‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ From Flop To Hit

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Happy Thanksgiving. Today's show is about Stephen Sondheim's 1981 musical, Merrily We Roll Along.

Speaker 2 Next week, a filmed version of the hit 2023 Broadway Revival will open in movie theaters for a limited run, and that's great news.

Speaker 2 The original production closed after only 16 performances, but over the years, this terrific musical developed a cult following.

Speaker 2 There have been several revivals, but the 2023 production was the first to open on Broadway, and it was only a limited engagement.

Speaker 2 It received seven Tony nominations and won four Tony's, including Best Revival of a Musical.

Speaker 2 Today we'll listen listen back to my conversation from last year while the show was still on Broadway with Jonathan Groff, who won a Best Performer Tony for his starring role as Frank.

Speaker 2 His performance in Hamilton as King George earned him a Tony nomination, and he received another nomination for his current role as Bobby Darren in the musical Just in Time.

Speaker 2 Groff is also known for his performances in the movie Frozen and in the TV series Mindhunter, Looking, and Glee.

Speaker 2 My other guest is Maria Friedman, who received a Tony nomination for directing the Merrily Revival. Friedman had also worked closely with Sondheim in the past.

Speaker 2 On stage, she co-starred in a London revival of Merrily in the mid-90s under Sondheim's direction.

Speaker 2 She also had leading roles in British productions of the Sondheim musicals Passion and Sunday in the Park with George.

Speaker 2 She became good friends with Sondheim, and he became the godfather of one of her children.

Speaker 2 People sometimes complain that Sondheim doesn't write hummable melodies, which isn't true, but it's particularly not true of the songs in Merrily, as you'll hear when we play excerpts from the Newcast recording.

Speaker 2 The story begins with three old friends. Jonathan Groff plays Frank, a composer turned film producer.

Speaker 2 Daniel Radcliffe plays Charlie, a lyricist and playwright who wrote songs with Frank and thinks Frank abandoned his calling as a composer to make money as a crowd-pleasing movie producer.

Speaker 2 Lindsey Mendez plays Mary, a best-selling novelist, turned theater critic, who's become bitter and drinks way too much. Charlie and Mary feel abandoned by Frank.

Speaker 2 The story spans 20 years, starting in 1976. Each scene goes further back in time until 1957, when the friends first meet.

Speaker 2 Let's start with Jonathan Groff singing Old Friends from the Newcast Recording.

Speaker 3 Hey, old friend, are you okay?

Speaker 3 Old friend, what do you say?

Speaker 3 Old friend, are we or are we unique?

Speaker 3 Time goes by,

Speaker 3 everything else keeps changing.

Speaker 3 You and I,

Speaker 3 we get continued next week.

Speaker 3 Most friends fade or they don't make the grade New ones are quickly

Speaker 3 made

Speaker 3 and in a pinch, sure they'll do.

Speaker 3 But us, old friend, what's to discuss? Old friend, here's to us

Speaker 3 who's like us,

Speaker 3 damn few.

Speaker 2 That was old friends from the new revival of Steven Soundheim's Merrily We Roll Along. Jonathan Groff, Maria Friedman, congratulations on the show.
Congratulations on your Tony nominations.

Speaker 2 I love this revival so much. I'm so happy to have you on the show.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 4 We're happy to be here.

Speaker 2 Sondheim's songs often have a different meaning than you'd think out of context.

Speaker 2 And this is sung after a fight between Jonathan's character, the composer, Franklin Shepard, and Daniel Radcliffe's character, the lyricist, Charlie Kringis, after their collaboration keeps getting putting on hold because the composer has become a successful film producer and isn't writing music.

Speaker 2 And the lyric is really frustrated because he thinks that the composer is a genius and he's not fulfilling his true worth. It's also very syncopated, this song.

Speaker 2 And I always think of Merrily as Sondheim's syncopated musical. So many of these songs are syncopated.
And Maria, I'm wondering if he ever talked to you about that.

Speaker 4 No, he'd always talk character and story, and that's what drove him to write in the rhythms that he did for different people.

Speaker 4 It's a very, very good question, by the way,

Speaker 4 that you notice that it's quite spiky, and it becomes more rhapsodic and luscious as we walk backwards towards the hope.

Speaker 4 And there was a point where they really have a row, and finally, an argument, I think you call it, I call it a row in England.

Speaker 4 And the syncopation is about the edginess of the way they feel. It's not just there as a kind of add-on.
It's driven by the narrative.

Speaker 2 So, Jonathan, what was it like for you to sing that song? And maybe you could clap out or sing out or point out the syncopation in it.

