Radcliffe, Groff and Mendez soar on Broadway

Like most people do, the three New York friends at the center of the musical “Merrily We Roll Along” get more cynical, jaded, greedy and stubborn with age. Or, as book writer George Furth succinctly put it in the original production, “practical.”

But Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 show, which was a 16-performance flop when it began its life, has, against all odds, only improved as the years have rolled on. It’s better and more youthfully optimistic now than it ever was before. 

Were you to walk in cold to Broadway’s first-ever “Merrily” revival that opens Tuesday night at the Hudson Theatre, you would never know about the gossip-ridden preview period during the 1980s, the calamitous early closing for the celebrated composer of “Sweeney Todd” and director Harold Prince and the decades of trial-and-error rewrites that followed. 

None of that.

You would, however, be often intensely moved observing a once-airtight friendship deflate backwards, as the scenes play out in reverse order. 

You would be floored by the acting of Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez, whose perfect chemistry is acting alchemy. 

And you would be dead certain you did not just sit through a perfunctory trotting-out of a notorious Broadway disaster, but one of the best and most alive musicals of the season.

Sondheim’s opening lyric, “yesterday is done,” couldn’t be truer or as welcomed as it is here.

The stunning turnaround for “Merrily” is owed not only to the passage of time, but a refreshingly realistic approach from director Maria Friedman. 

Only four years ago, Fiasco Theater’s slimmed-down off-Broadway revival yet again exposed the show’s most glaring flaw: Furth’s hokey and unsubtle book. Sondheim’s lush and propulsive score, as is often the case, couldn’t overcome the gaudy retro-ness of the script, not to mention actors’ tendency to overplay scenes.

“Merrily,” therefore, has always been a weirdly distancing show. Odd, considering it’s one of the composer’s few musicals specifically about contemporary, urban people.

This comparatively human revival, gently directed by Friedman, dials down the lunacy and the showbiz cliches and makes it much easier for average Joes to see themselves in these relatable characters. The wit and incisiveness of Furth’s dialogue suddenly sparkle, and tears and chills arrive well before the reliably emotional finale “Our Time.”

From the start, at a glamorous 1980 party thrown at the California home of Franklin Shepard (Groff), a Broadway-composer-turned-film-producer, the revelry, shameless sucking-up and whispered backstabbing come across as believable instead of an obnoxious Hollywood cartoon. 

An especially recognizable guest wisecracking in the corner is Mendez as Franklin’s best friend Mary Flynn, a former novelist who became a critic — and a drunk. The glue who holds the group together, she’s the only person willing to tell her famous pal to his face, in this sea of barnacles, that he’s turned into a jerk and a hack. Mendez, the No. 1 reason why this production works so well, makes the tricky Mary instantly heartbreaking and hilarious. 

Then, we whoosh to 1973 and Radcliffe whooshes in. During a live NBC interview his shy, neurotic lyricist character Charley Kringas suffers a mental breakdown and spews that all his friend and collaborator Frank cares about is money. Buh-bye, Charley.

The British actor, who after five shows is now Broadway’s Daniel Radcliffe, scores a showstopper with the song “Franklin Shepard, Inc.,” but following this staging’s trend toward restraint, he doesn’t play it as wacky as many others instinctively have. His number is a New York therapy session gone horribly wrong — or right, depending on how holistic you’re feeling.

The tolp, er sorry, plot keeps barreling backwards, rewinding through spats, kids, divorces and affairs. As Frank’s first wife Beth, Katie Rose Clarke painfully sings “Not a Day Goes By” about her shattered relationship. And Frank’s fling-to-ring history with Gussie (Krystal Joy Brown, fabulous), a Broadway star and wife of Broadway producer Joe (Reg Rogers), unravels.  

Most of “Merrily” is devoted to the trio’s adult burdens and only four scenes are set in their bright-eyed 20s, when they are hustling to make it on Broadway while working long hours as desk attendants and waiters. The musical (almost) ends on an apartment rooftop in 1957, when Frank, Charley and Mary’s most steadfast belief is in endless possibility.

If you’ve ever seen the fantastic Groff in concert, you know he’s a singer who loves to make eye contact with audience members. That quality — his desire for personal connection — is what makes him such a strong, layered, sympathetic Frank. And his hopeful glance is what sells an unobtrusive but vital new ending.   

Friedman adds a fleeting epilogue featuring Frank back in 1980, alone and staring out at the sky. His life has just played out inside his head, since we’ve never really left the midcentury-modern California house designed by Soutra Gilmour. And he looks at us as though he’s come to an important realization.

Perhaps for poor Franklin Shepard the best days are yet to come. 

That has certainly proved true for “Merrily We Roll Along.”