It's not hard to see that Merrily We Roll Along is a musical masterpiece. From the melancholy sweetness of “Good Thing Going” to the stoned backing vocals of “The Blob” and the dreamy hopes of “Our Time”, every single song is a work of art on its own (it's Stephen Sondheim we're talking about). However, I'd like to point out here that this show is also a literary masterpiece, a quality that is sadly too often neglected in musical theater. I sincerely believe that Merrily We Roll Along is more than a good musical: it's a play of real quality and real interest.

Sondheim's score relies on remarkably subtle stylistic effects. In the course of the inverted chronological construction, musical motifs are taken up again and again, producing a devious emotional effect: should we rejoice throughout the second act at seeing these characters happy and ambitious, or should we bitterly regret their downfall? The song lyrics are remarkable in this sense: Sondheim simply reuses a word, such as “right”, and loads it with a particular twist depending on the characters' current state during the song. Songs like “Not A Day Goes By” and “Merrily We Roll Along” are repeated throughout the play, without any significant change in lyrics, yet each time with a different tone (not to mention the recurring melodies: cf. “Now You Know” / “Franklin Shepard Inc.”).

I also have to give credit to George Furth's libretto, which is uniquely fast-paced; the vivid humor repeatedly asks the same question: “how did you get to be here?”, can we rejoice alongside characters we know are doomed to failure? The play is very easy to follow, and one might be led to think, wrongly, that the plot relies solely on a cheap vaudevillian atmosphere - the subtlety I've just mentioned should by no means be overlooked.