Speaker 5 Is this in the melody?

Speaker 3 In the melody, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 Even the opening line. Hey, old friend, are you okay?

Speaker 3 Old friend?

Speaker 5 One of my favorite ones, one of my favorite parts though, is

Speaker 5 when they say

Speaker 5 most friends fade or they don't make the grade, new ones are quickly

Speaker 5 made.

Speaker 5 The spaces are so delicious to play in the writing of the music. And Maria, oftentimes in rehearsal, would talk with us about how

Speaker 5 the pauses... are just as, if not more important, than the notes.
The pauses in between the notes and understanding the life that happens in those pauses are so major.

Speaker 5 And in that song, there's a kind of, because the character of Frank is trying to persuade, trying to

Speaker 5 manage Charlie's spikiness, there's almost like a playfulness I find in the pauses, particularly in that one line where I'm waiting for him to break. I'm waiting for him to melt a little bit.

Speaker 5 And it's that tension is so fun to play.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, the original 1981 production of Merrily We Roll Along was a big flop. It closed after, I think, 16 performances.

Speaker 2 Maria, you were close friends with Sondheim. You became close friends.
So why did you want to do a production, a new revival of Merrily, knowing that previous attempts also failed?

Speaker 2 And I don't think they were necessarily artistic failures. I've seen a few productions that I thought were great.
Had they tried to diagnose why the show had never succeeded before? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And what was the diagnosis?

Speaker 4 Well, I never knew what their diagnosis was what they've put in this show. So they didn't discuss that with me.

Speaker 4 I'll tell you one thing they were absolutely adamant about is that we didn't ever refer back to the old version, that this was the version they wanted done.

Speaker 4 That they themselves had rejected the old version that they had written. So, which was deeply painful for them, but they were starting afresh.

Speaker 4 You know, a couple of people have taken bits from the old one. That was just an absolute no-go with Steve.
He did not want his other version ever done again.

Speaker 2 Aaron Ross Bowie. This is the first commercially successful production of Merrily.

Speaker 2 In the show, when the characters have their first successful production, they're standing outside the door listening for the applause.

Speaker 2 And when they hear the applause, they sing, it's a hit, it's a hit. So

Speaker 2 where were you on opening night on Broadway for this show?

Speaker 2 And I'm also wondering, like, if you all went somewheres afterwards and saying it's a hit.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 4 I was in the auditorium. I can't tell you how much I missed Steve that night

Speaker 4 because

Speaker 4 for me, this has been a love letter to him from day one. Not that he wanted the love letter, may I say.
He always say, for God's sake, don't do it for me, do it for you. And I'll come and see it.

Speaker 4 And if I like it, I'll let you know. And if I don't, trust me, I'll let you know.

Speaker 4 But I went into,

Speaker 4 if it any way sounds arrogant, then I've not made myself clear. I was really calm on opening night.
I sat in the auditorium. I watched a whole audience sitting at the front of their seats.

Speaker 4 I heard an opening night that was quiet, sort of, I don't know, it felt like the whole room was pushing as one towards the story.

Speaker 4 I felt totally relaxed because I've been with this show now on and off for 30 something years.

Speaker 4 And it was what I, everything I wanted on that stage, there it was.

Speaker 2 Jonathan, were you listening carefully to the applause to see which way it was going to go?

Speaker 5 It's so funny you asked that because like Maria, funnily enough, the success you could hear in the silence.

Speaker 4 You could.

Speaker 3 It's absolutely right, Jonathan.

Speaker 4 It's in the silence. Yes.

Speaker 4 In the breathing as one. Yes.
When they heard things that they collected those moments, a bit like a sleuth.

Speaker 3 They're going backwards.

Speaker 4 They're like, oh, you just hear the whole audience as one.

Speaker 5 Yeah, there's some lines that happen two hours and 40 minutes into an evening after an audience, one line that has been laid out, one line that takes over the course of maybe three seconds to say.

Speaker 5 And now you've had a whole show, a whole intermission. And this, it reappears.
Several of these lines reappear at the very end. And when you feel those land,

Speaker 5 it's like, whoa, these people are really listening and picking up that detail that

Speaker 5 starts with his writing.

Speaker 2 Are you talking about lines in the song Our Time?

Speaker 5 Yes. I'm thinking about a specific dialogue line.
It's just after...

Speaker 3 Can't talk about it without crying. It's like

Speaker 3 so beautiful.

Speaker 5 The line comes after

Speaker 5 the character of Mary. This is in the first scene, which is chronologically the end of their story, but it's the first scene that the audience is seeing.

