Merrily We Roll Along (2024) (Broadway)

The latest revival of Merrily We Roll Along is so much better than the production I saw 5 years ago off-broadway. What's so incredible is that it's basically exactly the same and yet the presentation makes so much more sense. The confusing story-telling that usually muddles Merrily came out perfectly cohesive under Maria Friedman's direction. The minor characters' storylines come through much more clearly. And the tone is much darker than I remember. It's not just a play that moves backwards, it's a man looking back on the critical choices he made in his life that lost him his soul. It's so deeply sad and poignant in a way that was not properly conveyed before. It's about losing your friends, losing your joie de vivre, lost potential, lost time and the defeat of art by commerce. The whole thing really resonated with me; I don't know if that's due to being at a different point of life 5 years later or simply being able to follow the plot and themes this time around. Not to mention that it features some of Sondheim's most beautiful and heartbreaking melodies. The universe has a funny way of finally realizing Sondheim's most personal show after his death, the show they never quite figured out how to work, the one that broke up Sondheim and Hal Prince. I think also being a little more familiar with the music and plot, I was able to follow better and hear new things in the music, like "we never go forward" and "saying yes when I should've said no".

One of the reasons this production works so well is its 3 leads, who we truly believe to be close friends. Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez have been making the rounds on the late shows and magazine videos and such. And when they appear together, they seem to genuinely like each other. Sure, they're actors and they could all be fooling us but I'd like to believe their friendship is legit. On stage they have excellent chemistry. And all 3 of them are so good. Lindsay Mendez especially stood out to me. And I feel like Daniel Radcliffe has grown a lot as a singer since we saw a decade ago in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. And Jonathan Groff is actually playing piano, you could see his hands in the reflection of the rear window at the angle we had from the balcony. 

Carousel (Broadway) (2018)

I love Carousel. I think the music is beautiful and the story as well. Seeing this now a second time, on a Broadway this time, it doesn't hold up as well as I remember. There is a lot less plot than I remember. Most of the songs are kind of filler. And the second act that I remembered being so imaginative was actually very ambiguous. There are a number of seeming plot holes. Billy doesn't actually do anything to earn his ticket into heaven. Did grown people in the early 1900s really ride carousels? Multiple times in a single day? Was carousel barker a real job? Do clam bakes always involve scavenger hunts? The costumes are appropriately ugly. It's so site-specific to New England, it's almost too bizarre. The accents were sort of all over the place. Jessie Mueller's accent was fine but she doesn't have all that many lines for a lead. I took most issue with Joshua Henry's accent, which didn't quite sound New England. I think perhaps as a whole cast, they should have made a decision to just drop the accents, cause it was kind of inconsistent. Billy Bigelow is perhaps one of the meatiest male roles in musical theater--his acting is excellent (of which there is a lot) but I do not prefer his singing. Henry's voice has a lot of heft, it's very deep. His head voice sounds like it's coming from a completely different person. If I Loved You was delightful, but I didn't love his rendition of Soliloquy. Maybe it's just one of those songs you're so used to hearing one way that when other people try to do something a little different, it doesn't sound quite right. The absolute best part of the show is Justin Peck's choreography. The dance sequences are mesmerizing. Blow High, Blow Low--one of those filler songs--is so much fun. They even forgo the eponymous carousel in order to leave space for the dancers to do their thing.

I think Amar Ramasar is fabulous as Jigger (what an awfully racist name). I think he should've gotten a Tony nomination for a role arguably bigger than Mr. Snow. Speaking of racism, there is certainly a different dynamic with an African-American Billy, making an interracial leading couple. I actually sympathize with Billy more as an African-American. Who are the characters of color? Billy, the policeman, the Starkeeper, and Jigger. That is the two "criminals" (and the wife beater), the man charged with fighting the criminals, and the God-figure/low-level-afterlife-magistrate. Make of that what you will.

The criticism most often levied against Carousel is that it condones domestic violence, but I don't read it quite the same way. I don't think it condones anything (because Billy's redemption is really ambiguous), but I do think they try to rationalize why victims of domestic abuse stay. "He's your fella and you love him" and that's about it.