Merrily We Roll Along has a good thing going

As a performer Maria Friedman has memorably interpreted the work of composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim – she even played the lead role of Mary Flynn in the 1992 Leicester Haymarket production of Merrily We Roll Along – but there was no guarantee she would make the same impact in her directorial debut.

Fortunately, however, she surpasses expectation with this intelligent, witty and moving production that has transferred from the Menier Chocolate Factory to the West End. Sondheim and librettist George Furth’s bitter sweet story of what happens to friendships and ideals when they meet with ambition, materialism and compromise has predominantly been regarded as a problem piece since it so famously flopped back in 1981, but now it is looking better than ever.

In reverse chronological order, the audience first meets ex-composer/go-getting film producer Franklin Shepard when he is supposedly happy and living the high life in his Bel Air beach house. But it’s not long before the cracks start showing, not just with his wife Gussie, but also with one of his two very best friends, Mary Flynn (who takes solace in a drink or three). His relationship with his other closest chum, Charley Kringas – the lyricist who once supplied the words to his promising melodies – has deteriorated to such an extent that his name can’t even be mentioned.

And so the audience discovers in gradual flashback (the same dramatic device so famously used in Pinter’s Betrayal), what led to this sorry state of affairs – how different paths were taken to those originally intended. As a result, when we reach the final scene and witness the trio of friends on the roof of their apartment building, sharing their dreams and aspirations through the poignant song ‘Our Time’, the drama becomes all the more powerful.

I am not sure I have ever seen the piece so well acted and staged before. Indeed Friedman’s assured direction (along with Tim Jackson’s clever choreography and Catherine Jayes’ flair as musical director) creates a compelling play with music, paying as much respect to Furth’s book as Sondheim’s beautiful score.

Boosted by the experience of already having performed the show for a run at the Menier, members of the ensemble are pitch perfect and prove themselves vital to the success of the production. Even some of the smaller roles – Glyn Kerslake’s Broadway producer Joe or Clare Foster’s intensely emotional Beth – are incredibly well defined. Watching Josefina Gabrielle, as Franklin’s second wife Gussie Carnegie, change in reverse from an actress quick to switch husbands if it advances her career to the ambitious secretary hovering in the background, is quite captivating.

One of the problems in the past is that productions have been cast with young twentysomething actors in the lead roles, and while this worked well in the show’s final scene, it was difficult for audiences to believe the actors had genuinely experienced those feelings of disappointment and regret. The casting of more mature performers in Mark Umbers (Franklin), Jenna Russell (Mary) and Damian Humbley (Charley) allows the artists to create characters we truly believe in. Umbers ultimately brings a warmth and vulnerability to a figure that has been hard to like in the past, while Humbley manages to shift from the anger and frustration aimed at his collaborator in the showstopping ‘Franklin Shepard Inc’, to humour and gentleness by its finale.

Russell has already proved herself a wonderful interpreter of Sondheim’s work – including her portrayal of Dot/Marie in Sunday in the Park With George – but here her heartrending performance as Mary is a real tour de force.

In any night at the theatre, one is looking for something universal in the experience to connect with emotionally, something that stays with you beyond the theatre. That is what Merrily We Roll Along offers and more.

Frances Orkin