Speaker 5 And Mary, who's the dearest friend of Frank, leaves.

Speaker 5 And it's like...

Speaker 5 It's like his heart walks out the door.

Speaker 5 And just after that happens, this young,

Speaker 5 sort of like what would be the young version of Charlie, this young writer says, how do I get to be you?

Speaker 5 Devastating line. That's a devastating line.
And Frank says to this young man, don't just write what you know, pointing to his head. Write what you know, touching his heart.

Speaker 5 And some nights that line gets a bit of a laugh because maybe it's a bit of a douchey thing to say. And it's called upon again at the end of the show in the very final scene.

Speaker 5 Charlie says it to Frank, and it starts everything. It starts their collaboration, it starts their love story, it's the beginning of everything.

Speaker 4 And it's just thrown away.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 He says, You really like what I wrote? Yeah. He says, Yeah.
What's it? He says, You don't like it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you don't just write what you know, you write what you know.

Speaker 3 And that's it.

Speaker 4 And that's two hours, including an interval

Speaker 4 later. And the whole audience just goes, Oh,

Speaker 4 you just feel the pain.

Speaker 2 Jonathan, how could you tear up after having done so many performances of this? How is it that it's still so emotional for you?

Speaker 5 It's such a good question.

Speaker 5 I think that they wrote something really personal. Stephen Sandheim and George Firth

Speaker 5 feels like, just here, let me take my heart out of my body and just place it at your feet. That That is in the energy of the writing.
And then Maria came in and asked us all to do that.

Speaker 5 They did it. They had the bravery to do it.
And so everything actually is a word that comes up a lot in the music and in the script. This word everything.
And in a kind of cosmic sense, Maria...

Speaker 5 gave us the gift of inviting all of us

Speaker 5 to give everything. I mean, we've, including off-Broadway, we've done this over 300 times.
Instead of it getting rote or instead of it getting stale, it just goes deeper and deeper and deeper.

Speaker 3 That's a quote.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, it is.

Speaker 4 There's another thing, though, what I find really interesting, both as a performer and watching people like Jonathan, is that we have one tool that is our very, very best friend as an actor, and that's staying present.

Speaker 4 The greatest actors are present. They're not doing yesterday's show or a plan in their head.

Speaker 4 And because we change and the audience change, you know, we have different days, we're tired, we've had an argument, we've fallen in love, whatever it is, whatever it is, our life is running in town alongside the play.

Speaker 4 That if you are skilled enough and open enough as a performer, the person in front of you will be changing slightly every day. And when an actor presents you with something different,

Speaker 4 you can do two things. You can resent it because it takes you away from what you plan to do, or you go with it and it makes you richer and deeper.

Speaker 4 And hopefully, ultimately, they come back to something that you need and want, that it's a conversation, it's a constant conversation.

Speaker 4 And I don't know if that's right, Jonathan, that I see you every day.

Speaker 4 Every time I pop in and see you, it feels fresh because it's now, it's today.

Speaker 2 Jonathan, you mentioned that the word everything,

Speaker 2 that you were encouraged to give everything.

Speaker 2 And the word everything is mentioned in the song Our Time.

Speaker 2 So I'd like to play that. And just to set the scene, this is on the rooftop of an apartment building that both Charlie and Frank are living in.

Speaker 2 Charlie has been listening to Frank's music, like through the walls, and he had given Frank a copy of his play to read and they both really admire each other's work and

Speaker 2 Frank has this idea we should collaborate you write words and I write music we should be a team and it seems like a new world because you know they're on the verge of a new career it's a new generation it's a new time it's a new world and he sings our time

Speaker 2 And there's such sadness when we hear it in the audience because we all know how things have turned out. the compromises, the disappointments, the anger between the two of them, the frustrations.

Speaker 2 So anything you want to add to that, Jonathan?

Speaker 5 I thought you said it up beautifully.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm going to write it down and copy it.

Speaker 2 And I should also mention, you know, we know that Frank has lost friends and family because he stopped paying attention to them to devote all of his time to his career and to success.

Speaker 2 So let's hear Jonathan Groff sing Our Time.

Speaker 2 Something is stirring, shifting ground. It's just begun.

Speaker 3 Edges are blurring all around.

Speaker 3 And yesterday is done.

Speaker 3 Feel the flow. hear what's happening, we're what's happening.

Speaker 3 Don't you know?

Speaker 3 We're the movers and we're the shapers, we're the names in tomorrow's papers. Up to us, man, to show them.

Speaker 3 It's our time, breathe it in.

Speaker 3 Worlds to change and worlds to win.

