It is a paradox of human existence that while we experience life forward, we understand it in reverse. Only by journeying, backward, from present to past, can we comprehend the choices that form and deform us. Fans of Stephen Sondheim, George Furth and Hal Prince still return to the problem of what went wrong with Merrily We Roll Along, the legendary Broadway failure that closed abruptly in 1981. That’s probably why the show receives a significant revival every decade or so. Surely one day we’ll understand. Surely one day we’ll get it right.
It’s doubtful that anyone will get it righter than director Maria Friedman. A former actor and a sensitive and lucid interpreter of Sondheim’s work, she lends clarity and humanity to the revival of Merrily now playing at New York Theatre Workshop. Informed by her 2012 Menier Chocolate Factory production, this version stars Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez as a trio of friends disillusioned after two decades amid the gutters and stars of Hollywood and Broadway. Friedman’s interpretation will probably be regarded as a gold standard. But even here, despite that indelible sour-sweet score, the gold is short a few carats. Some choices, it would seem, can’t be unmade, no matter how acute our hindsight.
