Movie Review: Merrily We Roll Along

A review by Marc Primo

There’s a bittersweet charm in the fact that Merrily We Roll Along, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s once-dismissed musical, has aged into a classic. A story obsessed with the passage of time has itself survived it, becoming richer with distance.

Adapted from the 1934 Kaufman and Hart play, the musical follows a group of friends whose bonds twist, fray, and ultimately snap. Its most daring device remains the backward progression: the narrative rewinds from the aftermath of collapsed friendships to the hopeful night where everything began. What could have been a straightforward tragedy becomes, instead, a wry and piercing post-mortem of ambition and regret. Still, early audiences weren’t ready for it, and the original production closed after half a year.

A Friendship Shattered in Reverse

Daniel Radcliffe gives a deeply grounded performance as Charlie Kringas, the loyal writing partner and moral compass to Franklin Shepard, the composer whose compromises slowly corrode their partnership. Charlie is nowhere to be found at Frank’s 1977 gathering, the opening tableau that hints at cracks long since turned to chasms.

The undoing becomes clearest in a scene set in 1973. During a televised interview, Charlie discovers, live and in front of a studio audience, that Frank has secured a lucrative three-film contract without him. The betrayal is both professional and personal: Frank not only abandoned their creative bond but also allowed Charlie to be blindsided for his own advancement. It’s the moment that finally severs a friendship already strained by Frank’s habit of bending his principles to chase the next opportunity.

Mary, the Quiet Heart of the Trio

Completing the central triangle is Lindsay Mendez as Mary Flynn, a quick-witted magazine writer whose unspoken love for Frank lingers across decades. Her connection to Frank and Charlie begins on a New York rooftop in 1957, as the three strangers watch Sputnik streak across the sky. That night, plant the earliest seeds, their artistic collaboration, their ambitions, and Mary’s private heartbreak.

Mary’s affection for Frank sparks instantly, ironically just as Frank casually insists he’s destined to marry someone else. Frank often speaks in declarations he doesn’t truly weigh; it’s one of the many ways he unintentionally wounds those closest to him. Moments like these quietly foreshadow the pattern of charm followed by disappointment that trails him throughout the story.

Romantic Entanglements That Spiral Instead of Settle

Every major relationship in the musical is tinged with complication, and the backward timeline only sharpens the humor and sadness in their repetition. By 1977, Frank is married to Gussie Carnegie, a glamorous performer portrayed by Krystal Joy Brown with feline confidence and Eartha Kitt-like elegance. Once the star of one of Frank’s productions, Gussie left her husband, Joe Josephson, the duo’s first producer, to be with Frank.

But in typical Frank fashion, even Gussie’s devotion is temporary currency. When word spreads that Frank has taken up with a younger performer, Meg Kincaid, Gussie barrels into the party in a fury, igniting chaos that feels both dramatic and inevitable.

As the story moves backward, Frank’s romantic history unfolds like a series of warning signs he never noticed. Beth Shepherd, his first wife, emerges late in the narrative’s chronology yet early in his emotional life. By the time she appears, viewers can’t help but brace themselves each time a new talented woman catches Frank’s eye. The characters, of course, remain oblivious to the patterns the audience now sees all too clearly.

The Challenge of Writing About a Story Told Backward

The shifting verb tenses in any discussion of Merrily We Roll Along aren’t accidents; they’re symptoms of how difficult it is to describe a narrative built in reverse. American audiences are trained to see straight-line storytelling as the default, anything else as needlessly sophisticated. Yet stepping outside that familiar structure is precisely what makes the film so invigorating. In this world, scenes that occur later on screen serve as echoes of moments that technically happened years earlier. When Gussie splashes iodine at Meg in 1977, the act seems to “hint” at Gussie drenching Beth with Chardonnay at a 1964 gathering, even though that earlier spill took place more than a decade before the iodine incident.

When Music Becomes Memory

One of the richest examples of this retrospective design is Charlie’s blistering performance of “Franklin Shepherd, Inc.” on the talk show. What appears at first to be a manic, self-contained rant is actually a solo reconstruction of a much fuller musical moment the audience will encounter later: “Opening Doors.” Both numbers blend everyday sounds and formal composition, typewriters functioning like percussion, telephones chiming in rhythmic counterpoint, sung lines mingling with spoken phrases.

