Review Round-up: Critics Roll Along to Menier

Based on the play by Kaufman and Hart, Sondheim and George
Furth‘s musical charts the turbulent relationship between three
friends, Franklin, Charley and Mary, over three decades. Starting in
1980 and travelling backwards in time, it features songs including “Good
Thing Going”, “Not a Day Goes By” and “Old Friends”.

Starring Mark Umbers, Damian Humbley and Jenna Russell as the three friends, Merrily We Roll Along continues until 23 February 2013.

Michael Coveney
Whatsonstage.com
★★★★

This is a lovely directing debut by Maria Friedman, a full-value,
beautifully cast, moving and assured production of Stephen Sondheim‘s
and George Furth’s poignant 1981 musical…about friendship,
collaboration and trading your idealism for the easy material life. The
story is told backwards, so that we start at the end and finish at the
beginning. Friedman and designer Soutra Gilmour do the much harder
thing of moving backwards with the times in fashion and furniture. They
manage this without making everything look clumsy and laboured. The
show is given a classy sheen by David Hersey‘s first London lighting
in ages and by Jason Carr’s new dance arrangements. The cast is just
fine and dandy, with Joanna Woodward and Zizi Strallen chipping in
effectively with Martin Callaghan and Amanda Minihan as Beth’s
adamantly unimpressed parents from Texas.

Charles Spencer
Daily Telegraph
★★★★

Maria Friedman… is making her professional debut as a director with
Merrily We Roll Along. It’s a superbly assured production. She sharply
captures the show’s wit but also discovers its undertow of sadness and
loss.If the musical has a fault it is that it sometimes seems a little
too neat and schematic. But as a piece of craftsmanship Merrily We Roll
Along dazzle. The score ranges from the touchingly emotional to the
brilliantly comic. And Soutra Gilmour’s sleek designs neatly capture
changing times and fashions. Mark Umbers has the trickiest task as
the main character Franklin Shepard, a composer turned Hollywood
hotshot who betrays his friends…Umbers plays him with such charm and
swagger that you can see why his friends stay so loyal for so long.
Jenna Russell is deeply touching…and Damian Humbley gives a
deliciously geeky performance.

Michael Billington
Guardian
★★★★★

A superb production by Maria Friedman, astonishingly making her
directorial debut, that makes you wonder how anyone could ever have
doubted its quality. It’s… the backward momentum that makes the story so
moving: the show builds towards a surge of youthful optimism… that we
know will not be sustained. Sondheim’s score is also a miracle of
construction: motifs, phrases and even non-musical sounds echo through
the evening. What I love about this show is that Sondheim’s technical
brilliance is harnessed to emotional needs; and that is the point on
which Friedman has avidly seized. Instead of fretting about the
characters’ reverse-ageing, she focuses on the detail of their
relationships. Thanks to the anguished integrity of Damian Humbley‘s
Charley, and the frayed longing of Jenna Russell‘s Mary, you also
believe totally in the slowly dissolving friendship between the three
principals.

Mark Shenton
The
Stage

The Menier Chocolate Factory has now become London’s leading home for
both refining and redefining Sondheim musicals. Merrily We Roll Along
has… always been considered a problem show. But now Maria
Friedman… makes a startlingly good directorial debut with a show she
clearly knows inside out. She doesn’t so much solve the show’s problems
as embrace them. Played in the original Broadway production by actors
in their early 20s… the central trio of Mark Umbers, Damian Humbley
and Jenna Russell are older, which amplifies the show’s rueful sense
of the wrong turns… and collapsed dreams. Atmospherically coloured with
precise, mood-shifting designs (Soutra Gilmour), tight Fosse-esque
period choreography (Tim Jackson) and terrific musical direction
(Catherine Jayes), this is a production of crushing beauty about
crushed lives that paradoxically offers an exhilarating reclamation of
a one-time flop. Could the next stop be Broadway?

Henry Hitchings
Evening Standard
★★★★

Merrily We Roll Along revolves around the tussle between commercialism
and loftier aspirations. Franklin is the central character. He is
unsympathetic, and there’s no getting round the fact. But Mark Umbers
makes him interesting, even at his most arrogant and aloof. Expressive
tenor Damian Humbley is a tender Charley, and Jenna Russell’s Mary
oozes pathos. Poised support comes from Clare Foster and Josefina
Gabrielle. Maria Friedman… makes a first-rate professional debut as a
director. She locates the work’s emotional and musical heart. A
nine-piece band under Catherine Jayes does justice to the layered
score, and Soutra Gilmour has created a versatile, effective design.
Crucially, there is rousing emotion in the songs…Sondheim’s music and
lyrics have a gut-wrenching poignancy as well as elegance and subtle
colour, and at its best this production soars.

Libby Purves
The Times
★★★★

We see the euphoria of the pair’s hit musical, and a marvellous turn from Josefina Gabrielle as the gushy, sharp-clawed, rising star Gussie. We see how the celebrity “blob” alarms Charley (a gentle, heartfelt performance from Damian Humbley), as Frank is seduced towards “fast, loud and funny” and forgets their mission to make truthful musicals with meaning. We see their first club revue, gaily spoofing the Kennedys, then move back to end with the three broke young friends watching Sputnik rise in 1957, dreaming of the future; “It’s our time, breathe it in! Worlds to change and worlds to win…” We gulp, because we have seen how life will shrivel them all. And dammit, for all the perverse structure and lack of bum-di-bum-di-dee, the old wizard Sondheim has done it to me again.