"The Best Worst Thing In the World"

[+ beethoven]

This documentary, now playing in a few movie theaters in NYC, is just wonderful! It's about the making of "Merrily We Roll Along," a Sondheim "flop" in 1981, which has been revived again and again all over the world.

There are scenes from the rehearsals in 1981, and interviews with members of the cast in 2015.

 

Anyone remotely interested in the American musical theater should see this movie. There are some fabulous Sondheim songs in the show. I never saw the original musical, or a revival, but now I'd like to. The original ran about 20 performances, and was the last time Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince worked together. This movie was made by Lonnie Price, who has directed many plays and musicals, and who was in the original in 1981.

[+ WilliamM]

This documentary, now playing in a few movie theaters in NYC, is just wonderful! It's about the making of "Merrily We Roll Along," a Sondheim "flop" in 1981, which has been revived again and again all over the world.

There are scenes from the rehearsals in 1981, and interviews with members of the cast in 2015.

 

Anyone remotely interested in the American musical theater should see this movie. There are some fabulous Sondheim songs in the show. I never saw the original musical, or a revival, but now I'd like to. The original ran about 20 performances, and was the last time Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince worked together. This movie was made by Lonnie Price, who has directed many plays and musicals, and who was in the original in 1981.

 

I saw the original on Broadway, so will skip the documentary. Yes, the songs are fabulous.. But, the story told in the musical was and is confusing.. This is the one Sondheim musical that deserved to fail.

[body2body]

I saw a revival of Merrily We Roll Along at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1985. It was directed by James Lapine, and Sondheim massaged the score for the production. It was wonderful. The leads were John Rubinstein, Chip Zien, Marin Mazzie, and Heather MacRae. The friend I went with had seen the disaster that had been the original production, and he felt that if the La Jolla production and cast had premiered the show on Broadway it would have been one of Sondheim's biggest hits. I'll look for this documentary, it sounds fascinating.

[+ WilliamM]

@body2body , I usually agree with you. My biggest problem was not the cast or the the songs, but the "book." I had to constantly remember that the story was being told backwards.

 

I saw the musical in previews on Broadway.

[+ beethoven]

The documentary made clear that the book was the problem, as all of you said here. I hadn't known that "Merrily" has been revived again and again -- as in La Jolla -- and that it has met with great success.

[bostonman]

This documentary, now playing in a few movie theaters in NYC, is just wonderful! It's about the making of "Merrily We Roll Along," a Sondheim "flop" in 1981, which has been revived again and again all over the world.

There are scenes from the rehearsals in 1981, and interviews with members of the cast in 2015.

 

Anyone remotely interested in the American musical theater should see this movie. There are some fabulous Sondheim songs in the show. I never saw the original musical, or a revival, but now I'd like to. The original ran about 20 performances, and was the last time Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince worked together. This movie was made by Lonnie Price, who has directed many plays and musicals, and who was in the original in 1981.

 

The correct title for Lonny Price's documentary is The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened - which is a takeoff on a title of a song from the much more recent Sondheim show Bounce (or Road Show, as it was later retitled). And though Prince and Sondheim did break off their partnership after Merrily, they did reunite to work on Bounce - so it can't really said to be true that Merrily was the last time they worked together.

 

Merrily was heavily revised (mostly book, but some lyric/music revisions, including a few new songs) in 1994, and this is the version that gets licensed and performed nowadays. It still goes backwards, but the plot has been streamlined and is, IMO, a bit easier and clearer to follow. Not that the show isn't still without its problems (and Sondheim's score and lyrics are still by far the strongest element of the show), but I do think there's a lot of merit in there.

[+ beethoven]

Thank you, Bostonian. For me, the best thing about the new documentary is that we see the original cast in 1981, when they ranged from 16 to 25 years old, and then they are interviewed today. Perhaps the best known is Jason Alexander, who's on camera quite a bit, and is most interesting in his views on theater and on life.