Speaker 3 Our turn

Speaker 3 coming through.

Speaker 3 Me and you, man, me and you.

Speaker 2 Jonathan, when you sing that, what are you thinking about?

Speaker 2 I know you're thinking about being frank, but what do you connect it to in your own life? Because he's thinking about, you know, it's our time, the generation's different.

Speaker 2 But there's this line, and yesterday is done. Can you talk a little bit? Is it too emotional?

Speaker 5 No, no, it's okay.

Speaker 5 It's great that you bring up that line too, because that is also the first line of the entire show. Yesterday is done.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 the special gift of being an actor inside of this piece,

Speaker 5 because the show goes backwards,

Speaker 5 it forces the actor to be ultra present because unlike most shows where you build over an arc of an evening, you start at the beginning and go to the end and you carry with you the whole show to the final moment, in this you start

Speaker 5 at the end and you spend the show shedding your life until you're until we're at the purest version, which is on the rooftop singing our time.

Speaker 5 And yesterday is done.

Speaker 5 To hear that at the top of the show and to start performing is such a reminder every day for me to be present.

Speaker 5 And when I've made my way through the story and I get to the end, I feel like I am 18 years old. I feel full of hope.

Speaker 5 It's funny because it makes me emotional in when I think about it as an adult, but when I'm inside of it, I really feel like I'm 18.

Speaker 5 And then at the same time, I feel like I'm talking to Daniel Radcliffe. And that there are moments when I feel like there there is no

Speaker 5 character there. It is, of course, Frank and Charlie.
That's them. We're trying to tell the story.
That's the most important thing.

Speaker 5 But at the exact same moment, I'm saying these things to Dan, into his eyes, and looking out at this audience on Broadway, like 40 plus years later, on the edge of their seats at this show.

Speaker 5 And it feels like anything is possible. It's like the most inspiring, buoyant, life-affirming, exciting vibration to be inside of.

Speaker 2 If you're just joining us, my guests are Jonathan Groff, who won a Tony for his starring performance in the 2023 Broadway revival of Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along, and Maria Friedman, who was nominated for directing the revival.

Speaker 2 A filmed version of that revival opens in movie theaters next week. We'll hear more of the interview after a break.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Today we're talking about the 2023 hit Broadway revival of Stephen Soundheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along, which won a Tony for Best Revival of a Musical.

Speaker 2 The revival ended its limited run last year, but a filmed version of that production opens in movie theaters next week.

Speaker 2 My guests are Maria Friedman, who received a Tony nomination for directing the show, and Jonathan Groff, who won a Tony for his performance.

Speaker 2 Groff also earned Tony nominations for his role as King George in Hamilton and for his current role as Bobby Darren in the musical Just in Time.

Speaker 2 He's also starred in the TV series Mindhunter, Looking, and Glee.

Speaker 2 So, Jonathan, you're tearing up talking about some of these songs and what they mean to you, but you can't really do that on stage because you have to be in the moment.

Speaker 3 How does that work? How do you get your voice out?

Speaker 2 I know when I cry, my voice just kind of quivers and it's hard to speak.

Speaker 5 It's interesting. Right before we started rehearsals, I was obsessively listening to the music, became obsessed with the score.

Speaker 5 And I was trying to know the music before the first day of rehearsal because the music is not changing because this is a revival of a famous Sondheim show. And I would get to learning our time,

Speaker 5 and I would just weep. And I was like, okay, I guess once I'm in rehearsal, I'll stop.
aggressively weeping and we'll be able to sing the song.

Speaker 5 And then our first day of staging this song in the show, sat there with Maria Maria and Dan and Lindsay and we're just all weeping. And we're just, we're crying.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 We're, we're mourning the inner child, we're, we're, the dreams, all of it. And it wasn't really until we had the audience there that I could actually

Speaker 5 pull myself together because understanding, okay, this is a story that we're telling for an audience.

Speaker 5 And what Maria, especially in the intimacy of the off-Broadway experience at New York Theater Workshop where we were for three months before moving to Broadway and the audience is really in your lap.

Speaker 5 And that, for me, brings up a lot of self-conscious feelings. And Maria helped me by saying,

Speaker 5 the ideas that you're articulating are more important than you're feeling embarrassed that the audience is so close to you. Say what they wrote.

Speaker 5 You have to send these ideas into the audience and out into the street outside.

Speaker 5 And so connecting to the importance of telling the story and communicating the ideas was essential in getting me over that kind of crying that makes it unable to speak.

