In February 2012, I headed back to Ohio, with some of my favorite “good and crazy people”. I played producer Joe Josephson (as well as my clarinet and saxaphone) in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. The production was directed by John Doyle, who directed our Tony-winning revival of Company, just a few years earlier. Like Company (and Sweeney Todd), Merrily employed John’s unique “actor/musician staging”, where the cast is also the orchestra, playing the score from the stage.
The 2006 Company revival actually began at The Cincinnati Playhouse before it moved to Broadway, and Merrily featured many alums from that production including actor-musicians Matt Castle, Leenya Rideout and Fred Rose (plus Jane Pfitch and Jessica Taylor Wright who joined us in the New York cast), orchestrator Mary-Mitchell Campbell and costumer designer Ann Hould-Ward. We all can’t wait to be working (and playing) together again on another great Sondheim piece in Cinci! The show runs March 3-31.
