Review Roundup: Encores! MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

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.

Roma Torre, NY1: Sondheim's wonderful score movingly captures his characters' complexities from middle-aged bitterness to youthful innocence. And he gets a loving assist from orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and music director Rob Berman.

Howard Kissel, Huffington Post: Lin-Manuel Miranda (the composer of "In the Heights") is sensational as his constantly disappointed friend Charlie. He sings the caustic "Franklin Shepard, Inc." with an infectious enthusiasm that moderates its anger. His touching duet, "Good Thing Going," with Donnell, has heartbreaking poignance.

Joe Dzieminaowicz, NY Daily News: Because the book is thin, the songs and principals must work overtime to put flesh on the skeletal story. Donnell (Billy Crocker in “Anything Goes”) has a nice voice but comes off bland. Miranda (writer and star of “In the Heights’) isn’t a strong singer but adds scruffy charm as a needy nebbish. Keenan-Bolger (a Tony nominee for “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”) lands her barbed zingers but her singing is strained. The production makes smart use of stills and clips that Forrest Gump characters into era-defining scenes on an LED billboard. Musicians sit above the giant screen.

Linda Winer, Newsday: But the main casting, an exciting prospect on paper, lacks the chemistry to spark George Furth's awkward cautionary tale about the devolution of three talented kids -- told backward from Bel Air swank in 1980 to a dreamy-scruffy Manhattan rooftop in 1955. Lapine's direction is surprisingly sluggish. The useful and good-looking visuals belabor the familiar cultural timeline. Buoying things up, as always, are Sondheim's excruciatingly beautiful songs about hopeful, smart young people who dare to sing about the joys of "Opening Doors" and swearing, "We are the movers/we are the shakers/we are the names in tomorrow's papers."

Melissa Rose Bernardo, Entertaiment Weekly: New York City hasn't seen Merrily since 1994, and for musical-theater (and Sondheim) aficionados, this is a don't-miss: Who knows when you'll have another chance to hear this score, with Jonathan Tunick's beautifully brassy orchestrations, played by 23 musicians? Seriously: 23 musicians! Gods of the theater, smile on us and bless us with a cast recording. And, perhaps, another Lapine production: As he says in his bio, 'Yesterday is apparently not done.' 

Matt Windman, amNY: O'Donnell, who recently starred as Billy in "Anything Goes," makes a credible transition from hollow Hollywood hack to starry-eyed dreamer. Miranda, best known as the creator of the musical "In the Heights," is still adjusting to the difficult score, but manages to pull through.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

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