Reviews 2002
Reviews 2002
✭✭✭✩✩
music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by George Furth, directed by Jackie Maxwell
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 24-October 27, 2002
"A Backwards Musical"
In its initial Broadway run in 1981 "Merrily We Roll Along" closed after only 16 performances becoming the worst flop ever for Stephen Sondheim. A major contributor to its failure was director Hal Prince's bizarre concept requiring an all-teenaged cast. Since that debacle the show has been successfully revived with changes from Sondheim and the writer of the book, George Furth. The current Shaw Festival production shows the work in the best possible light. It's well sung, well directed, well designed. But for all the expertise put into it, the show still comes off as irremediably flawed.
That "Merrily" is being done at all is due to the opening of the Shaw's mandate two years ago to allow works not just written in the period of Shaw's lifetime (1856-1950) but also about that period. In this case Furth adapted the book for "Merrily We Roll Along" from a 1934 play of the same title by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. As in the play Furth's book follows the life of the central character and his two best friends from the moment of his greatest public success and private failure backwards through time to the point when the three came to know each other. Furth has updated the period from 1934-1916 to 1976-1957.
I don't know the original play, but this device, at least as handled by Furth, is the main source of the work's failure. In Furth's hands the action lurches backwards from one overwrought, soap-operatic scene to the next for the entire first act. Former composer now film producer Franklin Shepard has a major hit with his later movie, but at the same time his drunken former best friend Mary disrupts the celebratory party by denouncing Frank, and Frank's wife, angered by his attraction to a new starlet blinds her with iodine. Frank and his other best friend and lyricist Charley both appear on a television talk show, but Charley, angered by Frank's selling out, denounces him on air. Frank comes back from a round-the-world cruise to cool off from his divorce but instead of celebrating with Mary and Charley he takes up again with the Broadway star Gussie who broke up his marriage. And so on.
By showing the characters constantly in extremis (and in reverse time), it's nearly impossible to get any idea of what they are really like. The premise assumes that we want to find out how things came to such a bad pass in the first scene. But since everything in the Act 1 is so melodramatic what we learn has to do more with bad clichés than real characters. As a result we care little about either characters or plot. There is not much motivation to return after intermission except that, as it turns out, the second act, showing the characters in more normal interactions, is much more involving though by then it's too late.
The cast for the most part is excellent. The main problem is with the central character Frank. All we learn from Frank in Act 1 us that his various mistakes come from not being able to say no. But why that should be we never know. Tyley Ross sings well but his generic acting doesn't make this already-uninteresting character anything but bland. Jay Turvey fares better as Charley, expertly delivering the complex number "Franklin Shepard, Inc." But of the three "Old Friends" the one who holds our attention most is Jenny L. Wright as Mary. Mary is the only character Furth has given any depth and Wright makes that subtext, a frustrated desire for Frank, our means of connecting with her character throughout. Mary also traverses the widest emotional arc. Wright is fully equal to the challenge, making the reprise of "Not a Day Goes By" the emotional highlight of the show.
The second Mrs. Shepard (whom we of course meet first) is Gussie Carnegie, the Broadway star who has clawed her way to the top. Though the character is a stereotype, husky-voiced Charlotte Moore invests her with such venomous vitality you can enjoy her for the sheer camp of it. The delightful Glynis Ranney as Beth, the first Mrs. Shepard, brings the level of acting to a more realistic level throughout Act 2.
The smaller roles are all well taken. Peter Millard and Jane Johanson (subbing for Nora McLellan) make a memorable appearance as Beth's primly conservative parents. Gary Krawford has enough technique to make the wise-cracking Jewish producer Joe Josephson, Gussie's first husband, seem less of a stereotype. Patti Jamieson and Jeff Lillico are excellent as two news anchors whose careers we also follow backwards, as is Jeff Madden as Tyler, the man who supposedly invents the answering machine.
As might be expected Sondheim's music is far more complex and his lyrics far more intricate than is the norm in a Broadway musical, but they are inextricably wedded to the book. Perhaps it's because the characters are either blanks or clichés that ensemble numbers like the "The Blob", "Our Time" and the title song come off so much better than the individual numbers. Musical director Paul Sportelli has done a fine job of adapting the score to a 10-piece band, though he ought to have transposed "Not a Day Goes by" up into Glynis Ranney's range. As always at the Royal George it is a great pleasure to hear musicals performed without amplification.
Director Jackie Maxwell maintains focus throughout the complex action on stage, but there is there is only so much she can do to tone down the melodrama. Judith Bowden's Art Deco apartment for Frank is probably a reference to the source play, but it starts off the show on a confusing note. Nevertheless, the numerous costumes she has created are, beside a pixelboard readout above our chief means of clueing in to each time period. Robert Thompson uses a wide range of lighting effects to give a different mood to each scene. And Valerie Moore's intricate choreography is a pleasure throughout.
Sondheim fans will need no encouragement to see a production as solid as this of such a rarity and unmiked to boot. Non-Sondheim fans will leave with their bias intact. Those indifferent, despite the talent and energy on display, will leave indifferent wondering why the Shaw has chosen this work instead of one of one of the other better Sondheim shows that also fall within the Shaw's new mandate.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Jenny L. Wright and Tyley Ross. ©2002 Shaw Festival.
2002-09-05
Merrily We Roll Along