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Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened...
Not Rated
Documentary
7.5/10(19 ratings)
This film from acclaimed theater director Lonny Price charts the journey of the original cast of Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along" in the 30-plus years since the musical debuted on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre in 1981.
11-18-2016
1h 36m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Lonny Price
Writers:
Lonny Price, Ted Schillinger, Kitt Lavoie
Key Crew
Executive Producer:
Scott Rudin
Executive Producer:
Eli Bush
Executive Producer:
Kaki Kirby
Cinematography:
Matthew M. Howe
Producer:
Bruce David Klein
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Stephen Sondheim
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. Among the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Sondheim was praised for having "reinvented the American musical" with shows that tackled "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication". His shows addressed "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience" with songs often tinged with "ambivalence" about various aspects of life.
Sondheim started his theatre career by writing the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) before becoming a composer and lyricist. Sondheim's best-known works include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987).
Sondheim's accolades include eight Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2008), an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has a theater named for him both on Broadway and in the West End of London. Sondheim wrote film music, contributing "Goodbye for Now" for Warren Beatty's Reds (1981). He wrote five songs for 1990's Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", sung in the film by Madonna, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Film adaptations of Sondheim's work include West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Gypsy (1993), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Into the Woods (2014), West Side Story (2021), and Merrily We Roll Along (TBD).
Hal Prince was an American theatrical producer and director, responsible for such megahits as The Phantom Of The Opera, Evita, A Little Night Music, Fiddler On The Roof, Cabaret, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. For his stage work, he received 21 Tony Awards.
Teresa Jo Ann Bernadette "Terry" Finn (born August 6, 1955) is an American actress best known for creating the role of Gussie Carnegie in the original Broadway cast of the Stephen Sondheim/Hal Prince/George Furth musical comedy Merrily We Roll Along and its Original Cast Album.
Jim Walton is best known for his many roles on and off Broadway. Jim made his debut in the 1980 musical revue, Perfectly Frank. He is also known for a multitude of roles in various musicals by composer, Stephen Sondheim.
Jay Scott Greenspan, better known by his professional name of Jason Alexander, is an American actor, writer, comedian, television director and producer, and singer. He is best known for his role as George Costanza on the television series Seinfeld, appearing in the sitcom from 1989 to 1998. He also has had an active career on the stage, appearing in several Broadway musicals including Jerome Robbins' Broadway in 1989, for which he won the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical. He appeared in the Los Angeles production of The Producers with Martin Short. He is the Artistic Director of "Reprise! Broadway's Best in Los Angeles," where he has directed several musicals. Alexander is also an avid poker player.
Mandy Patinkin is an American stage, film and television actor and tenor vocalist. Patinkin is a noted interpreter of the music of Stephen Sondheim and is known for his work in musical theatre, originating iconic roles such as Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George, Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden and Burrs in The Wild Party. He has also appeared in television series' such as Chicago Hope, Dead Like Me, the first two seasons of Criminal Minds, and Homeland. His most noted film role was as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.
Liz Callaway is a Tony nominee and Emmy Award-winning actress, singer and recording artist. She made her Broadway debut in Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, received a Tony Award nomination for her performance in Baby, and for five years won acclaim as Grizabella in Cats. She has also starred in the original Broadway casts of Miss Saigon, The Three Musketeers, and The Look of Love.
Liz sang the Academy Award-nominated song “Journey to the Past” in the animated feature Anastasia and is also the singing voice of Princess Jasmine in Disney’s Aladdin and the King of Thieves and The Return of Jafar. Other film work includes the singing voice of the title character in The Swan Princess, Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride, Beauty and the Beast, The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars and The Rewrite with Hugh Grant.
She received an Emmy Award for hosting Ready to Go, a daily, live children’s program on CBS in Boston. Other TV credits include In Performance at the White House, Inside the Actor’s Studio: Stephen Sondheim, In Performance at the White House, Christmas with the Boston Pops, The David Letterman Show, and Senior Trip (CBS Movie of the Week).
Liz has released eight solo albums: Anywhere I Wander: Liz Callaway Sings Frank Loesser, The Story Goes On: Liz Callaway On and Off-Broadway, The Beat Goes On, Passage of Time, Merry and Bright, The Essential Liz Callaway, Comfort and Joy: An Acoustic Christmas, and her latest, To Steve with Love: Liz Callaway Celebrates Sondheim. Her numerous other recordings include Sibling Revelry, Boom! Live at Birdland, The Maury Yeston Songbook, Dreaming Wide Awake: The Music of Scott Alan, Hair in Concert, and the complete recording of Allegro produced by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization.
Tonya Pinkins was born in Chicago, Illinois. She has four children. Her father was a police officer and insurance salesman and her mother is a former postal worker. She has two brothers, Eric Swoope and Thomas Swoope and a sister Tamera Swoope from whom she is estranged. She was interested in the arts from a young age. In high school, she studied acting at the Goodman Theatre Young People's Program. Aged 18, she briefly attended college and decided to pursue an acting career instead. She later returned to college, earning an undergraduate degree from Columbia College in Chicago, followed by graduate work at Carnegie Mellon's music theater program, and a year at California Western School of Law in San Diego.
Pinkins is probably most admired for her stage work. She won a Tony Award for her performance as Sweet Anita in Jelly's Last Jam. She was nominated for her roles in Play On! and in Caroline, or Change, where she played the title role. Her additional Broadway credits include Merrily We Roll Along, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Wild Party, House of Flowers, Radio Golf, A Time To Kill and Holler If Ya Hear Me.
Pinkins has performed in several Off Broadway productions, including the comic role of Mopsa, the Shepherdess, in The Winter's Tale produced by the Riverside Shakespeare Company at The Shakespeare Center in 1983.
In 2011, Pinkins starred in the world premiere of Kirsten Greenidge’s Milk Like Sugar at La Jolla Playhouse, and received a 2012 Craig Noel nomination for Best featured Actress in a Play. She reprised her role in the Playwrights Horizons in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, and garnered a 2012 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play.
In 2012 Pinkins starred in Katori Hall's play Hurt Village, the gritty drama about life and change in a Memphis housing project made its world-premiere at Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre Company as part of the theatre's inaugural season. The play also Marsha Stephanie Blake, Ron Cephas Jones, Saycon Sengbloh, Lloyd Watts, Charlie Hudson III, Nicholas Christopher, Corey Hawkins, Ron Cephas Jones and Joaquina Kalukango.
In 2014, Pinkins appeared in New Federal Theatre's revival of Ed Bullins' The Fabulous Miss Marie opposite Roscoe Orman; in the Broadway production of Holler If Ya Hear Me; and the world premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' War at Yale Repertory.
She has also had a prolific television career making guest appearances on such television shows as Army Wives, 24, Law & Order, The Cosby Show, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, and The Guardian among others. During the mid-1980s Pinkins created the role of Heather Dalton on the CBS soap, As the World Turns. In 1991 she was cast as Livia Frye in All My Children. Pinkins left All My Children in 1995 but returned to her role in 2003. She was later put on contract with the show from March 2004 until June 2006, when she was downgraded to recurring status. She has played Amala Motobo on the popular television show 24. She has appeared in several films in supporting roles, including Newlyweeds, Home, Fading Gigolo opposite Woody Allen, Enchanted, Premium, Romance & Cigarettes, Noah's Arc: Jumping The Broom and Above the Rim among others.
