On July 7, 2024, the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along closed at the Hudson Theatre after 312 regular performances. (It opened on October 10, 2023.) It repeatedly broke box office records during its run. The final week’s gross was $2.77 million, the highest week ever for a Sondheim musical on Broadway. Here’s a link to the curtain call for the final performance; the YouTube video offers 21 minutes of emotional speeches with the entire cast and the musicians onstage. The principal speaker (pink suit, blonde hair) is producer Sonia Friedman, sister of director Maria Friedman. Pay close attention to the three young boys who played Frank Jr.: Max Rackenberg, Rocco Van Auken and Brady Wagner. They are clapping and hugging right along with all the professionals. I suspect one of these days one of them could be starring in a Broadway show and remembering this night.
Another way to hold onto memories of this Merrily is via show’s original cast recording by Masterworks Broadway, released last November. Here’s a link. In addition to all of the show’s music, the recording features liner notes by Maria Friedman and former New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley.
If you’re in New York City, you can go to the New York Public Library’s Theatre on Film and Tape Archive to watch a recording of the show that was captured on March 29, 2024. The library’s archival tapings are not the same as commercially released live stage captures. NYPL films a single performance using three cameras; these films have no post-editing; stage lighting and makeup are not adjusted. Here’s a link to more information. You’ll find more information plus set of 10 production photos from the show.
As the Playbill feature reports, Merrily also received an extensive “pro-shot” treatment in late June near the end of the show’s run. RadicalMedia, the company that produced the much-lauded film of Hamilton, was doing the work. No official announcement has yet been made, but a leading candidate for distribution is Apple TV+, which offered the pro-shot of Come From Away back 2021. We have that to look forward to, in addition to Richard Linklater’s 20-year cinematic project featuring Ben Platt, Beanie Feldstein and Blake Jenner — which might be in movie theaters in 2044!
Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, was a hit in London a year ago. Now it’s headed to Broadway, opening on March 25, 2025, at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. It will be headlined by Tony Award winners Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga. In London they teamed with an all-star cast of British performers, some of whom are sure to join them on Broadway with a list of other illustrious Broadway performers. Here’s a tip: If you’re on the West Coast, the production will have a pre-Broadway engagement in Los Angeles at the Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre, February 8-March 9, 2025. Catch the video preview here.
https://glimmerglass.org/2024/08/the-glimmerglass-festival-announces-enthralling-50th-anniversary-season/For anyone making even more distant travel plans, consider the Glimmerglass Festival’s 50th season in Cooperstown, New York, July 11-August 17, 2025. In addition to four operatic productions (including Puccini’s Tosca and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress), the company will present its premiere of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George (nine performances on July 12, 17, 19 and 21, and August 2, 5, 10 and 17). Glimmerglass presented Sweeney Todd in 2016 and West Side Story in 2018. For more details: Glimmerglass.com
Finally, for your listening pleasure, check out this nine-minute “Sondheim Medley” performed by pianist Michael Feinstein. The renowned performer and recording artist is also the artistic director of the Palladium Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana. The theater is home to diverse live programming and a museum for his rare memorabilia and manuscripts.
Give us more to hear!