Toward the end of this documentary, the director/narrator Lonny Price gives overviews of several of its subjects' life and career paths (including Ann Morrison [Mary Flynn], Jim Walton [Franklin Shepard], Jason Alexander [Joe], Terry Finn [Gussie], and himself [Charley Kringas]) after "Merrily We Roll Along" closed. However, Price doesn't mention the subsequent careers of two of the show's most successful cast members: Tonya Pinkins (Gwen Wilson) and Giancarlo Esposito (Valedictorian). Although she was interviewed for the documentary, the fact that Pinkins has had a successful Broadway career in plays and musicals like The Wild Party and Radio Golf, was nominated for two Tony Awards, and has won one all went unmentioned. And Esposito, whose extensive film and television career has ranged from Do the Right Thing to The Usual Suspects to Breaking Bad, is only seen in archive footage; he was not interviewed.
The film doesn't mention that Ann Morrison won the Theatre World Award for Merrily, starred on the West End in London, Off Broadway, Regional Theaters, returned to Broadway with Hal Prince directing, and has never left her stage career that extends over 45 years.
"Merrily From Center Stage" is her award-winning solo theater musical that gives additional insight into what it was like to play the original Mary Flynn during the 6 weeks of previews on Broadway when the show was different at each performance.
"Merrily From Center Stage" is her award-winning solo theater musical that gives additional insight into what it was like to play the original Mary Flynn during the 6 weeks of previews on Broadway when the show was different at each performance.
One of the casting agents visible in the archive footage of the audition scenes is Joanna Merlin. Merlin had a dual career: though she was an actress on the stage and screen (including in the original Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof, such movies as Ten Commandments, All that Jazz, and Mystic Pizza, and TV shows like Law & Order), she was also a powerful casting director. She was in charge of the casting for many of the original productions of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musicals, including Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, and (as shown in this documentary) Merrily We Roll Along, as well as non-Sondheim shows including On the Twentieth Century and Evita and movies including Big Trouble in Little China, The Last Emperor, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, and Jefferson in Paris. In the 1980 movie musical Fame, Merlin played Miss Berg, a dance teacher who is first seen supervising the auditions for students who hope to attend a Manhattan performing arts high school. The scenes of Miss Berg auditioning teenage singers, dancers, and actors are quite similar to the analogous documentary scenes of the real Merlin doing very much the same thing in her real life to cast the teenage actors for Merrily We Roll Along.