There is a particular look that lights up a Sondheim fan’s face when Merrily We Roll Along gets a serious revival — a slightly defensive look, like a parent volunteering their kid for the school play. The reverse-chronology gimmick has been litigated for forty years. The score is everyone’s secret favourite. And the show has, until now, never quite worked.
This production does. It works because the director made one decision that should have been obvious in 1981 and apparently wasn’t: she let the gimmick be a gimmick. The structure is no longer a hill to defend. It’s a tool. The show opens in the right place — at the failure — and reels forward from there with the tonal confidence of a much later piece.
Three things this revival gets right:
- The pacing of “Old Friends.” Played slower than usual, with a deliberate pause before the third repetition, the number lands as an accusation rather than a sing-along.
- The trio. Casting actors who can actually play friendship — not just stand near each other and harmonise — is the difference between this show working and this show being a 90-minute apology.
- The set. A single rolling proscenium that contracts the world as the timeline rewinds. No projections. No video. The cleanest design idea on a Broadway stage this season.
The caveat: The second-half ballads still drag in a way the rest of the production doesn’t earn. Two of them could come out. Whether that’s blasphemy or pragmatism is a debate this review is happy to have offstage.
Verdict: the first Merrily you can recommend without footnotes. At the Helen Hayes through 31 August.