Daniel Radcliffe to Star in Off Broadway ‘Merrily’ Revival

The actor Daniel Radcliffe will star in an Off Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Alongside,” a Stephen Sondheim musical that famously flopped on Broadway however within the a long time since has grow to be an oft-produced and beloved present.

The brand new manufacturing, directed by Maria Friedman, is bound to be a troublesome ticket to get, given Radcliffe’s celeb and the dimensions of the venue: It’s to be staged late this 12 months by the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop at its 199-seat primary stage within the East Village.

Sondheim, in an interview days earlier than his dying final November, stated he was trying ahead to the manufacturing. Friedman, a British musical theater star with an extended historical past of performing in Sondheim musicals, first directed “Merrily” on the Menier Chocolate Manufacturing facility in London in 2012; that manufacturing, hailed by The Guardian with a five-star assessment, transferred to London’s West Finish in 2013, and Friedman then directed a run on the Huntington Theater in Boston in 2017.

“Merrily” is an uncommon present, written in reverse chronological order, a couple of trio of artists whose shut friendship, and shared goals, unravel over time. The musical, that includes songs by Sondheim and a ebook by George Furth, ran on Broadway in 1981; it closed 12 days after opening. The abbreviated Broadway run was the topic of a well-received 2016 documentary movie, “Finest Worst Factor That Ever Might Have Occurred”; Richard Linklater is now spending 20 years making a movie adaptation of the musical starring Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein.

Ben Brantley, then the co-chief theater critic for The New York Occasions, known as “Merrily” “the much-loved downside baby of Sondheim’s musicals.” He noticed Friedman’s manufacturing in London, the place he known as it “heart-clutching,” and in Boston, the place he deemed it “transcendent.” The present, with an admired rating and a critiqued ebook that builds towards a rooftop second the place the three primary characters meet, has been repeatedly rethought; Jesse Inexperienced, the present Occasions chief theater critic, as soon as described himself as “somebody who’d gladly patronize a devoted ‘Merrily’ repertory theater, maybe on that rooftop, operating nothing however reworked variations in perpetuity.”

New York Theater Workshop, greatest often called the birthplace of “Lease,” stated Monday that its manufacturing of “Merrily” would run in “late 2022”; it didn’t announce dates. Radcliffe will play Charley Kringas, a lyricist and playwright; the theater didn’t announce different forged members.

Radcliffe, who vaulted to fame by portraying Harry Potter on movie, has starred in a number of Broadway and Off Broadway performs; he additionally starred in a 2011 Broadway revival of the musical “The right way to Achieve Enterprise With out Actually Making an attempt.”

The “Merrily” manufacturing is the ultimate present chosen by James C. Nicola, who has been the creative director of New York Theater Workshop since 1988, and who’s planning to step down in June. Nicola noticed the unique manufacturing on Broadway, and within the a long time since, he stated, the present “eerily, uncannily, has managed to entwine itself into my very own life.”

“I had by no means earlier than heard or learn any murals that appeared to know me — the truth is, all of us Boomers in that exact second of our lives,” he stated by e-mail. “‘Merrily We Roll Alongside’ is as soon as once more magically discovering its method into my life.”