New Merrily Pro-Shot? - Page 4

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 12:23am

ColdClimateDude said: "I'm not sure if Krystal Joy Brown's performance landed better in the theater”

 

It did not.

[TaffyDavenport]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 12:39am

Not giving audiences the complete overture is unforgivable.

[Shubert Alley Cat]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 12:43am

TaffyDavenport said: "Not giving audiences the complete overture is unforgivable."

Agreed 100%.  WTF

Also why was the curtain call not included.  Pissed me off.

 

[Sammy232]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 7:33am

TotallyEffed said: "ColdClimateDude said: "I'm not sure if Krystal Joy Brown's performance landed better in the theater”



It did not."

I actually thought it was even worse than live. Maybe it was all the closeups?

 

[Zeppie2022]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 8:11am

"Also why was the curtain call not included.  Pissed me off."

It seemed to me the choice was made to make it a movie and not a filmed stage show. You rarely heard audience reaction and there was no Act 1/Act 2 in the movie.

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 8:41am

Zeppie2022 said: ""Also why was the curtain call not included. Pissed me off."

It seemed to me the choice was made to make it a movie and not a filmed stage show. You rarely heard audience reaction and there was no Act 1/Act 2 in the movie."


I agree this was the intention but uh…they aren’t fooling anyone so why not just let it be filmed theatre?

[Zeppie2022]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 8:49am

"I agree this was the intention but uh…they aren’t fooling anyone so why not just let it be filmed theatre?"

Exactly!! I think they made the wrong choice.

[SkidRow82]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 9:46am

Maybe, because a traditional pro-shot of this exact production already exists with the London cast, they wanted a way to differentiate this version. So, they opted for a more "this is a real film" approach…

[MichelleCraig]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 1:45pm

Maybe the overture and curtain calls could be included in a physical release; DVD and Blu-ray. It would be a very easy thing to do…if they were shot initially.

Give us the option to watch it both ways on disc. Again, it would be so easy to do.

[Jumpin_J]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 2:30pm

Sammy232 said: "TotallyEffed said: "ColdClimateDude said: "I'm not sure if Krystal Joy Brown's performance landed better in the theater”



It did not."

I actually thought it was even worse than live. Maybe it was all the closeups?

"

That's one of the critiques from the NY Times review.

 

[GirlFromOz68]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 5:23pm

Zeppie2022 said: ""Also why was the curtain call not included. Pissed me off."

It seemed to me the choice was made to make it a movie and not a filmed stage show. You rarely heard audience reaction and there was no Act 1/Act 2 in the movie."

it was a very deliberate choice.  Maria Friedman talked about this in a YT interview i watched earlier this week.  She said something to the effect of she didn't want people to feel like they were missing out by not being in the theatre.

[Zeppie2022]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 7:39pm

"it was a very deliberate choice.  Maria Friedman talked about this in a YT interview i watched earlier this week.  She said something to the effect of she didn't want people to feel like they were missing out by not being in the theatre."

OK, thanks for the information. 

[TheOtherOne2]

Posted: 12/5/25 at 11:39pm

The Times review mentions the core trio tearing through "Bobby and Jackie and Jack."  The core trio is Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez, isn't it?  Mendez is not a part of this number, though.  Katie Clarke, playing Beth, is.  

This just seems an odd way to describe this number.

[NOWaWarning]

Posted: 12/6/25 at 10:41am

I saw this last night with some friends. I’ve never seen a full production of this show, though I was very familiar with the plot, score, and history of it. I think the piece definitely has some baked-in flaws and it ranks in the lower half of Sondheim’s shows for me. However I thought it was very well done and the cast, especially Groff, were excellent. I wish we’d gotten at least a few more wide shots. There were times when the insistence on close-ups really did a disservice to the staging (or I imagine, at least). 

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/6/25 at 5:26pm

My take on the Merrily “film” (I’m genuinely happy that my grumpy sounding negative comments seem to be in the minority here)

I was glad to see it, and surprised to see the theatre was sold out (and with a lot of young people--yes I've reached the age, I guess, where I notice all the "young people.")
I... wasn't sold on the filming. I know Friedman wanted to make the work more like a film and less like a record of a stage production, but I think in the end we kinda got something that was neither of those things. When James Lapine decided to film Passion, he wanted to make it more film like and so also emphasized close ups, but he also recorded it without an audience and had special cast rehearsals on how to modulate their performances for the camera. With Merrily this was still put together from several nights of filmed theatrical versions, and we could hear the audience--so when we got close ups (and boy did we get close ups) they were of performances that were meant to "play" to the back row of the theatre. Some of it did work for her vision (including emphasizing it as Frank's story,) but...
We *know* it's a filmed performance, so I wish there was more of a sense of where people are on stage in relation to each other, etc. And the extreme close ups did show how committed to the performance the cast was--the blond chorus member who keeps on doing coke with Frank in the opening party was also constantly grinding his jaw, which, as a friend pointed out, is a realistic detail lol

I admit, it reminded me too of some quibbles I have about this production and have had since the London filmed version ten years back. And no, it's not just about all of the changes for the revised version which, as anyone who knows me knows, I don't think improve on the 1981 book 😉 One random one, is I still don't quite get why the Blob party is SOO stylized in a beatnick/early 60s way, when the 1970s That Frank party isn't to the same extreme, since Sondheim and Furth said they should parallel each other. But that just seems to be an issue only i have. (And I won't get started about the fact that I still don't "get" the set and it still all looks like a room on a yacht or old cruise ship to me (why are there plants above the windows?) But, unlike nearly every other Sondheim show, I don't think I've ever heard of a major Merrily with a set design that was liked.

