What does it revenue a person if he features the entire world however loses his soul?
Whereas not cited within the script, that well-known query is on the coronary heart of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Alongside, which is being given a top-notch manufacturing by Arlington’s Signature Theatre.
The soul in query is that of Franklin Shepard (Jason Gotay), a superb, idealistic, younger composer who, in service of his fulfilled ambition for standard and monetary success, loses, over a 20-year interval, his connection to music, his two dearest pals, two wives, and his son.
In Sondheim’s and collaborator George Furth’s well-known reverse chronology, we first see Frank in 1976 on the nadir of his life. At a celebration celebrating Frank’s newest profitable film, his former greatest buddy, Charley Kringis (Jake Loewenthal), is absent and can’t even be talked about. His different longtime pricey buddy, Mary Flynn (Melanie Subject), who in her despair has change into an out-of-control alcoholic, will get drunk and makes a scene. His now visibly getting old second spouse, Gussie Carnegie (Maria Rizzo), is brittle and bitter as Frank is about to switch her with a youthful girl. Frank admits — how sincerely isn’t clear — a level of self-loathing, saying that he has made the identical mistake again and again: saying sure when he ought to have stated no. Gotay provides Frank a type of uncomprehending deer-in-the-headlights look amid the wreckage.
The present revolves round Frank, a type of hole middle of the motion, at all times prepared with a rationale or self-justification for no matter choice he makes, nonetheless damaging. Gotay — along with his robust vocals — makes Frank’s selections all too believable. He’s not somebody to admire, and even like, however the portrayal makes him comprehensible.
How did they get to be there? Every successive scene delves additional again in time to disclose how Frank’s selections, and the actions of the others in his orbit, led to this go. In what counts as one of the spectacular, and most troublesome, patter numbers in all of musical theater, “Franklin Shepard, Inc.,” Charley embarrasses Frank on nationwide TV in 1973 by calling out his abandonment of composing as his film profession has flourished. In Loewenthal’s aggressive tackle the quantity, Charley isn’t merely having a nervous breakdown. He takes out years of rising frustration and resentment with Frank’s constant postponement of their subsequent mission in favor of his commercially profitable offers. There’s intentionality in his insanity.
Later within the present, Loewenthal successfully delivers a extra lyrical quantity, the deceptively easy “Good Factor Going,” which, whereas introduced as a music he and Frank are auditioning for a present Joe Josephson is to provide, can be a prescient touch upon the path of their relationship.
Mary, lengthy hopelessly in love with Frank, tries to maintain the fraying relationships among the many three intact in “Like It Was” and “Previous Mates.” It’s to no avail. Frank has fallen underneath the affect of Gussie.
In Rizzo’s succesful arms, Gussie has one of the fascinating character arcs within the manufacturing. From her origin as a working-class secretary to producer Joe Josephson (James Whalen), to Josephson’s mistress, then spouse, then brassy Broadway musical star, Gussie’s bottomless insecurity and ambition lead her to change into a consummate manipulator. Her “Rising Up” is a masterclass in seduction as Gussie’s and Frank’s mutual attraction to success and show-biz prominence gas the ensuing affair and, finally, marriage.
The adjustments in Gussie’s life are fantastically displayed in Ivania Stack’s succession of costumes. She is in a dowdy gown as Joe’s secretary; then considerably extra upscale as Joe’s spouse, then in glittery attire as a Broadway star, in a regal crimson gown when she is on the peak of her energy, then lastly in a sublime however distinctly unsexy caftan as a theatrical grand dame previous her prime. Frank, in the meantime, is constantly in grays, blacks, and whites; it’s as much as different characters to convey colour to the proceedings.
Whalen brings dignity to the often-overlooked position of Joe, who annoys Frank (comparable folks aggravated Sondheim in his profession) by insisting that profitable musicals should depend on tunes which are “hummable,” at one level exiting whereas buzzing a considerably off-kilter little bit of “Some Enchanted Night.”
Within the midst of the acrimonious divorce ensuing from Frank’s affair with Gussie, Frank’s first spouse, Beth (Kerstin Anderson), sings probably the most often coated music from the present, “Not a Day Goes By.” The heartbreak and bitterness are palpable. That is maybe the perfect instance of the “reverse reprise” approach that Sondheim employs. Later within the present (i.e., earlier within the character’s chronology), Beth and Frank sing a candy love music model of the music, with Mary becoming a member of some traces in unhappiness as she sees the person she loves marrying a buddy.
Beth contributes to Frank’s trajectory by deceiving him a few being pregnant and later urging him to do yet one more “industrial” present with Joe reasonably than work with Charley. Each Mary and Charley, in “The Finest Factor that Ever Occurred,” assist persuade Frank, in opposition to his preliminary instincts, to go on a cruise after his divorce reasonably than getting again to work. Each illustrate the incremental deceptions and seemingly minor decisions that form the characters’ outcomes.
