In the film release of the Tony award-winning New York revival, Radcliffe is a revelation, embodying a televised breakdown with precision — clipped gestures, barely-contained rage, and a vulnerability the camera doesn’t soften. Friedman’s close-cropped direction turns the musical’s reverse-chronology into something unexpectedly lucid, restoring the emotional edge Hollywood so often sands away.
Sondheim’s cult show about crumbling relationships and the souring of creative success is set for release in UK cinemas on 4th December in a striking new film of Merrily We Roll Along starring Daniel Radcliffe.
Radcliffe plays Charley, alongside Jonathan Groff as Frank, and Lindsay Mendez as Mary. Maria Friedman who played Mary in the 1994 UK production, directs the film of the Tony Award-winning revival she directed at New York’s Hudson Theatre in 2023. The film’s defining characteristic is the arresting intimacy seen in the cropped storytelling, and sharp cuts, an artistic commitment that puts each performance front and centre. This has the unexpected dividend of making sense of Sondheim and librettist George Furth’s innovative storytine that can sometimes leave the newcomer to the work feeling a little confused.
At its heart, Merrily is a love story in reverse charting the life of a composer who seeks success at the expense of happiness. The twist for the audience is that the entire 20 year story is played out in reverse, each successive scene casting the story back years and years until the genesis in 1957 where the cause of the show-long heartbreak is revealed in nothing more than a passing phrase. Blink and you’ll miss it, exactly the very thing the protagonist did himself.
Friedman’s direction – close in shots, reactions, warts and all – conveys the intimacy of theatre and the jeopardy of live. Radcliffe is a revelation demonstrating that investment in education really does pay dividends and then some. His embodying of a breakdown in relations during a TV interview is electrifying, a triggering performance intensified by lingering close ups on Radcliffe complete with staccato gesticulations. Jonathan Groff as Frank transitions from wide eyed ambition to terrorised self-acknowledgment leaving us with a man either on the brink of a nervous breakdown or one overwhelmed by his own self-loathing and fully aware he’s insufficient funds for the therapy necessary to recover from it.
Krystal Joy Brown makes Frank’s wife Gussie flawed yet forgivable. In Lindsay Mendez’s Mary – the surreptitious lead and the only one who really sees the full picture – we have the best of both worlds: a live vocal that is urgent and energising and a studio voice that is taut yet warm and rounded. Mendez’s Mary is a tightly held portrait of lifelong dedication and disappointment. But whilst we may well be left feeling sorry, the question remains as the credits roll: what role did she play in sabotaging herself?
Friedman’s direction is heavily promoted in the pre-publicity. Deserved too where Hollywood’s habit of sanding down the edges as it did in Into the Woods, Friedman’s film restores that edge. The distraction free visual storytelling keeps the focus on the pathos reserving the throwaway put downs to acerbic sidebars. Simple innovation. The best kind. Securing a place for this often overlooked classic that subverts expectations, and leaves you wondering whose on your friends list who might no longer be making the grade.
