Merrily We Roll Along

Lonny Price’s Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened is one of my favorite documentaries. If you’re a Sondheim fanatic, you will recognize the title of the documentary as a play on one of the songs in the legendary Sondheim flop Merrily We Roll Along (book by George Furth, produced by Hal Prince). Price himself played one of the leads in the show. The film is a riveting and inspirational documentary about the original production and cast of the Broadway musical.

Merrily We Roll Along portrays the corruptions of success. The documentary depicts how the cast members turned the crushing failure of their dreams into successful lives. If the documentary doesn’t exactly invert the theme of the musical, it offers an ironic twist on it.

After watching the documentary I started listening to the original cast album — recorded the morning after the show closed. In its wit and beauty, I think the score is up there with Frank Loesser’s for Guys and Dolls. By contrast with Guys and Dolls, however, the book is thin and the gist of the musical is disillusionment.

I had no expectation that I would ever get a chance to see the musical itself, but it is now playing at Minneapolis’s Theater Latté Da at the Ritz Theater in northeast Minneapolis. I have seen it over each of the past two weekends. I can’t compare it to any other production. I can only say I think this one is is outstanding. The cast is excellent. The singing is beautiful. The orchestra is terrific. Not surprisingly, the show’s current run has been extended to November 6.

This is Minneapolis. Theater Latté Da is an echt woke institution. If you avoid the theater’s site and the show’s program, however, you can ignore the wokery almost entirely. This is a professional production. I was grateful for the opportunity to see it (twice).

Following the Kaufman and Hart play on which it is loosely based, the musical tells the story backwards in time. It begins in 1977, when the protagonists are jaded successes, and runs back to 1957, when their careers are little more than glints in their dreamy eyes. Two of the three lead characters ultimately go on to collaborate writing songs for Broadway shows. They dream of writing a show that will change the world. It takes the title Take a Left, but it is not to be.

Given the two songwriters at the heart of the musical, Sondheim must have injected elements of his own career into the mix. At least it’s not unreasonable to think so. The song “Opening Doors” comes toward the end of the show, when the three lead characters are starting out. For the version of the song that appeared in HBO’s Six By Sondheim, Sondheim himself took the role of the producer (played by a young Jason Alexander in the original production). He coaches the songwriters to get commercial: “I’ll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit.”