Andrew Melendez

2/25/15
Merrily We Roll Along essay
Bursting With Dreams: Sondheim and Merrily We Roll Along

Its a hit! is every artists dream: to produce work from the very depths
of their talents that goes on to receive critical acclaim and make them
moneywithout selling out. What price do artists pay to maintain their
artistic integrity? Their friendships? How much is a person willing to give up
to become successful? These questions are examined and answered in the
1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along, with music and lyrics by Stephen
Sondheim and book by George Furth, based on the 1934 play of the same
name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The original production was
directed by Broadway magnate Harold Prince.
Prior to Merrily, Prince and Sondheim worked together and collaborated
on six musicals: West Side Story (1957, with Leonard Bernstein, Arthur
Laurents, and Jerome Robbins), Company (with George Furth, 1970), Follies
(with James Goldman, 1971), A Little Night Music (with Hugh Wheeler, 1973),
Pacific Overtures (with John Weidman, 1976), and Sweeney Todd (with Hugh
Wheeler, 1979). Merrily was conceived as an experiment with genre
conventions: it is a musical about writing musicals, and the story, like its
source material, is told backwards through time, starting in 1976 and ending
in 1957.

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Merrily We Roll Along essay
The show has a long history of failures and revisions: by 1994,
Sondheim assessed that Merilly [had] gone through four revisions over a
period of thirteen years (Buchman 119). Tryouts for the musical began
October 8, 1981, to poor reception. Larry Fuller replaced Ron Field as the
choreographer, and the Broadway run opened November 16, 1981.
Audiences responded negatively to the show: the original Broadway run had
only 16 performances and 52 previews, Sondheims least successful musical
since 1964s Anyone Can Whistle. Critics and audiences argued that the
truncated plot was confusing, the protagonist was unlikable, and the themes
were too cynical for a Broadway audience. The structural concept of the
musical and the stage designs were poorly compared to those of Company
and Follies and critic Frank Rich wrote that for all his cleverness, While Mr.
Prince often finds brilliant unifying concepts for his shows, even the ones that
don't work, he's come up with a flat one here school (Rich).
For all its defeats, Merrily did win the 1982 Tony Award for Outstanding
Lyrics. Since its Broadway flop, Merrily has been revived in various settings.
In 2000, a London revival at the Donmar Warehouse received the 2001
Laurence Olivier award for Best New Musical. Maria Friedman, who previously
played Mary in a 1992 London revival, directed the show at Londons Menier
Chocolate Factory in 2012. This revival received more 5-star reviews than

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Merrily We Roll Along essay
any musical in the history of West End theatre, and won the 2012 Peter
Hepple Award for Best Musical (Youtube).
The protagonist (or perhaps antihero) of Merrily We Roll Along is
Franklin Shepard, who, at the beginning of the musical, set in 1976, is a
powerful and successful Hollywood producer. He is also bitter and cynical
about his youthful dreams of being a successful musician. At a high school
commencement ceremony, Frank openly defies idealism and encourages the
young graduates to compromise and be practical (Buchman 121) . The
opening number of the show, which shares its title, introduces the theme of
examining the past and how we become the people we are: Dreams dont
die, so keep an eye on your dream. / And before you know where you are,
there you are (Score 11). This motif is repeated in transitions as the musical
rolls back in time, serving as a guidepost to help the audience through time .
The structure of the show is episodic, similar to the vignette structure
in Company. In Act I, we are introduced to Franks best friends, Charley
Kringas and Mary Flynn, a lyricist and novelist respectively. At the beginning
of the show, Frank becomes alienated from them, choosing commercial
success over their friendship. In Franklin Shepard, Inc., Charley laments
the state of their relationship and begs Frank on live television to return to
doing what he loves: writing music. He begs the audience to tell that man