Speaker 5 And so I still feel quite emotional when I'm singing it, and tears do come, but the necessity and the need to articulate the thoughts and the ideas. And

Speaker 4 the same thing, I don't know about you, but I have I have cried probably almost as much over joy and beauty and possibility. So I say use it.

Speaker 4 You know, if it comes because you're excited and you're sitting with your best friend and it's possible, I know I have welled up and teared up with pure joy and hope many times, a beautiful sunset, a moment where I'm sharing ecstasy with friends.

Speaker 4 I don't mean that in the chemical sense.

Speaker 3 I mean in the...

Speaker 4 But that will make me cry. So if that's what Jonathan feels when he's feeling those things, let it happen.

Speaker 3 Why not?

Speaker 2 Maria, how did you cast Jonathan in the role of Frank?

Speaker 4 By meeting him.

Speaker 4 We talked on a Zoom, and then I took him to Steve Sondheim's house, who had already passed away, because I wanted Steve to be, I don't know, somehow part of the decision.

Speaker 4 I wanted Steve to meet Jonathan properly. And we sat and we talked in his house for ages.

Speaker 4 And then Jonathan drove me to my hotel and I got out the car just going, well, that's that then.

Speaker 4 It did mean that we all had to wait an enormous amount of time for him, but I would do that 10 times over.

Speaker 2 How did you cast Daniel Radcliffe? Did you have any idea that he sang?

Speaker 4 Yes, I knew he sang.

Speaker 4 He'd come to see the show in London and had photographs with the cast. And I remember thinking, if I was Daniel and I was watching that show and I was watching that part, I'd think, that's my part.

Speaker 4 Because, I mean, he is Charlie. He's just a walk.
I mean, he's that kind of brilliance. And

Speaker 4 anyway, he's Charlie. And then lists arrived

Speaker 4 and he was on the list and he's with my agent.

Speaker 4 And so I think that we'd just done availabilities

Speaker 4 across a you know a range of people. And my agent called me saying we've just had an availability on Daniel.
And I just thought, well, that's that, then, isn't it?

Speaker 3 If

Speaker 4 that means he really, you know, the fact they'd called me

Speaker 4 meant that there was a big possibility he was at least interested. And then I think I was auditioned.
I mean, I had to go and meet him a couple of times to see whether he would get on with me.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 he's a proper, true, brilliant, brilliant actor. So we immediately started talking about character and the detail and things that he was concerned about and asked me as many questions as I asked him.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 3 that was that.

Speaker 2 We're listening to my interview with Maria Friedman, who directed the 2023 Hit Broadway revival of the Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, and Jonathan Groff.

Speaker 2 He starred on the show, along with Daniel Ratcliffe and Lindsey Mendez. A filmed version of that revival opens in movie theaters next week.
We'll hear more after a break. This is fresh air.

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Speaker 2 Maria, you played Mary,

Speaker 2 one of the three leads in the show,

Speaker 2 in the mid-90s, and this is the time when Sondheim was rewriting it as you were rehearsing it.

Speaker 2 How did he direct you as well? He wasn't directing the show, but I'm sure he was making suggestions to you.

Speaker 4 He was directing the show.

Speaker 3 He was directing it. Okay.
Like literally or actually. I mean,

Speaker 4 he's a great collaborator, so he wouldn't step on the toes of the staging, but the staging is only part of directing. Aaron Powell,

Speaker 2 how did he direct you in that character? And could you compare that to how you directed

Speaker 2 Lindsay Mendez, who plays at Mary in the New Revival?

Speaker 4 There's a kind of reverence about Steve, which he hated.

Speaker 4 They had the published score, and I was being made to sing like it was Charlie, like down here.

Speaker 4 Because it was printed in that score.

Speaker 3 So I was like, Charlie, what?

Speaker 4 I was like, anyway, he came into the rehearsal room and he just looked at the musical director and Darius said, why is she singing down there? And they said, well, it's in the score.

Speaker 4 He said, I write for people. I don't write an idea.
So up it went by a fifth and suddenly it was, guess what, in my key. And I had been saying to them, he won't mind, but they were like,

Speaker 4 he's coming in. It's got to be in this thing.

Speaker 4 so that was the first thing I tore up the it's got to be in this key so when an actor arrives with me and it's out of there we change the key we make it fit them second thing is it's all about the detail so if ever you skimmed past a thought or an idea or a subtext he would sit cross-legged looking into my eyes maybe two foot away and just going, nope, what are you thinking?

Speaker 4 Nope, what's that? What are you doing? What are you thinking? And then he would fill you or make you fill up yourself with your ideas.

