We live in an era of hustle culture and burnout. We watch friends move to LA to "make it" and slowly ghost us. We scroll through LinkedIn and see former radicals turned corporate consultants. Merrily is the sound of that realization.
Here’s the miracle: Merrily refused to stay dead. Merrily We Roll Along
Of course, you can’t write about Merrily without mentioning the train wreck of 1981. After the genius of Sweeney Todd , Sondheim and director Harold Prince assembled a cast of fresh-faced kids (including a 22-year-old Jason Alexander). The out-of-town tryouts in San Diego were a bloodbath. Audiences, disoriented by the reverse chronology, walked out. Critics sharpened their knives. We live in an era of hustle culture and burnout
For most stories, that’s the opening question. For this musical, it’s the entire plot. Merrily is the sound of that realization