The All-Sondheim Thread — Page 14

Saw Sunday. Posted a review- more of a ramble, really. If you're looking for me, I'll be in heaven, floor seven.

*eyes you*

I'll have to find out about that some time.

Margo and Yoda began to discuss a MERRILY revival a few pages back, before our Doyle SWEENEY discussion, and I thought it may be interesting to bring it back up.

I think a Roundabout engagement makes perfect sense, but if people could get over the "total failure" mindset it has a real chance to thrive. Many of us who are "Xers" and in our late twenties/ early thirties now are just cynical enough to make it a huge hit, if it were presented properly. I am not good with casting though. The "Old Friends" would need to be spectacular.

Here are their comments to limit a need for a search:

Margo:
I think MERRILY might do well in a revival. Certainly better than the 16 performances of the OBC. The book revisions have made the story much clearer and it's one of Sondheim's most mainstream, "tuneful" traditional musical comedy scores. As Prince, Furth, Sondheim etc... now realize having seen so many reworkings of the show over the years, MERRILY works much better cast with real adults rather than kids (kids can't be completely convincing with Furth's ultra cynical, sophisticated dialogue), so imagine the 30-somethings who might be available to play Charlie, Franklin and Mary. Not sure if it can survive going the commercial route or not, so perhaps Roundabout needs to take it on. Could be terrific.

yodamarie78:
After seeing an off off broadway production of Merrily this summer I completely understood why it failed and was sure that a revival would never work. Then I saw NYU's recent production and completely changed my mind. I think that with the right cast and the right director Merrily could do pretty well, not great, but well.

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Seeing a really well done production of MERRILY really moved it up in my estimation. The NYU show was very, very well done.
I think it is show that has major "non-fan" appeal if it were promoted, and cast, properly.

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I saw the production of MERRILY that played at the Kennedy Center Sondheim Festival with Raul Esparza, Michael Hayden, Miriam Shor and Emily Skinner back in 2002 with the final revised version of the book from Furth and I found it to be a very entertaining show. It made me really wonder just how ill-conceived the original production had to be to end up being such a huge flop. I don't know that it'll ever be a big commercial smash, but as one of Sondheim's most accessible shows it certainly should be able to be profitable with the right production.

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The plot/book is really not bad. I don't know how many changes have been made since the original production (I know Furth and Sondheim have done major work.) but in its current state the plot is very enjoyable and well concieved. Although not "typical" fare by any means.

The set, direction, and costumes, as well as the casting of "teenagers" in the original production all look awful in the pictures I have seen. I also think it is more effective not to bookend the show with "high school." It now starts with Franklin alone and ends with college.

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which makes a short term Roundabout run for it smart. Roundabout only goes "wrong" when they try to over-extend their limited runs to make them more "profitable." Witness "Follies" and "Assassins."

Doesn't the new version actually begin with Frank at his piano, drinking, alone? I've seen two productions of the show where that was the case.

If Roundabout revived Merrily, I would go every day. I would sell all my belongings and eat dog food for every meal so I see Merrily for as long as it played. (hyperbole) It is a dream of dreams. *prays*

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penguin- on the rooftop and about to jump??? ugh! i agree with you!

by the way, i believe tomorrow is the anniversary of the closing performance of Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway. *mourns*

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Here's a rave review of the London "Sunday in the Park with George" that Plum saw:

http://www.whatsonstage.com/dl/page.php?page=greenroom&story=E8821133303757

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If it did, I wish that it would come to an intimate Off-Broadway venue rather than a big Broadway house. I think that it and the current Sweeney (which also began in a small venue) would be much more effective in a 300-400 seat house.

Never happen, of course, because of the economics involved, but I wish it would.

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Brantley raves for the London revival of Sunday in the Park With George at the Menier Chocolate Factory:

"LONDON - The instructions boil down to one simple-sounding, endlessly complicated command: Connect. That's what a questing artist exhorts himself to do in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1984 musical "Sunday in the Park With George." And though it is one of those tricky words from a Sondheim show that always mean more than one thing, "connect" takes on even greater resonance when spoken in the stirring revival that has theatergoers lining up to jam into a cramped industrial space just south of London Bridge.

The place is called the Menier Chocolate Factory, a reference to the original use of the 1870 building. The theater, created less than two years ago, seats a not entirely comfortable 200. But this air of enforced intimacy makes you listen to the show as if it were an irresistible storyteller seated next to you at a bar. When George, played by Daniel Evans, tells himself to connect, he might be whispering the same advice in your ear.

What George is saying, it is clear, is not just an artist's mantra; it's an injunction to find the bridge between thought and feeling, between the mind and the heart. The conventional wisdom used to be that this was a bridge too far for Mr. Sondheim, who was perceived by some as having "no life in his art," to borrow a convenient lyric from "Sunday."

But intense, intimate productions like this one - and they have become gratifyingly frequent - are dissolving such objections into mists of tears. Try suggesting to someone that Mr. Sondheim is a cold fish at the end of this revival, staged by Sam Buntrock, and you might well get a punch in the nose. (The critical acclaim for this "Sunday," capped by the Chocolate Factory's recent Evening Standard Award for outstanding newcomer, has led to several extensions, with a transfer to the West End scheduled for spring.)
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"We lose things, and then we choose things," sings George's model and lover, Dot. And through Mr. Evans's and Ms. Casey's ardent and precise commitment to their roles, you are always aware of two people longing, in their different ways, to reach each other. More palpably than ever, George comes across as a prisoner of his talent, and his subliminal awareness of his limitations singes even his artistic triumphs. The celebrated first-act finale - in which Seurat's masterpiece, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" comes to three-dimensional life - is all the more affecting for the implicit emphasis on the ache within the aesthetic order.

Mr. Evans's and Ms. Casey's emotional concentration carries you through the sometimes facile satire of the second act, set in the art world of the 1980's, where another George, an American Conceptual artist, has lost his bearings. Ms. Casey, reincarnated as Dot's now elderly daughter (and the new George's grandmother), Marie, movingly projects the wistfulness of an old woman stretching back to a vibrant, elusive past. "Connect" remains the watchword for her, as it does for George.

Connecting is a delicate business in "Sunday," a process exquisitely embodied in a small, eloquent gesture that occurs with the impact of a cinematic close-up. In the first act, George Seurat slips a stray lock of hair behind Dot's ear. Ms. Casey's expression conveys the hope and hopelessness of Dot's response. Is this the touch of a lover or of a controlling artist?

Actually, it's both. This double-sidedness is thrillingly echoed when the 20th-century George, visited by Dot's ghost, replicates the movement. In that tender, ambivalent moment of physical contact, two people and two generations connect in a fusion of heart and head that mirrors the love affair that has developed between this show and its audience."



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/theater/newsandfeatures/28bran.html

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I never fail to cry at the Finale of Passion. Never. And if I'm really sad, I'll sob for a few minutes after it's over.

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