Speaker 4 It's what we're talking about, the pauses, the bits in between, the connective tissue that allow you to

Speaker 4 just be full with that part. That was one thing.
The other thing is I

Speaker 4 played her incredibly wild, the first scene where she's drunk and I was like screaming and throwing things and falling on the floor and everything.

Speaker 4 It was pretty, it was really fierce and always different. So I would every single day do something different so that the cast would jump out of their skin.
I'd go up to somebody else and whatever.

Speaker 4 He said to me, I'm really worried about you. This comes too easily to you.

Speaker 4 And over the years, I was so happy because I thought, oh my God, maybe this is like a premonition. I'm going to be one of these crazy, angry banshees, alcoholic, whatever.

Speaker 4 But because he said that, I promise you, I kept an eye on myself because it was. Like in real life?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because it was easy for me to be that wild. I didn't have

Speaker 4 that kind of safety valve that I see a lot of actors have.

Speaker 3 It was all out.

Speaker 2 Were you letting out your bottled-up anger?

Speaker 4 I think probably that's what he said to me. He said, there's some massive part of you that's angry, Maria.

Speaker 4 And I'd always thought of myself as playful and funny and good to be around but then I kind of realised of course that is the actor I am. I don't say yesterday is done, I'm bringing it all with me.

Speaker 4 So it's all available. It's all available, that stuff.
And I had a very complicated childhood. So all those things that were unprocessed find their way into the corners of what I do as a performer.

Speaker 4 So I hope that's something that I was given to him is kind of to be mindful that there's a separation between acting and your real life.

Speaker 4 Make sure that you're not bleeding the two into one another, that they are, it's a technical requirement that mustn't cost you so much that it makes you sick.

Speaker 4 Because it could do when you're asked to do that much.

Speaker 2 Can you think of an example when Sondheim was sitting down looking into your eyes and said, nope.

Speaker 4 I can tell you a story when I was doing Sunday in the Park with George

Speaker 3 where

Speaker 4 I had cried

Speaker 4 during, when I was playing the old Marie, and there's a beautiful song called Children and Art. And I had got

Speaker 4 over-emotional about

Speaker 4 part of that,

Speaker 4 this little old lady's idea about her grandson's art.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 4 he came, he was flying in my dressing room, absolutely raging, saying, what was that?

Speaker 3 And I was like, oh, I thought I actually thought I'd been quite good that night. I was like, oh, dear, oh, dear.

Speaker 4 And he just said, it's not for you to cry, it's for the audience to cry. Now, that, I know, goes against what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 but you have to choose when you cry and I'd just become sort of sentimental with the kind of beauty of the music and it wasn't specific enough and he loved me being specific and I'd kind of

Speaker 4 given it a kind of glow of sentimentality and he was just like

Speaker 4 fuming with me and I remember just sitting there shaking. It was the first time he was ever really cross with me just thinking, oh

Speaker 4 and Jonathan and I share an exact same thing is that he came in into the rehearsal room and he gave me and everybody many many notes in Sunday of the Park with George and I had about 21

Speaker 4 different notes where he said when you do this do that when you do that do that and I just nodded nodded nodded and he flew into my dressing room that evening and he said, I was ready to be really mad at you because I thought, who is this arrogant girl without her notebook and her pencil?

Speaker 4 She didn't write down one thing I said. And then you did them all.
And it's exactly the same. And that's where our friendship started there at that point.

Speaker 2 Speaking of Sondheim,

Speaker 2 as we've discussed, Merrile is told in like reverse chronological order.

Speaker 2 It starts with the present when expectations have not been fulfilled, and it ends when they're like 20 years younger, when expectations are so high and they're so excited and so fresh and the world is so new to them.

Speaker 2 And several songs are reprised, but often the second time around when they're younger, the song has a much more optimistic flair than the first time around that we heard the song.

Speaker 2 And that's particularly true of a song called Not a Day Goes By.

Speaker 2 And the first time we hear it,

Speaker 2 Frank's wife is singing it while they're in the middle of this very acrimonious divorce. And the second time we hear it is at their wedding.

Speaker 2 like years earlier. And you know, one of the times I interviewed Sondheim, I asked him about that song and about writing things in reverse chronological order.

Speaker 2 So before we hear both versions of that song, I'd like to play what Sondheim had to say about it. So here's Sondheim talking about writing the song in reverse chronological order.

Speaker 7 Well, I wrote the whole score knowing that it was going to go backwards in time. And I thought, what does that imply?

Speaker 7 Well, it implies that something that you and I sing today, 20 years from now, will have a different meaning to both of us. It doesn't have to be that we get divorced.

Speaker 7 Maybe it'll be memories of something.

