Merrily We Roll on Broadway?

Doubt it. Most of the cast have moved on to other projects.

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According to Michael Reidel at the time, if Sondheim would have endorsed a production of the show on Broadway, it would have been the Doyle one. Neither appear to be moving on to a commercial life.

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Look, I named my dog Kringas, so I'm a big champion of this show, but even I am finally willing to concede its never ever going to work. And I'm sure Lin Manuel-Miranda was probably really fun on stage, because I find him to be a charming performer, but Charley Kringas just seemed to be a role he's not suited for. And it's just depressing that Frank and Charlie both sing "Good Thing Going."

I'd rather someone do a one man Merrily than see Doyle do it on Broadway. No one looking each other in the eye and stuff.

I love it and will always root for it, but maybe, like the show it self, I find myself more cynical and jaded about it as I get older.

I have a very, very special place for the score of MERRILY, but I think the primary unsolvable problem about it is that the backward time device doesn't unearth anything special about the characters or the story. So they started off young and idealistic and became progressively cynical and bitter with age. Okay? If there was some big reveal that completely changed your perception of who the characters were at any given time, that'd be one thing, but there isn't.

It's also particularly problematic that Frank is such a poorly drawn and unlikable leading man, and you're given little to nothing to understand why. I think the show suffers in that regard in general- each scene feels like it's trying to fit so much narrative in that you never get to dig much below the surface to see who these people really are. I've always found Gussie to be the most interesting person in the piece, and that's because the story going backward in time actually reveals a significant change in her.

I saw both Doyle's production in Cincinatti and Lapine's incarnation at Encores!, and I found the casting of the central trio to be so problematic in both that the rest of the production in either was a moot point. Doyle's idea of using three significantly older actors fell completely flat, and while I loved Colin Donnell's Frank, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Lin-Manuel Miranda were so painfully miscast (and vocally under-equipped) in Lapine's version that any strengths they all presented in chemistry were lost by their inability to serve the material.

Sondheim and George Furth have made attempt after attempt at reworking and re-conceptualizing the show, and try as anyone might, I think it's destined to live as a piece that "could have been," much like the wistfulness the characters in it feel toward the failed prospects of their lives.

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Updated On: 7/11/12 at 01:07 AM