Earlier than the principal characters’ downward path takes form, their youthful selves have the carefree enjoyable with “Bobby and Jackie and Jack,” a lighthearted 1960 spoof of the Kennedys (the later tragedies that engulfed the Kennedy household are usually not talked about — Sondheim saved that for “One thing Simply Broke” from Assassins). Signature’s model of the quantity was the perfect I’ve seen, together with using a Kennedy picture album prop and an ensemble member appearing as their accompanist, giving a Lenny Bernstein head toss at one level. Within the late Nineteen Fifties, the three leads are fortunately concerned within the chaos of getting began within the music and theater enterprise in “Opening Doorways,” a music that Sondheim stated mirrored the struggles of his era of Broadway songwriters.
Talking of doorways, Wilson Chin’s set has six of them (which do often open for solid entrances and exits), organized symmetrically, three every on every axis of the set. Symmetry, actually, is the defining attribute of the set, with a excessive spiral staircase flanking all sides of the set. Heart stage is a low sq. platform with a small turntable and a piano, the hub of a lot of the motion. I questioned if the ordered symmetry of the setting was supposed to distinction with the dysfunction of the characters’ lives.
Director/choreographer Matthew Gardiner follows go well with, utilizing symmetrical blocking in lots of scenes and often balanced stage footage. When one thing is out of stability, you discover. For instance, Gardiner makes good use of putting Mary off to the aspect of in any other case balanced or clustered teams of actors, emphasizing her aloneness. Whereas not a dance present within the ordinary sense, Merrily is an energetic motion present, and Gardiner’s design retains the foremost characters and ensemble transferring easily and seamlessly. A pleasant contact is having actors stroll backward within the present’s transitions to signify the clock winding again because the reverse chronology unfolds.
The ensemble has a fantastic deal to do in Merrily, with many numbers involving very intricate exchanges of sung and spoken traces amongst characters. The actors deal with these calls for and not using a hitch. Everybody sings properly and in character, and music director Jon Kalbfleisch’s 12-person band, set on an upper-level V-shaped construction about the principle enjoying space, fills the theater with a full, wealthy, exact sound.
Cory Pattak’s lighting design is part of the present past its position in illuminating actors. The stage is stuffed with desk and upright lamps, which kind a part of the background besides in “The Blob” quantity within the second act, the place they’re introduced into the middle enjoying space with the ensemble. Over the stage are hung — once more symmetrically — teams of huge globes.
The globes get their greatest second within the transition to the ultimate scene of the present, as Frankie Jr. (Neal Gaensehals), Frank’s younger son, sings — very touchingly — a verse of the title music solo whereas holding a blue helium balloon. The balloon ascends into the rafters because the globes are lit from inside in the identical blue colour.
This results in the present’s closing quantity, “Our Time,” through which Frank, Charley, and Mary meet as a trio for the primary time, on the roof of an condo constructing, trying up on the evening sky to catch a glimpse of Sputnik. They’re younger, idealistic, stuffed with hope, stuffed with plans to make artwork that may change the world. The viewers is aware of what’s going to change into of their desires, whereas, of their innocence, they don’t, making the music a concurrently uplifting and deeply unhappy second.
In his e-book of lyrics, Ending the Hat, Sondheim feedback that Merrily was his try to repair Allegro, an unsuccessful Rodgers and Hammerstein present on which Sondheim served as a teenage gofer. In every present, an idealistic younger man (a health care provider within the case of Allegro) turns into corrupted and disillusioned, helped to his doom by an formidable, greedy spouse, and betrays his pals. The distinction, Sondheim writes, is that Allegro redeems its hero, whereas Merrily leaves him “sinking into the hell he has created.” Not essentially, for my part.
Typically a present, in efficiency, can develop past its creator’s intent. Within the closing second of this manufacturing, after everybody else has cleared the stage, Frank sits on the piano — the one factor left onstage — and appears at a photograph of him with Charley and Mary. Equally, on the identical level within the hit 2023-24 Broadway revival, Frank holds a folder with the script for a play that he and Charley by no means wrote. They seem considerably contemplative.
This delivered to thoughts a e-book I lately got here throughout, Falling Upward, by thinker/theologian Richard Rohr. Rohr argues that, within the first half of life, folks usually set up their id, construct a profession, and discover safety or standing. Then, there’s a fall: a serious failure, loss, struggling, or disillusionment. We develop extra by doing issues incorrect than doing issues proper, Rohr suggests. This painful descent can let folks rise right into a deeper, extra compassionate, and joyful understanding of life, a second half of life that may be extra significant and real.
Might there be such a second half for Frank? We’ll by no means know, in fact, however each these very good productions (the latest Broadway revival and Signature’s present manufacturing) go away at the very least a touch that it would simply be attainable.
Because the actors acquired a well-deserved standing ovation on the present’s finish, your entire firm joined in a refrain of “Previous Mates.” Coming after the intentional melancholy of “Our Time,” it was heat, cheerful, glad, and hummable. Producer Joe Josephson would have permitted.
Working Time: Two hours and half-hour together with one 15-minute intermission.
Merrily We Roll Alongside performs by means of November 1, 2026, within the MAX Theatre at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave, Arlington, VA. Tickets begin at $47 and can be found on-line or by calling the field workplace at 703 820 9771. Tickets are additionally out there at TodayTix.
This system is on-line right here.
(Given the diploma of air con within the theater, patrons might wish to convey a sweater or jacket.)
SEE ALSO: Signature Theatre pronounces solid and artistic group for ‘Merrily We Roll Alongside’ (information story, July 29, 2026)