Speaker 7 But everything that happens at a given time in your life has echoes and resonances afterwards, what I would call like reprises, really, of thoughts, of moments in your life that happen in different contexts.

Speaker 7 So I thought, if I'm going to write the show that goes backwards in time, we'll start with the reprises. That is to say, start with the variation on the theme and then go back to the theme.

Speaker 7 And that's what happens here. It happens with a lot of other songs in the show, too.

Speaker 7 But this one, very specifically with the lyric, because it applies to two very distinct and distinctly defined situations, one a divorce and one when they got married.

Speaker 7 So you're taking two high spots of their lives,

Speaker 7 their marriage and their divorce. I did that throughout the show.

Speaker 7 I still began, as I always do, writing the score from the first song on, but knowing, always making notes as to how I would use it later in the show. So I never wrote blind, so to speak.

Speaker 7 I wrote knowing, okay, this will be useful when this, because we had plotted out the show and we knew what was going to happen in the second act. In other words, we knew what had happened in the past.

Speaker 7 And so, yeah, so I was writing to that kind of plot.

Speaker 2 Okay, that was Stephen Sondheim on Fresh Air. So let's hear that song, Not a Day Goes By.
The first version we'll hear is Katie Rose Clark singing it when Beth and Frank are divorcing.

Speaker 2 And it's a very acrimonious divorce. And the second version is when they're getting married.
And she's just expressing her love for him. And Frank,

Speaker 2 my guest Jonathan Groff, duets with her.

Speaker 3 So here we go.

Speaker 2 Two versions of Not a Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll Along.

Speaker 3 Not a day goes by,

Speaker 3 not a single day.

Speaker 3 But you're somewhere a part of my life.

Speaker 3 And it looks like you'll stay

Speaker 3 as the days go by.

Speaker 3 I keep thinking

Speaker 3 when

Speaker 3 does it end?

Speaker 3 Where's the day I'll have started forgetting?

Speaker 3 But I just go on thinking and sweating and cursing and crying and turning and reaching and waking and dying. And no,

Speaker 3 not a day goes by.

Speaker 3 Not a blessed day.

Speaker 3 Not a day goes by

Speaker 3 Not a single day

Speaker 3 But you're somewhere a part of my life

Speaker 3 And it looks like you'll stay

Speaker 3 As the days go by

Speaker 3 I keep thinking, when does it end?

Speaker 3 That it can't get much better, much longer.

Speaker 3 But it only gets better and stronger and deeper and nearer and simpler and freer and richer and clearer. And oh,

Speaker 3 not a day goes by.

Speaker 2 That was two versions of Not a Day Goes By from the new cast recording of Merrily We Roll Along. We'll talk with the show's star Jonathan Groff and the director Maria Friedman after a short break.

Speaker 2 This is fresh air.

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Speaker 2 Let's get back to my interview with the star of the 2023 Tony Award-winning revival of Merrily We Roll Along, Jonathan Groff, and its director, Maria Friedman.

Speaker 2 A filmed version of that revival opens in movie theaters next week.

Speaker 2 Maria, another question for you about Sondheim.

Speaker 2 He became the godfather of one of your children. What did that mean in your life and in his life and your child's life?

Speaker 4 Huge amount. And my other child's mentor, along with, I mean, he mentored a lot of young writers.

Speaker 4 It meant everything.

Speaker 4 I asked him

Speaker 4 after I'd had a big health scare.

Speaker 4 We were walking along Covent Garden. We always held hands or, you know, we just like just walking.
He loved walking the streets of London.

Speaker 4 And when I got diagnosed, he said, I'm taking you to the hospital. I mean, he was, you know, he was very much,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 he was a great friend to those of us lucky enough.

Speaker 4 I don't want to own him, that's the thing.

Speaker 4 I've seen a lot of people come out of the woodwork who claim him as great friends. So I don't want to own him.
What it meant to me was everything. I asked him whether he would be

Speaker 4 godfather to either one of my children.

Speaker 4 Toby was the one he'd known longest. So he said, Toby, but I will.
But I really wanted to make sure that if I wasn't around, that they had this sort of

Speaker 4 contact with the man that meant so much to me in my life. So

Speaker 4 that's how that happened.

Speaker 2 Had you asked Sondheim to be the godfather of one of your children, afraid that you might not live very long?

Speaker 3 Yep. Yep.

Speaker 4 And he was very happy to accept. He had no choice, really, did he?

Speaker 3 No, thanks.

Speaker 3 No. That's like.

Speaker 4 No, yeah, it was lovely.

