Broadway fans are about to be buzzing with the news of Daniel Radcliffe’s return to the stage in the soon-to-be Off Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. The Harry Potter star will join a leading cast that includes other huge names in the world of theater, film, and television, with original Spring Awakening cast member and Mindhunter star Jonathan Groff and Tony Award-winning actress Krystal Joy Brown of Carousel and Hamilton fame also signed on for the production.
While Radcliffe first appeared on a West End stage in 2002 as part of the Kenneth Branagh directed The Play What I Wrote, it wasn’t until 2007 that the then 17-year-old would make waves in both London and New York with his appearance in a revival of Peter Shaffer’s Equus. The story of a young man who has a deep-rooted obsession with horses called for Radcliffe to perform nude in one scene — something that caused a media frenzy as it coincided with the peak days of Harry Potter frenzy. His followup Broadway performance would be in another revival, this time in the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Following this appearance, the Swiss Army Man star would also be cast in several more plays including The Cripple of Inishmann, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and a double-header of Samuel Beckett penned plays, Endgame and Rough for Theatre II. While he caught a stride between the years of 2011 and 2020, appearing nearly every year in a production, Radcliffe has been absent from the stage over the last two years, marking his casting in Merrily We Roll Along as a momentous occasion.
A classic piece of American theater with music and lyrics by Sondheim, Merrily We Roll Along first opened on the stages of Broadway in 1981. The plot follows three friends over a twenty-year period and tells the story of how their personal lives change both inside and outside the friendship. Although each story is told, one of the friends, Franklin Shepard, receives more attention. A musician with a strong talent for composing musicals, Shepard ditches both his musical musings and his friends to become a major Hollywood producer. The beginning of the production picks up at the end of the story in 1976 and marches back in time to 1957 when the group was still tight-knit.
The Off Broadway revival will be directed by Maria Friedman and choreographed by Tim Jackson. It will hold a special place in the hearts of many as Sondheim passed away just last November. The ensemble cast is to be made up of Sherz Aletaha, Katie Rose Clarke, Leana Rae Concepcion, Carter Harris, Colin Keane, Morgan Kirner, Corey Mach, Talia Robinson, Reg Rogers, Amanda Rose, Jamila Sabares-Klemm, Brian Sears, Evan Alexander Smith, Christian Strange, Koray Tarhan, Vishal Vaidya, Natalie Wachen, and Jacob Keith Watson.
Previews will begin at New York Theatre Workshop on November 21 and will run from December 12 until January 21, 2023. You can check out an interview below with Radcliffe and his co-star Evan Rachel Wood about their upcoming appearance in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.