Someone give Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince a ring and tell them that the black sheep of their legendary collaborations may have finally found a place that it could work: The Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts.
I say could because unfortunately, the Beverly Hills venue doesn't entirely compensate for the quality of the work itself. When Prince's production of "Merrily We Roll Along" premiered on Broadway in 1981, it ran for an abject 52 previews and 16 performances, causing a rift between the director and Sondheim that ended their working relationship for over twenty years. Perhaps the criticism was aimed mostly towards George Furth's book, which sacrifices plot and character nuance for the breakneck speed that its title suggests. Perhaps the overtly negative portraiture of New York was a bit too standoffish for the Broadway audience. Or perhaps it was just the one preordained failure for the Zeus of musical theatre! Whatever the case, this new Los Angeles production, helmed with admirably tempered pizzazz by artist-in-residence Michael Arden (whose production of Deaf West's "Spring Awakening" transferred to Broadway from the Wallis in 2015), admittedly doesn't hit all the wrong notes that its 1981 premiere suggested. Fortunately, it gives enough glitz and glam and sentimental fodder to woo over us Angelenos with dreams as monumental as those of the characters. But at what cost?
Starting in 1976 and going back in time to 1957 (a device well-used, for Sondheim is the universally acknowledged king of the concept musical), the story examines the roots of three friends grounded in show business — composer Franklin Shepard (Aaron Lazar), lyricist Charley Kringas (Wayne Brady), and journalist/theatre critic Mary Flynn (Donna Vivino). We begin with Frank's fortuitous yet vapid success as a famed film producer who has just adapted one of his musicals into a major Hollywood motion picture, having excommunicated Charley and destroyed Mary along the way; we end with the trio's first tryst atop a Manhattan apartment building in college, all afraid of the opportunity ahead of them yet wide-eyed and eager to make the most of it together. Along the way, we see how Frank's two wives — first vanilla Southern belle Beth (Whitney Bashor) and then manipulative stage diva Gussie Carnegie (Saycon Sengbloh) — have respectively grounded and warped his perspective of his passion, and how his friends are powerless to stop his ultimate sell-out.
Aside from the reverse chronological structure, the story is remarkably conventional. Unfortunately, the same goes for the performances here. Every actor seems to harp on the drama of the situation over and over again to the point where the alliances are blurred, the love is lost, and — most importantly for a story like this — the formidable passion is unclear. Lazar's Franklin is as superficially charming as they get, nowhere near complex and human enough for us to feel heartbroken when discovering his humble roots. Vivino's Mary is mousy enough, but she misses a golden comedic opportunity to punctuate the artificiality with her character's endearingly awkward yet genuine attraction to Franklin. And Sengbloh, disappointingly, might be the most underused; a Tony nominee for last season's Eclipsed, she presents us with an overly brassy Gussie, a woman of a confusing moral compass that drastically shortcuts our empathy for her, even when we see her as the meek secretary to her eventual first husband, producer Joe Josephson (an adequately smarmy Amir Talai). Whether this was Arden's direction or not, Sengbloh's indubitable skills don't get the chance to shine.
Brady and Bashor seem, for the most part, refreshingly in their element as Charley and Beth. Brady's Act I performance of "Franklin Shepard, Inc.," in which his Emmy-winning comedic timing is put to masterful use as his character suffers a breakdown on live TV, is a highlight — as is Bashor's gorgeous rendition of the signature tune "Not A Day Goes By," the penultimate number of the first act. Her performance succeeds in its powerful brevity enough to make us wonder who this strong yet vulnerable woman is going to turn out to be in Act II, and when she does get there, she's tender and light, but with strong roots in her personal and romantic desires. When she defies her stuffy conservative parents and marries the composer that swept her off her feet, we don't see a stubborn brat — we see a lovestruck, fearless artist.
Arden, meanwhile, doesn't prove quite as fearless as he has been in the past. The crystal clarity of the movement and stage pictures that made his "Spring Awakening" such a treat for the senses is nearly gone in "Merrily." The scenes between songs are generic and unrefined, with the opening party scene being almost scarily messy for the opening scene of a musical. His conceit, however, is that he knows his LA audience, and he manages to retain his formidable cleverness by providing us with a nice bait-and-switch for the finale.
Before the closing number, the now nineteen-year-old characters are talking about their futures on that starlit Manhattan rooftop. One by one, three teenage ensemble members who have been subtly shadowing the lead actors for the whole show take their places in the same outfits to finish the scene. For the first time, we see what the characters look like when they truly begin the story that we've already seen, before they embark on the journey we've just experienced with them. In that moment, as we sit between the ornate LED-emblazoned walls of the Wallis, we are made aware of the city of dreams that we are fortunate enough to inhabit ourselves. Whether young or old, it's a moment of universality and reflection on the beautiful uncertainty of our lives, and Arden capitalizes on the comforting nature of this moment. For all the story's flaws, this moment is redeeming and almost makes the whole thing forgivable.
I say "almost" because for as poignant as that moment is, it's fundamentally still a sentiment. A trope. A clever trope, but a trope nonetheless. And no matter how beautiful Sondheim's score may be, no matter how much Arden may be a visual auteur who has proven he can elicit magic out of the ordinary, you can't authentically provide a solution to overwhelming convention with more convention. I was moved in the moment, but I felt tricked and cheated afterwards. Where was that amount of truth anywhere in the preceding two and a half hours? Why did I have to wait this long? What could have been done differently?
I will say that Arden's production did have undoubted potential. The fault is still fundamentally in the writing. I blame George Furth above all else. But as I walked out of the theatre, I did not feel as if I had just merrily rolled along through a lifetime of creativity and sacrifice — and I'm not sure if the company did either.
"Merrily We Roll Along" runs through Sunday, December 18, in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts (9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210). Performances take place Tuesday through Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 2pm and 7pm. Tickets range from $29-$110 and can be purchased at www.thewallis.org, by phone at (310) 746-4000, or at the box office.
Contact Staff Reporter Ryan Brophy at rbrophy@usc.edu.
Annenberg Media