music” next summer, directed by Julianne Boyd in her final season as that theater’s artistic director.And New York Theater Workshop, an Off Broadway nonprofit, is close to confirming plans for a production of “Merrily We Roll Along,” directed by Maria Friedman, for late next year.Plus, of course, the Steven Spielberg-directed movie remake of “West Side Story,” which Sondheim wrote the lyrics for, is already generating awards buzz in advance of its release on Friday. (“I think it’s just great,” Sondheim said of the film in an interview a few days before he died. He added, “The great thing about it is people who think they know the musical are going to have surprises.”)A film version of “Follies” is also in the works; the script is “in active development,” according to a spokesman for the production company, Heyday Films.Ben Sisario More