In “Opening Doors,” these textures are shared among the trio of young creatives. But by the time Charlie reaches “Franklin Shepherd, Inc.,” nearly two decades later in story chronology, he’s left to juggle all the sonic chaos on his own. The contrast is devastating: a once collaborative energy reduced to a single voice desperately trying to be heard.

Reverse Foreshadowing and the Anatomy of What Went Wrong

Sondheim and Furth fill the musical with small, clever touches, moments that would read as classic foreshadowing if the plot moved forward instead of backward. In a traditional narrative, the turning points that send characters veering off course are framed as shocks, eliciting gasps or sympathy. Here, each revelation becomes another entry in a case study. The audience isn’t waiting to see what happens; they’re trying to understand how a group of bright, idealistic young artists drifted so far from their starting point.

This reversal also highlights how poorly people predict the permanence of the world around them. Take Mary reassuring Beth’s parents at the wedding that she works for Look Magazine, a publication that would soon collapse, only for Beth’s mother to respond with confidence: “Now there’s a steady, secure job!” Moments like this become gentle reminders that even the characters’ convictions are built on shifting ground.

Moments That Resonate No Matter the Timeline

Some scenes in Merrily We Roll Along carry the same emotional weight as they would in a conventional timeline. Take the trio’s 1960 performance in a bohemian coffeehouse, where Frank, Charlie, and Beth charm a roomful of patrons with a cheeky revue about the Kennedy clan. Even though the film works backward, viewers can’t help but feel the shadow of history hanging over the number, knowing the family’s tragic future makes the scene bittersweet. But that melancholy would linger even in a chronological version of the story. The sadness isn’t a trick of the structure; it’s baked into America’s collective memory.

A Production Rooted in the Stage

What unfolds on screen is theater at its most unfiltered. Sam Levy’s cinematography begins loosely, almost like a public television concert special, determined not to miss a cue. The early sections, set in the 1970s, have a slightly chaotic, documentary feel. As the narrative winds backward into the ‘60s and ‘50s, the filmmaking becomes more refined. Shots grow cleaner, staging more deliberately, and the visual rhythm steadier.

Part of that transformation stems from the story itself: with fewer characters occupying each chapter, the creative team has more space to linger on expressions, frame interactions, and sculpt moments with care. As the ensemble shrinks, the images sharpen.

Working Within Real Constraints

That evolution also reflects the limitations the filmmakers embraced. This wasn’t a project designed to explode the stage musical and reassemble it as a sprawling cinematic reimagining. Instead, they captured a live performance in a real theater, bound by sets, architecture, and the unseen barrier dividing the audience and the performers. They couldn’t tear through the scenery or pull off impossible camera moves without shattering the essence of the production.

The result is a balancing act, a negotiation between theatrical immediacy and cinematic ambition. It calls to mind the “Opening Doors” scene, where Joe pleads with Frank and Charlie to strike a compromise, something lively, accessible, and still true to their artistic intentions. “Give me a melody!” he demands. The film, in many ways, seeks that same middle ground: honoring the demands of the stage while still pursuing a touch of movie magic.

When Simplicity Turns Into Cinematic Magic

Even with every limitation of filming inside a live theater, the production still manages to conjure moments that feel unmistakably cinematic. The filmmakers quickly learn that restraint is their strongest creative tool. The opening, an overture that melts into the first rendition of “Merrily We Roll Along,” relies almost entirely on intimate closeups of Jonathan Groff. His face carries a paradoxical mix of sorrow and lingering optimism. Lines from other characters float in from off-screen or drift through the frame as blurred figures passing behind him. It creates the sensation that the audience is eavesdropping on Frank’s internal monologue, riding along as he sorts through the past that brought him to this point.

As the musical winds toward its conclusion, the final two numbers stand out as the production’s most powerful achievements. Each involves only four performers. The staging is stripped down, the compositions clean and deliberate, yet every image lands like a beat in a drumline. The edits snap sharply from one angle to another, mirroring the quicksilver pace of Sondheim’s writing. The visuals and lyrics seem to chase one another, breathless and electric.

A Composer’s Belief Made Visible

Taken together, these choices transform Frank’s artistic worldview into pure film language. His conviction that music isn’t built on words alone, but on emotion and sound, becomes something the audience can see, not just hear. The movie doesn’t lecture about his philosophy; it embodies it. Through minimal tools and thoughtful framing, the production turns a stagebound constraint into a creative declaration.