Merrily We Roll Along is a Rubik’s Cube of a musical. Move a row the wrong way, it loses its emotional connection; another and the characters become unlikable. This may be why it was such a failure when it premiered on Broadway in 1981 and ran only 16 performances. Some say its negative critical response was a comeuppance for the success of director/producer Harold Prince and composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who had a changed the face of musical theater over the 1970s with such innovative musicals as “Company,” “Follies,” and “Sweeney Todd.” But Prince even admitted that he could never come up with a visual concept for “Merrily,” the most conceptual of musicals; and he complicated its complexity by casting actors mostly under the age of 21, setting it in a high school gym, and having the cast wear T-shirts that explained their connection with the protagonist, Franklin Shepard, a successful Broadway composer whose life unfolds in flashbacks.

All that made Merrily a musical to hate on. That was the case during its stormy preview period when audiences walked out in droves and the word spread, even before social media, that there was disaster unfolding at the Alvin Theatre. Yet Prince later would say the rehearsal and preview period was one of his happiest experiences in the theater, despite making frantic changes to the show from an impending disaster. Consequently, the show’s failure affected him greatly, as it did Sondheim, who considered stop writing musicals altogether. Nonetheless, his ten year partnership with Prince was put on hold.

Sondheim and his librettist George Furth (Company) returned to Merrily to revise the piece, which had been adapted from one of the few box office failures by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart in the 1930s. They added songs, strengthened the characters, and sharpened the focus, and most significantly, cast it with adult actors for its premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1985, which was better received, but still didn’t fully solve its puzzle. That would wait until 2012 when Sondheim acolyte Maria Friedman directed a new version at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London. As an actress, she was one of the foremost Sondheim interpreters, starring in the London premieres of Sunday in the Park with George and Passion. She won the Olivier Award for the latter (and as someone fortunate enough to see it, it was one of the great Sondheim performances). Then as a director, she fully realized Merrily, simplifying it by focusing on its characters and relationships. Her version traveled to America, first at Boston’s Huntington Theatre with members of the London cast, then off-Broadway in 2022 recast at the New York Theatre Workshop with Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez. It transferred to Broadway the following year, winning Tony Awards for Groff and Radcliffe, and for the show itself for Best Musical revival. At last Merrily was a hit.

And now a beautiful thing happened. Friedman has directed a film version of her production that Sony Pictures Classics released this past Friday in more than 1000 theaters throughout the country. Far more than a video record of the production, Friedman and her able cinematographer Sam Levy rethink her staging in cinematic terms. It is filmed largely in close-ups, which seem too intense at first, but make sense as the story unfolds. Never has Franklin Shepard’s life and relationships felt more real than they do here. Nor has Furth’s libretto been as biting or Sondheim’s song as probing. Wisely Friedman brings all the background characters to the forefront in both the book scenes and the interlocking musical scene changes that use the title song as a motif. Individuals that seemed like caricatures in previous versions are more vividly played, underscoring how these relationships effect Franklin’s decisions. Central, of course, are the relationships between Shepard (Groff) and his collaborator Charlie Kringas (Radcliffe) and bff Mary Flynn (Mendez) and they are captured at crucial junctures in their relationships. Friedman stages the melodramatic opening scene – a satiric Hollywood party – with its subtexts up front allowing Mendez a scene-stealing moment as a drunk truth-teller. The same is true when Radcliffe brings down the house with his angry indictment of his partner’s selling out with “Franklin Shepard Inc.” In past productions, his character has often felt like a crank, but Radcliffe impassioned performance gives his criticism deeper and more personal meaning, and the song comes vividly to life.

If the first act chronicles how Mary and Charlie fall out-of-love with Franklin, the second shows how that love developed. Along the way Franklin leaves his wife Beth (a moving Katie Rose Clarke) for Broadway superstar Gussie Carnegie (Krystal Joy Brown in a revelatory performance) as he trades his integrity for wealth and fame. Part of the problem with Merrily in prior productions is how judgmental this all seems, but Friedman’s staging makes this betrayal of values viable, and the musical falls into place because of that. It is a cautionary tale that resonates, which I think is what attracted Sondheim and Prince to the Kaufman and Hart play in the first place.

Groff, who is currently something of the Prince of Broadway playing Bobby Darin in Just in Time, here comes into his own as a musical actor. His mix of sweet boyishness and steely determination is nicely balanced, and he has great rapport with Radcliffe and Mendez, who may just love him too much for their own good. But part of Groff’s appeal is that you understand why they fall for him. This comes across in the final scene in which the three gather on a rooftop to watch Sputnik fly by (it is 1957). Groff’s enthusiasm is infectious, and the trio’s reading of “Our Time” provides a bittersweet coda to this film version of its superbly mounted revival.

Currently Richard Linkater is filming his version of Merrily using the technique he used in Boyhood; that is, filming the sequences as to reflect the actors’ real ages over its 20-year running time. With a cast led by Paul Mescal, Ben Platt, and Beanie Feldstein, Linklater started filming in 2019. This means that the film will not be completed until 2039 and released until 2040. “I first saw, and fell in love with Merrily in the ’80s, and I can’t think of a better place to spend the next 20 years than in the world of a Sondheim musical,” Mr. Linklater said in a statement. “I don’t enter this multiyear experience lightly, but it seems the best, perhaps the only way, to do this story justice on film.”

Sondheim’s score has long been the reason why the show lived on after its 16-performance Broadway run. The original cast album distilled what was great about Merrily and prompted it being revisited. In the rewrite, Sondheim restored Beth singing “Not a Day Goes By” as it was originally staged before giving it to Franklin for the Broadway opening; replaced “Rich and Happy” with “That’s Frank,” a more-focused song; and added “Growing Up,” a song that better defines his goals and his relationship with Gussie. In this production, Sondheim’s long-time collaborator Jonathan Tunick provided new orchestrations for a smaller ensemble that may be missing the brassy sound of the original, but function nicely. But the star here is Friedman, who rethinks her stage version for the movies, and does so in ways that allow this thorny musical to come into its own. Its too bad that Prince and Sondheim aren’t around to see it; they would likely be pleased.

Merrily We Roll Along is currently in theaters. For more information, visit the Sony Pictures Classic website.