The holiday season is always a perfect time for movie musicals, but as it turns out Wicked: For Good is not the only one Broadway lovers will have this season. Director Maria Friedman‘s exquisite film of the hit Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim‘s Merrily We Roll Along is rolling along into more than 1,000 theaters his weekend and that is very good news for those who missed its run at the Hudson Theatre in New York or just couldn’t afford those pricey tickets.
This motion picture version is the same show, and was in fact shot over three nights in the same theatre with the same cast, orchestrations, sets, and in fact everything but the audience which is never seen (if they were even there) and only heard subtly in the background laughing or applauding. Usually in directly filmed stage productions the audience figures more heavily, but Friedman’s approach here is far more cinematic than just getting a filmed record of a theatrical performance. What she achieves with her cast is an intimacy I have never experienced in any of the productions of this legendary musical I have seen over the years, and indeed it is that intimate nature of Merrily We Roll Along that makes this a perfect candidate for this kind of presentation.
This revival won four Tony Awards including for musical revival and for two of its stars: Jonathan Groff took lead actor in a musical and Daniel Radcliffe featured actor in a musical. The third cog in this wheel, Lindsay Mendez, was nominated as featured actress. Here they re-create performances that were clearly as fresh and illuminating at the end of the play’s run (when this was filmed) as they were when it first played London pre-Broadway.
When I say this show is “legendary,” there is no question it is. This was the rare total flop for Sondheim and book writer George Furth when it opened in 1981, lasting only 16 performances. This was rather shocking for creatives who had experienced such wild success just a decade earlier with a similarly sophisticated contemporary musical, Company, not to mention countless other Sondheim smashes. Maybe this was just too sophisticated, or maybe the show’s main conceit of starting at the end and going all the way backward over the course of 20 years in the relationship of its three main characters was just too much for audiences to get. Refined over the past four decades since its notorious miss on the Great White Way, Sondheim — posthumously — got the last laugh. Merrily We Roll Along became a certified hit, and now this filmed record shows you why.
Based on a rather obscure 1934 Kaufman and Hart play (Sondheim loves musical adaptations from unexpected sources), it starts in 1978 in the lavish Bel Air home of uber successful musical songwriter Franklin Shepard (Groff), who has clearly let that success go to his head as he hosts a shallow Hollywood party attended by Mary Flynn (Mendez) but it doesn’t go well — at least as far as she is concerned. All we know at this point is that he is kind of an asshole and she, secretly in love with him for years, is reeling from the decaying of their so-called friendship.
The timeline then goes backwards from there and we are introduced to Shepard’s songwriting partner Charley Krings (Radcliffe) in a harrowing scene and biting musical number that essentially ends forever not just their partnership but also friendship. As the years continue to drift backwards and this forever friendship is shown in various stages, we also meet Franklin’s wife Beth (Katie Rose Clarke) and his young son , his second wife actress Gussie Carnegie (Krystal Joy Brown) and producer Joe Josephson (Reg Rogers), all weaving in and out of his life until the story rewinds all the way back to 1957 and the moment these “old friends” first got together. If this were a traditional linear storyline we would see idealism and dreams turn to initial struggles and early success to personal fulfillment and marriage and parenthood to the crumbling of those dreams and the price of fame and the human toll. But in this show it is all completely reversed, and with the years clearly stated it all works.
Friedman inherently seems to know this kind of tightknit story needs to be played in closeup, the emotions all unmistakably displayed on the character’s faces. It may be fine to sit in the theatre balcony and watch it all unfold, but this director understands the difference between how we consume theatre and how we consume movies, and cinematographer Sam Levy’s multiple cameras catch all the hope, hate, and heartbreak so vividly expressed by these exceptional actors. For a viewer this is better than front row, better than house seats, because we are on stage with them. Even if you have seen this show as many times as I have, you have never seen it like this. Incidentally filmmaker Richard Linklater is currently in production with his own unique film version of Merrily We Roll Along being shot in real time over the course of 20 years with stars Paul Mescal, Beanie Feldstein, and Ben Platt appropriately aging right up to the beginning of the story. Get ready to see it sometime in the 2040’s. Until then this one is your ticket.
As for the music, this score remains one of Sondheim’s best, from the bouyant title song and “Old Friends” to the triumphant “Our Time” to the poignant “Not A Day Goes By” to “Good Thing Going” and many more, and they are all exceptionally sung and performed by a cast that could not be better.
Sony Pictures Classics is wisely treating this like a movie, not a filmed stage show, and with this marvelously entertaining and perceptive version they do indeed have a ‘good thing going’.
Producers are Sonia Friedman, David Babani, Patrick Catullo, F.Richard Pappas,
Jon Kamen, Dave Sirulnick
Title: Merrily We Roll Along
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Release date: December 5, 2025
Director: Maria Friedman
Cast: Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, Lindsay Mendez, Krystal Joy Brown, Reg Rogers, Katie Rose Clarke
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 2 hr 25 min
