Merrily We Roll Along
from Flicks with The Film Snob Hosted by Chris Dashiell
Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 musical goes backwards in time telling of three friends and their pursuit of fame and fortune on Broadway. I always thought the idea of telling a story in reverse chronological order was a relatively recent one—from Harold Pinter’s play “Betrayal” in 1978, to be exact. But I’ve just discovered that over a century ago, in 1923, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart did it in their play “Merrily We Roll Along.” It starts with the smashing success of a playwright (the main character), and then goes backward in time through each act, showing through this remarkable reversed…
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