Review: ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ is a sublime exploration of life’s perils

In life, as God and Stephen Sondheim understand, we roll along whether or not we choose to do so merrily.

But if ever there was a musical about how our youthful idealism and crucial personal loyalties are so often sacrificed on the tawdry altar of getting ahead, ever a show about how darn stupid most of us turn out to be, ever a show about how we blow our most important relationships and friendships for … what? In the regretful end, then “Merrily We Roll Along” is that masterpiece.

I watched Maria Friedman’s stunning, revelatory production at the New York Theatre Workshop (it originated a the Menier Chocolate Factory in London) through a kind of moist-eyed haze, mind racing, heart beating and all that stuff. For starters, the musical, written by Sondheim and George Furth and first seen on Broadway in 1981, is a work of such genius. (And, yes, it’s even better than “Into the Woods”).

Take, for example, how “Merrily” uses the song “Not a Day Goes By” as both a love song, an exquisite ballad of need and adoration, and, following a bitter divorce proceeding, as a truly agonizing reminder that we all get wounded in different ways by our failed relationships.

Past loves, not to mention previous lies, imprint themselves on our souls and they cannot be shaken off, whatever all our talk about moving on and other such self-deluding pablum in which even the great Sondheim occasionally indulged, while temporarily lying to himself.

In “Merrily,” a relatively early work about show business, the rewards it affords, and the price it extracts from a quartet of young, creative friends named Franklin, Mary, Charley and Beth, he already knew the truth: You might have a good thing going, it might be your time, but it’s brief and you eventually have to toil to try and keep it that way. And it will turn, as we all do, to dust.

Friedman’s production, which demands with every note to be back on Broadway, features four blisteringly emotional and deeply rooted performances from Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, Daniel Radcliffe, and Kate Rose Clarke. All dig very deep trenches and the show is especially propelled by how richly (and this is hard to do) Groff links his vocal excitement, energy and power to his character’s calcified well of emptiness.

Mendez immerses herself in Mary’s bitterness to spectacular effect and, as idealistic Charley, Radcliffe dances very deftly on the edge of hope and denial, showing us a young man who sings about how unlimited he feels, but also sits in terror that he is about to crash on the shores of his own emotional limits, not to mention the betrayal of his pals.

What makes Friedman’s approach (the deceptively sardonic set and deliciously, pathetically pretentious costumes are from the brilliant Soutra Gilmour) so distinctive?

It’s pretty simple, really.

Most every other production, including Hal Prince’s Broadway original, has focused on the youth of the young writers and composers. But that is not what the show, which moves backwards in chronology, is really about. It’s about being old, about having regrets born of shattering personal errors and callousnesses and no one in this cast can ever pretend to be that young. They all have crucial tread on their tires. That’s what the show needed all these years.

Add in Friedman’s relentless focus on mortality, desperation and paradox, the triplets of everyone’s personal apocalypse, and you have one stunner of a show. “White Lotus” fans will realize who got there first.

Conventional wisdom has it that “Merrily” starts with a roar and ends with a whimper. Maybe that is the case, but Friedman and this extraordinarily talented clutch of actors make darn sure that it’s a hollow whimper, its promise thoroughly underminded by the subsequent horrors that we already have seen unfold before our eyes and, of course in song.

We see our heroes thwarted by the temptations of those like the avaricious actress Gussie (Krystal Joy Brown) and, yet worse, the cynically demanding producer Joe (Reg Rogers). Abandon all hope of happiness ye who do business with him.

Friedman, a veteran star of the stage herself, knows every inch of this treacherous living landscape and, merrily, verily, her loyal crew go along with her cheerily and unknowingly to the brink.

Once they arrive? It’s too late.