Andrew Melendez
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Merrily We Roll Along essay
to get back to his piano (Score 69). But Frank storms out and disowns
Charley. As the musical progresses, we discover that Frank had an affair with
Gussie, wife of Broadway producer Joe Stephenson who gave Frank and
Charley their first big Broadway break, and eventually marries her. Frank
suffers a divorce from his wife Beth, with whom he has a son.
In Act II, Charley and Frank celebrate their first big hit. By this point in
the show, there is a sense of sadness that accompanies the celebration of
their success, as the audience already knows where that success will take
these young upstarts. As the transitions continue moving the audience back
in time, Franklin, Charley, and Marys bushy-tailed idealism continues to
grow, finally culminating in the climax of the musical, and one of Sondheims
most well-known songs, Opening Doors. The three young artists celebrate
the endless possibilities in front of them, singing:
Were opening doors, singing, Here we are! / Were filling up days on a
dime. / That far-a-way shores looking not to far. / Were following
every star / Theres not enough time! (Score 254)
In Finishing the Hat, Sondheim writes about his intentions in writing an
unconventional musical with conventional, thirty-two bar songs. Since the
story was told in reverse chronological order, he wanted to invert the
concept of reprises and repeated vocal melodies to be undercurrents of
memory, but the audience would hear the accompaniments first (Sondheim

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Merrily We Roll Along essay
381). Sondheim has said of this score that it was the hardest score he ever
had to write (Buchman 128). Sondheim confesses that for all the fervent
hysterical activity that accompanied revising the show for its Broadway
debut, it was the most fun he ever had on a single showhe and Harold
Prince, however, would not reunite for another 20 years, until 2003s Bounce
(or Road Show).
Merrily We Roll Along has received a cast recording four times, and
numerous songs from the score have been recorded by popular artists such
as Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews, Patti LuPone, and Liza Minnelli, among
others. In 2013, HBO aired Six by Sondheim, a documentary which explores
six backstories of some of Sondheims most seminal works, including
Opening Doors. A short film of Opening Doors was directed by James
Lapine for Six by Sondheim, and starred Jeremy Jordan, Darren Criss, America
Ferrera, and Laura Osnes. Sondheim has explicitly stated that Opening
Doors is autobiographical: Thats my big autobiographical number;
everything in that number is me (Buchman 128).
I will admit that as much as I appreciate Sondheims experiment with
conventions, there is something almost duplicitous about Merrily We Roll
Along, and this is perhaps what audiences were so taken aback by when it
first premiered: it feels like the audience is almost cheated out of a real
ending, and in spite of how fanciful and inspired the end of the musical is,

Andrew Melendez
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Merrily We Roll Along essay
when the audience looks back they are only left with the knowledge that the
friendships of these young people will be ruined, their hearts broken, and
most of all, their dreams crushed. It is a sad story: in the end, there isnt any
kind of hope for the characters that you disliked in the first place and only
come to pity later on. For me, this musical is less entertainment and more an
exercise in examining genre conventions and how they can be broken,
rearranged, and then put back together. Merrily We Roll Along is an excellent
ensemble show, with a great score and lyrics, and a bold attempt by
Sondheim to continue exploring his aesthetic, which would culminate in
another critical success in Sunday in the Park with George in 1984.

Andrew Melendez
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Merrily We Roll Along essay
Sources

Buchman, Andrew. "Growing Pains." The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim

Studies. Ed. Robert

Gordon. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. 117-131. Print.

Merrily We Roll Along - Behind The Scenes With Jonathan Ross (LONG
VERSION). Perf.

Jonathan Ross. YouTube. Merrily WestEnd, 26 June 2013.

Web. <http://youtu.be/QidhhLPtb_A>.
Rich, Frank. "A New Sondheim: "Merrily We Roll Along"" The New York Times
17 Nov. 1981,

Stage sec. Print.

Sondheim, Stephen. "Merrily We Roll Along." Finishing the Hat: Collected

Lyrics (1954-1981)

with Attendant Comments, Principles,

Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. 1st

ed. New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 2010. 379-421. Print.

Sondheim, Stephan. Merrily We Roll Along Piano Conductor Score. Revelation
Music, 1981.

Print.