Merrily We Roll Along – New Broadway Cast Recording (Masterworks Broadway).
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The (growing) legion of fans keen to discover Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along are surprisingly spoiled for choice when it comes to cast albums, particularly given the show’s infamous Broadway opening (and closing, after just 16 performances).
Hal Prince’s original Broadway cast somehow found the energy and enthusiasm to record a cast album the day after their premature curtain, at least documenting for posterity Sondheim’s wonderful music. (It continues to baffle me how this show failed so spectacularly.)
Twelve years later in 1993, John Yap’s JAY Recordings released an album using the cast of Paul Kerryson’s Leicester Haymarket production, which notably featured Maria Friedman as Mary Flynn. And the following year, Varèse Sarabande released “The New Cast Recording”, documenting the 1994 Off-Broadway York Theatre production.
A whole 18 years would then pass before we were treated to a new (two-disc) recording, this time of the New York City Center Encores! production from February 2012, featuring, among other luminaries, Lin-Manuel Miranda as Charley Kringas.
And while it was never released on CD, the 2012 Menier Chocolate Factory revival (and subsequent move to the Harold Pinter) – with Maria Friedman again, this time as director – was beautifully captured by Digital Theatre in all its glory. (Although good luck finding this now, even if you purchased it legitimately through the service.)
Friedman’s production has finally now been released as a cast album, thanks to the incredible success of the show’s staging in New York. The musical’s glorious return to Broadway – its first since that disastrous 1981 staging – could not be more contrasting, consistently hitting the million-dollar mark each week thanks in no small part to a cast that featured Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez as the lead trio of backwards-looking friends.
This new release, by Masterworks Broadway, is, as you’d expect from any new Broadway cast album, razor sharp and crystal clear. I’m no expert on these things, but it sounds to me like it’s been constructed in multiple layers – as opposed to being laid down in a single take – giving the producers the opportunity to balance everything perfectly. Either way, there’s a clarity and crispness – almost a dryness, to a fault – that allows every word to be picked out, with in-song dialogue particularly clear.
You can practically cut yourself on Lindsay Mendez’s sharp-tongued interjections during ‘That Frank’, for example. (‘What do you do?’, ‘I drink.’ ‘What do you really do?’ ‘I really drink!’) The number doesn’t include all of the dialogue, sadly, but more than enough to give listeners less familiar with the show the chance to get the gist of what’s going on.
That opening number also gives us our first chance to hear Jonathan Groff’s Franklin Shepard, who we meet as a successful – if bitter and cynical – filmmaker celebrating the glowing crits of his latest movie. Something that I didn’t appreciate from the auditorium of the Hudson Theatre was the shifting quality of Groff’s voice as he de-ages; when we first hear him, he sounds tired, almost croaky. I mean, he still knocks the singing out of the park but there’s a rasped edge to his voice. When he belts out ‘Paramount!’ you can hear the Marlboroughs. Yet the more we hear from him, the clearer – more youthful – his voice becomes, which is a very nice touch I’ve not picked up on in other recordings.
We get our first taste of Daniel Radcliffe in his ‘Old Friends’ duet with Mendez, and he has a lovely tone, with just a hint of his English pluminess poking through. Of course, the test of any Charley Kringas is his tongue-burning patter song, ‘Franklin Shepard, Inc.’, which here is taken at a decent pace of 128 beats per minute, so quick but not so quick as to sacrifice any clarity.
The transitions between scenes seem to have been revisited with all-new harmonies – deliciously full and interesting in their own right, rather than just a necessary plot device that in some recordings gets irksome.
What really sings in this recording is the character acting. The performances are exceptional, giving a much needed three-dimensionality to the cast. There is true chemistry between the lead threesome, and this is where this production excels – in the genuineness of the relationships, and their relatability. We really do care about these people, which is one of the most important ‘finds’ that Friedman has made in her exploration of the material.
This acting-first approach is most effective in ‘Opening Doors’ – the number that Sondheim admitted was his most autobiographical. There’s a lightness of touch from the orchestration (and typewriter sound effects) that gives the cast plenty of room to put real thought into each huff, groan and lyric, from Groff’s silly accent when answering the phone as the ‘Russian tea room’, Mendez’s exasperated ‘Me and Balzac’ and through to Joe Josephson’s ‘I’ll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit’ (comedically underpinned by the brass). Joe is gloriously brought to life by Reg Rogers, whose quirky characterisation I found to be a joy at the Hudson – something that comes through in this recording.
The reprise of ‘Not a Day Goes By’ – a trio between Groff, Mendez and Katie Rose Clarke as Frank’s soon-to-be-new wife Beth – is also all the more heartbreaking for the emotional depth of the performances. And again the clarity in the recording and orchestration helps to draw focus on Sondheim’s lyric, with Mary’s despondent line ‘I’ll die day after day…’ emerging clearly underneath the more soaring love theme from the other two.
The joy of recordings such as this – with its A-list leads – is its wider appeal than perhaps the typical cast album. If the only reason that the CD is bought is because of the leads’ mainstream appeal, then so be it. It may not add anything new or different for diehard Sondheim fans – those purists determined to own every iteration of the canon (guilty!) – but it does extend Sondheim’s reach and welcomes a new generation of fans to his glorious work.
I’m a huge fan of the old-school OBCR, complete with its split notes, tuba solos, echoing feedback and stumbling tempos. It’s meatily orchestrated (20 musicians, compared with 2024’s 13), with a rich, brassy big-band sound – which was later deemed inappropriate for the content by orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, who revamped and simplified the score in later productions. This original has a rare almost-varsity let’s-do-the-show-right-here enthusiasm, and I’ll always have this to go back to, as it’s probably still my favourite.
But as an account of the 2023 revival, this cast recording is as faithful as you could wish for. Fans will be thrilled to know that the production was filmed by RadicalMedia in the week beginning 17 June, but until this is released (no date mentioned, as yet), audio recording will stand as the next best thing to have seen it in the flesh. And if you pick up a physical copy of the recording, you can enjoy singing along with the 39-page booklet of lyrics, with additional notes from Friedman and critic Ben Brantley. Or if you’re a streamer, download the booklet here.
Craig Glenday
- Sony Masterworks (2 LP) 19658874371. Released: 8 March 2024.
- Produced by David Caddick, David Lai, Joel Fram and Maria Friedman.
- Recorded and mixed by Ian Kagey at Berklee at PowerStationNYC and Renaissance Recording NY.
- Available digitally on all streaming platforms.
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