Speaker 4 Really, really lovely.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Outrageous of me to ask, but

Speaker 4 he was happy. He was happy.

Speaker 2 Jonathan, a question for you. A lot of people know you from Hamilton, where you were King George.
And so Hamilton is such an ensemble cast, but you're always on stage alone.

Speaker 2 Like, you're the king, you're the British one, and everybody in the cast is fighting, like, the Revolutionary War. They want to be done with you.

Speaker 2 And so in this great ensemble show, like, you're alone on stage singing your King George stuff. Whereas in Merrily, you're the central figure in an ensemble cast.

Speaker 2 You're the figure that everybody else revolves around.

Speaker 2 And so it seems so different to me. Can you just compare those two experiences?

Speaker 5 When I said yes to signing on to Hamilton for a year, I said yes, of course, because I loved the nine minutes that I got to be on stage as King George.

Speaker 5 But really, the yes was to be inside of that brilliant material eight times a week. Theater for me is,

Speaker 5 it's almost religious. You know, they say you are what you repeatedly do.

Speaker 5 And when you're doing a show, you show up to the theater eight times a week and you repeat the same words over and over again.

Speaker 5 And so I take it really seriously what I, what you're fortunate enough to be in the position where I can, in certain ways, choose the things that I get to spend

Speaker 5 the eight show a week, the material that I get to spend doing that.

Speaker 5 And with Hamilton, I would stand in the king costume in the box and I would peek through the curtain and I would watch the entire show. Performing-wise,

Speaker 5 it's so much more difficult for me to do those nine minutes than it is to play Frank because to come out cold and sing and leave and, like you said, Terry, not interact with anyone is

Speaker 5 not my personal dream of acting. I love interacting while acting.

Speaker 5 With Merrily, getting to hear this incredible material and get to have this incredible material inside of my body eight times a week is literally life-changing.

Speaker 5 Like the cells in your body, the music, the vibration,

Speaker 5 I feel like I'm 18 when the show is over. And

Speaker 5 to be inside of something where you can play

Speaker 3 everything.

Speaker 5 Like the therapy, can you imagine the therapy of that that we get every night?

Speaker 5 To scream and show every dark, repressed corner of myself and then lean into the joy. I mean, it really is, it is the gift of gifts.

Speaker 2 Thank you both so much. And thank you for this production.
I just enjoyed it so much.

Speaker 4 Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure.

Speaker 5 Thank you for the great questions and the great time.

Speaker 2 Maria Friedman directed the 2023 revival of Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along. Jonathan Groff starred in the production in the role of Frank.

Speaker 2 I spoke with him last year when the show was still on Broadway. A filmed version of that production will open in movie theaters next week.

Speaker 3 How's it going? Good, you?

Speaker 5 Fair. Yeah, tell me.

Speaker 3 Russian Tiru. Hi.
Mary, say hello. I think I got a job.
Where? True romances. Posing.
Thank you. Writing captions.
What about the book? What about the book? Nothing. Are you working on the book? Yes.

Speaker 3 Good. No.
Mary.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Boldonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monik Nazareth, Faya Chaloner, Susan Yakindi, and Anna Bauman.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
Roberta Shorak directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.

Speaker 2 I'm Tyria Gross, and all of us at Fresh Air wish you a happy Thanksgiving.

Speaker 3 How's it coming? Good. You done.
One minute. Hemper coming.
Hi. Terry.
Say hello. I got another job.

Speaker 5 Where?

Speaker 3 What's that? A brand new concept. Pop-up pictures.
What about the book? What about the book? Did he give the publisher the book? Yes,

Speaker 3 finished. Let me call you back.
Right, this is just a draft. Probably it stinks.
Haven't had the time to do a polish. You sing.
Right. Who wants to live in New York?

Speaker 3 Who wants the worry, the noise, the dirt, the heat? Who wants the garbage cans clanging in the streets? Suddenly I do.

Speaker 3 They're always popping their cork. I'll fix that line.
The cops, the cabbies, the salesgirls up at sacks. You gotta have a real taste for a maniac.
Suddenly I do.

Speaker 3 That's great. That's swell.
The other stuff as well.

Speaker 3 It isn't every day you hear it score this strong. But felt as if for me, there's only one thing wrong.

Speaker 3 There's not a tone you can hum.

Speaker 3 There's not a tune. You go bump, bum, bump, da-dum.
You need a tune, you go bum, bump, bump, dumb. Give me a melody.

Speaker 3 Why can't you throw him a crumb?

Speaker 3 What's wrong with Lanning him? Tap that toes a bit. I'll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit.
Give me a melody.

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