Just three little things to mention about Merrily We Roll Along, since it has come up:
The T-shirts with character identifications of various sorts — not always character names — were there from the first preview. The change was made after a dress rehearsal. The T-shirts did go through changes during previews, with the IDs changing on many of them, but the idea was onstage from the first preview.
Sondheim was nominated for but did not win the Tony for best score. I think it was the show's only Tony nomination. Sondheim tied with Maury Yeston for best lyrics in the Drama Desk Awards.
I'm very surprised that you feel the show didn't change much during previews. I first saw it at the third preview and then I saw it six more times complete, plus two times when I second-acted it. The last time I saw it was the closing performance. My perception was that it had changed tremendously, although the score changed relatively little compared with everything else in that there were no new songs. Revisions were made to some songs, but no new songs were added. While the basic outlines of the plot were generally the same (although even in basic plot there were several important changes), there certainly were major changes to the dialogue in a number of scenes, with two major scenes being drastically rewritten (basically entirely reconceived). One of those two scenes was drastically rewritten twice. Some scenes did undergo only fairly minor changes. The staging was reworked greatly in a number of scenes. |