Calum Marsh in his overall positive NYT review said it best:
"But as a film director, Friedman adds little and, occasionally, inadvertently subtracts: This “Merrily” is too reliant on close-ups and frenetic cutting, which simply distract from the moving, beating heart of this wonderful play. [. . .] Merrily We Roll Along” is an OK movie of a good production of a great musical: on balance, another worthy addition to the Stephen Sondheim canon, which can always stand to be expanded."
Now before everyone jumps on me, I'm so glad we have this, I'm so glad I got to see it on the big screen surrounded by people who loved it, and I know I'll return to it! And I am so glad to see these lead performances.

(Oh but WHY cut the overture by more than half? 😛 )

(And of course, we do have the pro shot of the London version already which gives some sense of the overall staging. When I saw that in theatres there was only one other couple in the audience. Nice to see how different that was this time)

Maria Friedman just did an interview on it for What’s On Stage podcast. I admit I’m amazed at all the work involved—completely recolouring and filtering shots due to the stage lights not filming well, adding light to eyes that otherwise would look like black coals, filming reaction shots… interestingly she saws she avoided wide shuts because feet on stage would pull the viewer out and remind them this is a stage production which she didn’t want. But doesn’t the (muted somewhat) audience and set do that already?

 

 

[sppunk]

Posted: 12/6/25 at 6:23pm

Caught it to today and echo comments about the camera work being a bit to jarring. It got less jumpy after intermission but I wish they had used longer cuts and a bit wider of a lens.

I saw Merrily twice live and (not shockingly) missed Lindsey both times. Her Mary is more vulnerable and damaged that how Jamila played it, but I think I enjoyed the latter in the opening party scene a bit more.  
 

All that said, this is a marvelous filming and I’m so happy to have gotten to see it. 

[TweetyPie2]

Posted: 12/6/25 at 7:11pm

I saw it today. The theater was packed, but the auditorium was one of the smaller ones in the multiplex. Bad decision on their part—they could have sold more tickets. Not crazy about this as a filmed production. I don’t think it worked. I was bored, which I wasn’t when I saw it in NYC. I could imagine the people walking out in 1980. And I got really sick of Gussie.

[Shubert Alley Cat]

Posted: 12/6/25 at 7:46pm

TweetyPie2 said: "I saw it today. The theater was packed, but the auditorium was one of the smaller ones in the multiplex. Bad decision on their part—they could have sold more tickets. Not crazy about this as a filmed production. I don’t think it worked. I was bored, which I wasn’t when I saw it in NYC. I could imagine the people walking out in 1980. And I got really sick of Gussie."

I freaking loved it at the Hudson even though I missed Lindsey both times.  Jesus I was over Gussie in the film, and I must also say that here I grew tired of many of the repeated motifs in the music especially all of the merrily transitions!  And I don’t know why but the dude in the ensemble who played Beth’s father was so goddamn annoying (he is Willie Conklin in Ragtime now).  

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/6/25 at 8:14pm

Shubert Alley Cat said: "TI don’t know why but the dude in the ensemble who played Beth’s father was so goddamn annoying (he is Willie Conklin in Ragtime now)."

He's the guy who really camps it up in the party scenes, right?  (It's funny, because maybe that was a Maria Friedman decision--I would have to go back to check, but I swear in the proshot of the original 2013 London production, there's a larger guy who does the same in those numbers...)

 

[schubox]

Posted: 12/6/25 at 11:01pm

Echoing what a lot of others have said. The camera work was very jarring at first. About half way in I had decided I hated it and was pretty annoyed. Saw this twice at the Hudson and adored it, and didn’t really feel like this captured what I saw. But it grew on me as it went and I settled into the style. Whoever said it wasn’t a capture of the production but its own kind of movie was spot on. It was somewhere between a pro shot of a musical and a movie. I did appreciate the closeups that allowed me to see the depth in the performances. A lot more nuance than can always be picked up from a theater. But I just wish they’d pulled back more. I missed the staging and seeing everyone together 

[Zeppie2022]

Posted: 12/7/25 at 8:56am

Yes, I wished they had filmed it a bit differently as I believe I mentioned in other posts. That being said, making this show available to millions of people no matter how it was filmed is a very good thing. The average tourist in the Midwest who can't make it to NYC to see Broadway shows like the BWW veterans on this board are not going to be very picky about camera angles and other things mentioned. They will get to see a good show with outstanding cast and that is the most important thing.

[cmorrow]

Posted: 12/7/25 at 10:04am

For those who can visit the TOFT screening room at the Performing Arts Library, I can report that the library’s archival video was recorded with several cameras. It was taped on March 29, 2024. There are wide, medium, and (fairly) close shots of the performers, and no jumpy camera work. The curtain call is included. And after the curtain call, Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groffe, and Lindsay Mendez conduct an auction for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. That lasts for about eight minutes, and is included in its entirety.

[SteveSanders]

Posted: 12/7/25 at 10:13am

The average tourist in the Midwest likely sees enough movies that they can recognize the cinematic flaws of this one even as they still appreciate the stage production's magic that remain intact.

[RUkiddingme]

Posted: 12/7/25 at 10:51am

Did Lindsey miss any performances this weekend?

[schubox]

Posted: 12/7/25 at 11:53am

SteveSanders said: "The average tourist in the Midwest likely sees enough movies that they can recognize the cinematic flaws of this one even as they still appreciate the stage production's magic that remain intact."

Yeah I'm from Kansas City. We got cars and everything here.