The word "merrily" may appear in the title of Stephen Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along, but it hardly describes how the show spent decades climbing its way out of the reputational gutter, going from legendary Broadway fiasco to Tony Award-winning Broadway smash. Merrily premiered in 1981 and closed after only 16 performances, a disastrous, dreadfully reviewed final venture between Sondheim and director Harold Prince (their previous Broadway collaboration was 1979’s Sweeney Todd). Over the decades, various fixers, including Sondheim, have tried to revive the play to incremental degrees of success. But the show’s fortunes only began to turn in 2012 when Maria Friedman, who had never directed a musical, mounted an acclaimed revival in London’s Off-West End. In 2023, Friedman took the

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