Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along, the first New York City Center Encores! production of the season, opens tonight, February 8 at New York City Center, and features Colin Donnell, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Elizabeth Stanley, Betsy Wolfe and Adam Grupper. Merrily We Roll Along, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by George Furth, is directed by James Lapine with music direction by Rob Berman and musical staging by Dan Knechtges. Merrily just opened, and will play a two-week run through February 19, 2012.
Tthe cast additionally includes Zachary Unger, with Whit Baldwin, Rachel Coloff, Ben Crawford, Joshua Dela Cruz, Bernard Dotson, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Marja Harmon, Leah Horowitz, Mylinda Hull, Michael X. Martin, Sean McKnight, Kenita R. Miller, Patricia Noonan, Andrew Samonsky, Pearl Sun, Charlie Sutton, Jessica Vosk, Karl Warden and Michael Winther.
Tickets start at $25 and are available at the New York City Center Box Office (West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues), through CityTix® at 212-581-1212 , or online at www.NYCityCenter.org.
Ben Brantley, NY Times: When theater fanatics sit down to dissect the problems of “Merrily,” it’s usually its structure that is blamed first. Based on George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s 1934 play about lost illusions, this musical held onto the central stunt of tracing its characters’ fortunes from their jaded present to their idealistic past. It begins with a view of a 40-ish composer at the summit of his success (in 1976), then follows him and his two closest friends back to their first meeting, two decades earlier, when the world seemed new and unsullied.
Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg: Most Broadway failures limp offstage, never to be seen again except as posters on the Wall of Flops at Joe Allen’s Theater District canteen. Not “Merrily We Roll Along.” Ever since it closed after 16 performances in 1981, this Stephen Sondheim musical has been revived, revised, rearranged and reconsidered by some of the best talents in the business. The latest attempt to make an honest show of it is the concert version opening the season at New York City Center’s invaluable “Encores!” series of semi-staged concerts.
