MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG - FESTIVAL PLAYERS
Sondheim is almost 90 and undeniably the world’s greatest living writer of musicals. But is he always great? Set against his most brilliant shows: ‘A Little Night Music’, ‘Into the Woods’ and ‘Sweeny Todd’, this 1981 musical is among his least successful. Hats off then to Festival Players for reviving ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ which had very poor reviews when it first came out and has struggled to find a place in the Sondheimian canon. The reasons for the general lack of plaudits for the show are essentially structural and frankly it would take a Danny Boyle to turn it into a smash hit. That said, the Festival Players totally lived up to their reputation for incredibly fine and powerful singing, convincing acting and great support from a note-perfect band (led by Ana Sanderson).
The Players really do blur the lines between professional and amateur drama especially in their choice of leading actors. These included Emma Vieceli as the bitchy New York star Gussie Carnegie. She delivered her rapid-fire lines with acerbic acuity and sang her tricky songs with power and precision. Andrew Ruddick looked and sounded spot on in the part of Franklin Shepard, the writer of Broadway musicals who through time has been corrupted by wealth, fame and a total inability to remain faithful to the women in his gilded life. There was fine support too from Matthew Brown as Charley, a clever lyricist who unlike his working partner Franklin, has never lost the youthful dream of being a great songwriter. I also enjoyed a very strong performance by Samantha Billing as Mary, an increasingly embittered former girlfriend of the louche musician. Very good too was Catriona Clark as the kind-hearted Beth, the mother of the musician’s child.
The show had strength in depth with a large chorus which when called for sang with huge gusto or tender reflection. Every actor was well on top of Sondheim’s perilously difficult cross-rhythms and quick-fire mood changes; almost filmic in conception.
Though the set was disappointingly bland and the marshalling of bodies sometimes a little mechanical, the show moved apace especially in the shorter, punchier second half. That said, the whole show, as written, is easily 15 minutes too long and would benefit from a light trim.
For the audience, the show, though 40 years old, still seems to be a refreshing challenge. The story of Franklin’s unlovely rise is told backwards – from 1976 to the dawn of the space age in 1957. A clever use of back projection clearly marked the anti-clockwise progression of the plot showing us, as one of the songs keeps repeating, ‘how we got here’. The pace was fast and very Noo York, so it was sometimes tricky to know who was whom and where we were. There were though many outstanding moments to savour - a brilliant patter song by the angry and frustrated lyricist (wonderfully executed) and an intensely clever riff on the Kennedy dynasty in a song called ‘Bobby and Jackie and Jack’. Was Sondheim referring to himself in a song very well performed by Warren Clark as a big shot producer who demands that the songwriting pair give him something with a good toon! Sonheim must have had that reaction all his working life (yes he provided a good tune to accompany that lyric).
So – well done the excellent Festival Players for bringing us this (it has to be said) lesser Sondheim. Is he always great? No, but even when he’s not – he’s still the best.
