“Merrily We Roll Along” Again

“Who wants to live in New York?” the three frenemies in Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” wonder. Happily, Maria Friedman does. Friedman, a British singer and actress, is directing a new version of that musical, soon to open on Broadway. “Here, the elevator man has as much right as you do,” she said one day last week, sitting in the café behind the Loeb Boathouse, in Central Park. “Everything is like these quick-witted, fast one-liners.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize her point.

It was late on a sultry afternoon. The temperature was past ninety, but Friedman, who had just finished nine hours of rehearsal with Daniel Radcliffe (Charley), Jonathan Groff (Franklin), and Lindsay Mendez (Mary) for the mid-September transfer from New York Theatre Workshop (sold out) to the Hudson Theatre (limited run), felt not the humidity but “the aspiration of man” in the New York air. For her, yes, the noise, yes, the dirt, yes, the heat—whoops, a rat! Friedman lifted her feet up and gamely went on with her story.

Her first visit to Manhattan was as a twenty-three-year-old, in 1983. A boyfriend who had a gig as a dancer with Shirley Bassey in the Bahamas sent her a cheap ticket with a stopover in the city. She asked a cop how to get to the Park. “Take a left, a left, then another left,” she recounted. She acted out the joke, doing a New York’s Finest accent.

Her favorite part of Central Park is the Lake. She has rowed there no fewer than twenty-five times, by her count. But, alas, the rehearsal had gone so long that she’d missed her chance on this day. The boats were all locked up, leaving the water to darkness and to—whoops, another rat!

This prompted a good show-biz story: Friedman was having dinner in the West End one night. A friend excused himself to use the bathroom and came back to find her standing on a chair. She recalled, “He asked, ‘Are you singing “Happy Birthday”?’ And I was, like, ‘Maria Friedman is going to stand up and sing because it’s somebody’s birthday? Are you kidding me? Get me out of here!’ ” She’d seen a mouse.

“Merrily” is Friedman’s first Sondheim directing credit, but her singing epaulets are well sewn on. She originated the role of Dot in the London production of “Sunday in the Park with George” (Olivier nomination, 1991), did the same six years later with Fosca, in “Passion” (won!), and sang the jealous Mary in “Merrily” along the way. Directing the play made her shift her sympathies to Franklin. Of all the “Merrily”s over the years, Friedman’s is probably the nicest to the character, who is usually portrayed as the kind of spineless wretch that Alan Alda plays. “Here’s the question,” she demanded. “What is wrong with success? Why wouldn’t you want it? Do you want to sit in a garage? They call it selling out. I call it success.”

Friedman and Sondheim, who died in 2021, were old, old friends. When did they meet? Friedman doesn’t do dates. “I’m literally the most present person,” she said. “I’m useless. Days go by and I’m in them, whatever.” She first got to know the composer-lyricist when she played Dot in “Sunday.”

A connection blossomed. Sondheim looked out for her. “I got ill once,” Friedman recalls, “and I said, ‘Look, who knows what’s going to go on?’ ” What do you say, old friend? Sondheim agreed to be godparent to one of her children. Friedman even has a rare I-stood-up-Sondheim-and-lived-to-tell-the-tale story, which took place on the very same Lake she was sitting by. She was rowing with an elderly friend, lost track of time, and couldn’t find a cab in the Park. Sondheim loved her and forgave. But what year? “So find out the year Marvin died,” Friedman said. She was in town to sing at his memorial. (Hamlisch, 1944-2012.)

“Merrily” on Broadway, she added, is the N.Y.T.W. “Merrily” plus “a notebook this full of notes”—fingers spread—that she and the cast never got to address earlier. And a bigger budget. When Franklin walks up the gangplank to sail to Europe, the stairs come out now. “The beat was missing before,” Friedman said. “Now I have the show I wanted to do.” Her next hope isn’t to direct another Sondheim but to sing him again. She has her eye on Mrs. Lovett, in “Sweeney Todd.” She worries that she is going to be too old—Annaleigh Ashford, almost twenty-five years younger than she, is baking the meat pies now on Broadway. But this is New York. “I have a very good Mrs. Lovett in me,” she declared, with moxie. ♦