Review: Merrily We Roll Along by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
If you present a tragedy backwards, does it become a comedy?
That's the gimmick used by Kaufmann and Hart in 1934, updated by George Furth and Stephen Sondheim and turned into a musical in 1981.
Our protagonist Frank Shepard, played with quiet insensitivity and great courtesy by Scott Shipman, appears in the opening scene set in 1976, surrounded by the busy adulation of Hollywood phonies. If you're not expecting the gimmick, you might be confused for the first dozen minutes or so. Frank's party in his Hollywood mansion celebrates the success of his new film (your invitation measuring about 4' x 6' is prominently displayed on the lobby wall of the Mary Moody Northen Theatre).
During the opening numbers done by an enthustic and smartly choreographed young cast, you'll be wondering why Frank is looking so distracted and distressed. You might be puzzled by the drunken comments of that attractive woman clutching the bar as if it were a life raft. Then you'll make the acquaintance of Frank's wife Gussie, who's disgusted with him and the whole crew, especially that adoring starlet who keeps hanging on him.
Aristotle's authoritative view was that a tragic hero had to be a person of consequence and that his inevitable, foreseeable downfall had to result from a fatal flaw in his character. The tragic hero makes choices and pursues his destiny, but his choices, or at least some of them, are the wrong ones.
That fits Frank the talented composer like a tailored suit. We don't know that in advance, however, so Furth and Sondheim feed us a string of precedent scenes, taking Frank and friends gradually back through the years to 1956 when he was just getting out of military service (a contemporary with Elvis, back in the days there were draft boards).
Merrily We Roll Along gives us a platterful of Sondheim songs, some of them vividly memorable and thematic -- Old Friends has long been a favorite of mine, and it's a pleasure now to understand the context and hear it bob up as the leit motif in this tale of the gallant three, Frank, Charlie and Mary, whose old friendship Frank destroys with inattention and selfishness. Not A Day Goes By is another heartfelt lament that's also reprised to great effect.
Ev Lunning, Jr., stages this exploration of memory lane as a cheerful stampede in the crowd scenes, with sly reminders of the 70's and 60's vigorously presented by the dozen-strong ensemble . There are loads of cameos for them along the way, and choreographers Danny Herman and Rocker Verastique keep them busy and supple.
Those clever and colorful costumes by Susan Branch Towne are a kaleidoscope of style and wit, well deserving of theatre award nominations. We quickly learned to anticipate wild style changes as the story worked its way back from the sideburns and wrap-arounds to the Jackie/Chanel lookalikes of the sixties to the scruffy garb of young folks just out of college. Many a theatre company would lust after the budget spent on those threads. The dressers deserve standing applause for getting those cast members changed with so few glitches. Does Hannah Marie Fonder ('14) get to keep that news interviewer's crisp outfit with the flashes of color or the wondrous pink dress from the 1960's with hat piled high with leaves and berries?
Because of the reverse structure we make belated acquaintance with those pushed out of Frank's life. Equity participant Tyler Jones as Charlie the frustrated lyricist is consistently funny and real, providing a foil for our protagonist -- think Martin Freeman to Benedict Cumberbatch. Jones has an innocent twinkle that gets mightily frustrated as Frank is lured away from their collaboration.
The third Equity player, Jarrett Mallon, isn't really invited into the story until well into the second half, for he turns out to have been both the wallet for the boys' first Broadway show and the husband of the aspiring singer who later (that is, in this context, earlier) left him for Frank.
Confused? It's not worth trying to work it out in advance, for you can ride with the performances, music and choreography.
St. Ed's puts some really impressive female talent on display in this piece: Brittany Allyson ('15), the third of the old friends, whose heart Frank has been trampling underfoot all these years without even realizing it; tall and emphatic Anna Vanston ('15) as Frank's second wife, the schemer outschemed; and the appealing Rachel Dunk ('16), recruited back in the early 60's for that awful chirpy Kennedy satire (Bobby and Jackie and Jack), knocked up by Frank and then married, to the stern Texan disapproval of her parents (Kayla Belk, '14, and Ryan Mattingly, '16).
The nine-piece orchestra led by Susan Finnigan is tucked away in the upper reaches of the theatre, where it handles Sondheim's music with aplomb.
Will Sendera, a fourth grader with thespian credits from the Zach Theatre and elsewhere, has some satisfying "aww!" moments while playing the son Frank essentially abandons when leaving Beth and accepting a divorce. Perhaps it's at that point in the reverse development that we see our protagonist's irresponsibility most clearly -- especially in contrast to Beth's dignity.
It's a cautionary tale, perhaps particularly apt for an undergraduate cast of artists with stars in their eyes. The Kaufmann and Hart play was never revived after its financial failure in 1934, but the Sondheim/Furth vehicle from 1981 has stayed alive along the margins, in revivals, in regional stagings and last year in an elaborate staging in London's West End. Sondheim's music is one important factor, of course; and another might the subtle arrogant irony of drawing for us the portrait of a financially successful and emotionally bankrupt composer and inviting us to compare him with Sondheim himself.
Merrily We Roll Along
by Sondheim, Furth, Kaufmann & Hart
Mary Moody Northen Theatre
