MERRILY: IT’S A HIT … ON NETFLIX If you missed seeing the 2023-2024 Tony Award-winning, record-breaking Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along during its sold-out run — or you couldn’t afford a ticket — you can get a sense of it via Sony Pictures Classics’ live stage recording (formally called a “ProShot”) now available
Sondheim Update #35 Read More »
MERRILY KEEPS ROLLING The Tony Award-winning 2023 revival of Merrily We Roll Along that starred Jonathan Groff as Frank, Daniel Radcliffe as Charley and Lindsay Mendez as Mary, was a huge success, staged at the Hudson Theatre by British director Maria Friedman. (It was more or less the same production she staged with a different
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SWEENEY TODD (and Halloween) ARE HEADED YOUR WAY! In the concluding chapter to my new book, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: Behind the Bloody Musical Masterpiece (released on Oct. 2), I point out, “Sweeney Todd marked an inflection point in musical theater that invited greater experimentation in subject matter told with seriously composed music — stepping
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SONDHEIM’S BLOODY MUSICAL MASTERPIECE My next dive into the world of Stephen Sondheim will be published by Bloomsbury on October 2. Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: Behind the Bloody Musical Masterpiece is an in-depth study of every possible aspect of the show. I begin with the tale’s gruesome literary origins in the Penny Dreadfuls of the
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HEY, OLD FRIENDS! Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends began as a one-night gala in London on May 3, 2022. More than a year late in October 2023, producer Cameron Mackintosh brought it back in a very successful three-month West End run ending early January 2024. It featured numerous British musical theater stars, plus Broadway veterans Bernadette
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MORE LIAISONS. A decade ago pianist Anthony De Mare thrilled Sondheim fans with recordings of Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano, a three-disk set of adaptations he commissioned from an array of composers using Sondheim’s songs. The numbers, performed by De Mare, were fascinating, and Sondheim himself was intrigued. “They’re fantasias responding to the melodic
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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.
Merrily ends — but keeps on rolling Read More »
Since it’s debacle of a debut in November 1981, Merrily We Roll Along was termed a sad flop that closed in just 12 days. However, its recent revival, staged by Maria Friedman, which opened at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre on October 10, 2023, became an unqualified hit. Her production began to make waves with an off-Broadway
Thomas Floyd assembled an excellent feature for the April 6 edition of The Washington Post: “An Oral History of Mrs. Lovett, one of theater’s greatest, bloodiest roles.” He interviewed English actor Julia McKenzie, Broadway stars Patti LuPone, Sutton Foster, Lea Salonga, Bryonha Marie, Annaleigh Ashford, movie actor Helena Bonham Carter, and TV’s Christine Baranski, and
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March 22 would have been Sondheim’s 94th birthday. Before the end of March, there’s a Broadway Birthday: Sondheim, Lloyd Webber and Friends, happening in California at the Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa on March 28. It’s marking the strange coincidence that Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber shared the same birthday. Coming together for this
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