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.