Good Thing Going (Backwards)

Last night, I went to see a new production of Merrily We Roll Along at the Wallis Theater in Beverly Hills. It's there through December 18 and tickets are still available — though apparently not many since it's real good. Director Michael Arden has reconceived the show in a way, staging it on a unique set. There are areas like small backstage dressing rooms all around with mirrors ringed in light bulbs, and sometimes you see actors at them getting ready for their next entrance.

Also, as you may know, the show is about three Old Friends — played here expertly by Wayne Brady, Aaron Lazar and Donna Vivino. But they're also played by three younger actors who appear and reappear, dancing about like real-time flashbacks, a la the dream sequence in Oklahoma! or maybe the ghosts in Follies. It seemed to me like an effective way to underscore the conceit of Merrily, which is that we are watching key moments from the Old Friends' lives in reverse. I've seen this show several times but never a production with this much unity and grace as it rewinds three lives.

And yes, that's Wayne Brady from Let's Make a Deal and Whose Line Is It Anyway? playing Charlie the Lyricist. I would not have thought of him in the role as Charlie is usually played by someone weaker and more nebbishy than Mr. Brady but it worked fine, maybe even a little better that the traditional way. His partner Franklin seems less unlikeable, less like he's taking advantage of a partner who can't fight back.

(Brady inserts a few moments of mime and improvisation that were not in the book by George Furth. They're funny but reviewers seem to think they're out of character. I'm not sure. Maybe they change the character for the better, just as the casting of someone who seems less a victim does.)

Merrily We Roll Along is, of course, one of those Sondheim musicals that didn't work on Broadway — it lasted 16 performances — but which lives on in production after production, each trying to find a way to finesse its inherent structural problems. This version did that for me. I stayed with it, fully engrossed, in a way that I don't think I did in previous versions I've seen.

It's not a happy story. It's about the failure of idealism — three starry-eyed kids who envision doing great things with their careers and though they achieve some of what most would call success, wind up unfulfilled and unhappy. Because the story is told in reverse, we see the unfulfillment and unhappiness at the beginning and the youthful idealism at the end, which makes the idealism seem sappy and naive.

But along the way, you also see things happen which change the context and explanation for events and clashes you've already seen and with that comes a kind of understanding of how deeds and decisions have consequences — an effect-and-cause relationship. If that's what the playwrights intended when they said "Let's tell the story backwards," this production achieved it. I really liked it. It also helped that the cast is so strong and that they sing Mr. Sondheim's lyrics with expert clarity, which not every singer of Sondheim can manage.

Like I said, some seats are still available. Goldstar has some of the cheaper seats but I doubt they have many. And if you've never been to the Wallis, it's not only one of the newest theaters in town, it's also one of the nicest. I guess you'd call this a real good review.