[In the following review of a revival of Merrily We Roll Along, Simon offers a negative assessment, focusing on Sondheim's lack of melody, the absence of character likability, and the weakness of the retrogressive structure of the musical.]

The history of painting stretches from Anonymous to Untitled, from where only the work was essential to where the work can be anything at all and only the signature in the corner matters. Things may have come to the same pretty pass in the theater, with the pretentiously inflated, artistically bankrupt Passion a sure flop if it weren't for the prestigious signature “Stephen Sondheim” and, it must be admitted, the feebleness of the competition from Beauty and the Beast. Now, however, the York Theatre Company has revived Sondheim's 1981 fiasco, Merrily We Roll Along, so we can check out whether the old failure is better than the new success.

To be sure, this is no longer the 1981 show: Through several productions from California to England, Merrily has been fairly extensively tinkered with on book and score, though the changes have brought about scant improvement. All these revivals attest to the magic of the Sondheim signature, which even had several reviewers recanting their initial bad notices of 1981 upon reseeing the show a few days later, thus giving rise to the myth that a Sondheim opus was something like, say, a Berg opera, whose depths could not be plumbed on first hearing. This conjures up a vision of audiences having to leave future Sondheim musicals—the scenery, like the score, being unhummable—humming their hopes for a second visit.

Merrily, granted, is still in the traditional musical mold, and has some winning numbers, even if others are merely ground out, smelling a bit of midnight oil and a bit more of the sausage machine. Although Sondheim has an unbeatable way with lyrics, and a solid academic background in composition (he studied with Milton Babbitt), he lacks the natural gift of melody as it spontaneously and idiomatically wells up from the likes of Cy Coleman, Jerry Herman, and Charles Strouse. With Sondheim, as most of the Merrily score demonstrates, the key elements are rhythm, which is his own, and orchestration, which is someone else's. Except for three genuine songs—“Old Friends,” “Our Time,” and especially “Not a Day Goes By”—an aura of laboriousness attaches to this score, a sense of stubborn doodling, more kinetic than incantatory.

The show has a book by George Furth based on a play by Kaufman and Hart, whose gimmick is to move backward in time as we retrace the steps of a group af artists and friends. Franklin, a composer, and Charley, his lyricist, are old college chums. Mary, a novelist unrequitedly in love with Franklin, is the third musketeer. They have all made it, but at what cost! Franklin has dumped his sweet actress wife, Beth, to marry Gussie, an ambitious and jealous prima donna, herself hounded by an ex-husband, a once powerful producer, now a washout. Franklin has become a sharklike film producer; Mary is now an obstreperous lush and a critic (which is worse?); Charley has succeeded with a straight play of his own, but has left the group to their relentless careerism and corrosive partygoing.

Through phase after phase, the story regresses to the trio's beginnings, until these hard, unlovable characters reach their likably idealistic youth, and the viciously barbed story turns cutely sentimental—a doubtful improvement. But the first half makes for extremely unpleasant onstage goings-on, exemplified by a woman's tossing the contents of an iodine bottle in a younger rival's eyes, all of which prevents even the music from rolling along merrily. The retrograde structure is strategically self-defeating: We might care enough about decent people as we watched them gradually turning into rotters, but people we loathe on sight are unlikely to move us with the buried sweetness of their early days. Especially not if there is confusion in the authors’ minds, so that we cannot tell whether success itself is automatically corrupting—a rather stale formula—or whether the characters themselves are intrinsically flawed, which is not properly brought out.

The current production is no help, either. As Franklin, Malcolm Gets is, from start to finish, undistinguished as actor, singer, and presence. As Charley, Adam Heller has the right comic-sidekick persona, but he can't sing. Amy Ryder's Mary is so aggressively unappealing in every part of her vast anatomy and puny personality that one cannot imagine what would have drawn the others to her in the first place. As Beth, Anne Bobby delivers “Not a Day Goes By” with such an edgy shrillness (perhaps demanded by the director) as to effectively scuttle it. As Gussie, Michele Pawk hardly changes from scene to scene—a fault shared by some of the others. Only Cass Morgan, in several supporting parts, makes a definite impression.

On a small stage and budget, a unit set must convey many locations, which requires the taste and ingenuity James Morgan's décor vainly strives for, despite a useful assist from Wendall K. Harrington's projections. Costumes, lighting, and choreography try hard, but succumb to various constraints. Susan H. Schulman's direction is merely competent: It manages individual scenes more or less, but fails to achieve a propulsive and purposive whole.