Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened
54th New York Film Festival
September 30 - 11, 2016
Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince, and George Furth’s much ballyhooed reverse chronology musical Merrily We Roll Along closed after just 16 performances in 1981 but gradually assumed legend status. This alternately heartbreaking and euphoric film focuses on the original cast members, then and now, and the special place this experience holds in their memories.
In 1981, Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince, and George Furth embarked on Merrily We Roll Along, a musical based on the 1934 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart comedy told in reverse: the characters, played by a cast of teenage unknowns, begin as disillusioned adults and end as starry-eyed adolescents. Though the original, much-ballyhooed production was panned by the critics and closed after just 16 performances, Merrily We Roll Along would go on to attain musical theater legend status. This alternately heartbreaking and euphoric film by original cast member Lonny Price features never-before seen footage of Prince and Sondheim at work on the show and revisits many of Price’s fellow actors, all of them united by this once-in-a-lifetime experience. An NYFF54 selection. An Abramorama release.
Examine[s] the thrill of dreams coming true, and the inevitable come down afterwards.
—Jude Dry, Indiewire
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