Review: ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ on Broadway Is Almost-Perfect Sondheim

The most charming and delightful scene on Broadway right now is Daniel Radcliffe, Lindsay Mendez, and Jonathan Groff, as the core group of Charley, Mary, and Frank, singing “Old Friends” in Merrily We Roll Along (Hudson Theatre, booking to March 24, 2024).

The song is a teasing, typically ingenious Stephen Sondheim song about friendship and bonds—comic with a serious undertow, and the three lead actors playing three friends whose triangular relationship we chart in reverse perform it as a playful balletic joust—choreographed with a brilliant flow by Tim Jackson—that echoes the emotional waves of the song. Two gang up against one, one goes their own way, the group comes back together again, things shift, smiles and mischief reign, and then, collective push and pull finally done, they are finally united again with their signature us-against-the-world pinky-swear.

The Tony-winning (for Carousel) Mendez, Radcliffe and Groff share a terrific collective chemistry that roots and animates the show. That does not mean the transfer of this Sonia Friedman-directed show from New York Theatre Workshop is issue- or problem-free; oddly, it has sprouted unwelcome oddities in its upsizing. But it’s mainly still just as terrific it was in its luminous downtown incarnation. Even its newly spawned dents can’t shatter the whole, because the performances—not just the leads, the whole company—zing throughout. The lyrics and music are Sondheim at his most waspish and wise; days later, the songs are still buzzing in my mind, insisting on being hummed.

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