Merrily We Roll Along

Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 musical goes backwards in time telling of three friends and their pursuit of fame and fortune on Broadway. I always thought the idea of telling a story in reverse chronological order was a relatively recent one—from Harold Pinter’s play “Betrayal” in 1978, to be exact. But I’ve just discovered that over a century ago, in 1923, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart did it in their play “Merrily We Roll Along.” It starts with the smashing success of a playwright (the main character), and then goes backward in time through each act, showing through this remarkable reversed…