Free Showstopper by Abigail Pogrebin

 
     “Everybody merrily, merrily”

I have on my wall a large black-and-white photograph of the legendary Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim and the famed director Harold Prince, from the fall of 1981.
    They’re mid-conversation in a rehearsal studio; a lean, young Sondheim is dressed in a sweatshirt with three stripes on the sleeve, sheet music in his left hand, appearing to listen intently. Prince is clearly saying something about the show they’re rehearsing, the stub of a cigarette between two fingers, his trademark dark-rimmed glasses perched, with inexplicable balance, on his high, bald forehead.
    The men appear focused and also intimate—friends and collaborators since 1970, with a track record that includes, at the time of this photograph, several Sondheim classics: Company , Follies , A Little Night Music , Pacific Overtures , Side by Side by Sondheim , and Sweeney Todd . I bought this image after coming upon it in an art gallery a few years ago. My response to it was immediate, because I remembered clearly the day it was taken. I was at that very rehearsal, and so many others, as one of the twenty-eight cast members in Sondheim’s most infamous, anomalous flop: Merrily We Roll Along , a show that closed after just sixteen performances but went on to become a cult favorite.
    Merrily is the story of three close friends—Franklin Shepard (a composer), Charles Kringas (his lyricist), and Mary Flynn (a novelist/journalist)—and how their devoted troika splinters over time, thanks to compromises and betrayals. The narrative winds backwards chronologically, opening with a tense party scene in the Reagan era and ending with the sweet launch of their friendship (and Sputnik) in 1957. It was conceived originally to have teenagers playing adults at various ages, over two decades, as the timeline rewound.
        I treasure the snapshot not just because it captures two giants whom I’d idolized in my show-obsessed youth, but also because it stands as a relic of their storied partnership, which went awry with Merrily , and which never quite recovered. After the show shuttered abruptly, they wouldn’t work together again for twenty-two years, and even when they finally did, not with the same fanfare and mythology around them.
    I value the picture also because it reminds me of how seemingly perfect moments inevitably fray and dim.  

    “One quick ride ...”

    I’m a journalist now; I don’t wear my Merrily credit on my sleeve and, most of the time, I don’t think to mention it to anyone—unless I’m talking to an obvious Sondheim junkie—because it was so long ago, and because I have spent my adult life as theatergoer, not a performer. That piece of the past feels very much like it’s passed.
    But recent events have brought it all back—the magnitude of the experience, the profuse fondness of our cast, the shock of the smashup, and especially the saliency of the show’s material. Its story and lyrics were about aiming boldly, getting shot down, success, settling, and ultimately losing track of what really matters. The themes didn’t really resonate when I was in the show: At sixteen, I’d yet to become jaded or thwarted by severe disappointment. Merrily ’s failure was the first time, really, that I saw a “sure thing” stumble.
    But then, of course, growing up has a way of introducing all the lessons that Merrily portended. Despite all the blessings in my life—more than I can name without feeling superstitious—by now I've seen my share of letdowns: collapsed friendships,  over-dramatic breakups, the shoals of parenting, goals thwarted or never tried. 
     
    What else brought Merrily back to me in the last year?
    The show’s forthcomingthirtieth anniversary this November.
    The myriad birthday celebrations and retrospectives for Sondheim’s eightieth in 2010.
    The publication of Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat , the first of two rich volumes in which the maestro deconstructs every one of