You can thank digital technology for sharp hi-def Photo-shopped images and news reel type feeds to keep the audience on track to the otherwise bizarre retro-timeline... (An old fashioned slide show projection or rear screen projection in it's day would have lacked the punch...)
My favorite line from the script: "When the hell am I going to get a waiter that's just a waiter" declares a millionaire after he was on the receiving end of a pitch for a new fangled invention called a phone answering machine by a moonlighting young inventor...
"Hey Old Friend" is one of Stephen Sondheim's most easily sung ditties, and "Not a Day Goes By", one of his most lovely ballads...
But otherwise, the score lacks luster and... As my friend BMB pointed out... "the conceit that writing musicals is the highest form of artistic endeavor is, well, a little conceited".
The gentleman seated to my left had seen the original production... He said the beginning of the original show showed the main characters as 1957 high school kids and that then the audience, at least, had a chance to "like em" and "identify with" them.... But going backwards like this, from the end of their bitter show biz careers.... They were all too unlikeable from the get go...
So, this guy pointed out that the audience isn't engaged because we don't care for these guys.... He also seemed to recall there was a different opening number "The Hills of Tomorrow".... But that it was obviously cut from this production...
All said and done? I'm glad I went. It was like a textbook viewing of an era and a peek into Sondheim's world, circa 1981...
Many of Sondheim's works became butterflies... But this one? Even with the improvements, remains more of an odd moth that flutters sideways and never makes it fully into the spotlight.
Notes: Brilliant cast featured Colin Donnell, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Elizabeth Stanley, Betsy Wolfe and Adam Grupper. Merrily We Roll Along, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth, directed by James Lapine, with excellent music direction by Rob Berman and clever musical staging by Dan Knechtges. Merrily was extended for a two-week run and played for 15 performances, February 8-19, 2012, 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues.
