Time for another report on my theater-going. Last evening, I went to see the Musical Theater Guild's production of Merrily We Roll Along. The M.T.G., as explained here many times, is a local group of very gifted actors and several times a year, they put on a great old musical in a "concert style" performance, meaning no sets, not a lot of costuming and sometimes, the actors even have to carry their scripts around. Despite the low budget nature of it all, they work wonders.
Merrily We Roll Along features a book by George Furth, freely adapting the play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The Kaufman-Hart non-musical version opened in September of 1934 and closed in February of 1935, lasting a disappointing 155 performances. The musical version opened in November of 1981 and closed…in November of 1981. Ordinarily, when a Broadway show shutters after sixteen performances, it goes in the books as a flop and is never heard of again.
But the musical had a score by Stephen Sondheim, to whom the normal rules do not apply. Once the regional rights were available, countless producers and directors lunged to take a shot at it, many regarding it as a challenge to make the show "work." There was so much right with it — particularly the glorious Sondheim score — that trying to fix the flaws was irresistible to some. Let me tell you what the show's about and maybe you'll see what the problem is.
Merrily We Roll Along is about a composer, Franklin Shepard, and two of his friends. Charley Kringas is his partner and lyricist during his early years when the two of them are out trying and eventually succeeding to write hit shows for Broadway. Mary Flynn is a writer herself and a platonic friend of both…though she is very much in love with Franklin, a fact that Franklin manages to never notice as he goes about marrying others. The three of them begin with near-poverty and idealism and eventually cope with their successes by fighting with one another. There's a major rupture when Franklin becomes a successful movie producer and abandons his Broadway career and Charley. He achieves great success but along the way, he leaves behind some of his friends, his first wife and son…and just about all his idealism.
This is pretty much a downer story. It's filled with unpleasant people and bad things happen to the pleasant ones. So there's part of the trouble. The other part is that the story is told backwards. That's right: Backwards. The first scene is the last in the above narrative with Franklin all grown up and assessing what he has become and what it cost him. Then Scene 2 takes place a few years before Scene 1, and Scene 3 takes place a year or so before Scene 2 and so on. The last scene is the one in which Franklin, Charley and Mary are young and poor and starting out on their careers with great high-mindedness and hope and energy. So you walk out of the theater thinking, "Poor kids…they had such wonderful dreams and it all turned out so sad for them."
Is it any wonder the show didn't catch on?
Maybe a little. Most of the songs are quite wonderful and I enjoyed pieces of Mr. Furth's script very much — or I should say, pieces of one of Mr. Furth's scripts. There have been a couple of different revisions but, as a friend said to me in the lobby, "No matter what they do to it, it's still about these talented people who screw up their lives…and the story's still backwards."
The Musical Theater Guild did a first-rate job with this one, as they always do. The leads were so good that I just went out to the garage at 3 AM to get the program book so I could get their names right. Robert J. Townsend was in terrific voice as Franklin, Lisa Picotte caught the tragedy of Mary, and Richard Israel was outstanding as Charley. Yes, this is the same Richard Israel who was so good in another musical I saw two weeks ago and which closed last Sunday. The guy gets around. There are two more performances of Merrily — one on September 24 in Thousand Oaks and another the following day in Long Beach. If you're anywhere near those cities on those dates, you might have a very good time. I did. Even though it's backwards.