NEW AGAIN

“Merrily We Roll Along” and “Some Like It Hot.”

- HELEN SHAW

“It’s our time, breathe it in,” the friends Frank ( Jonathan Groff), Charley (Daniel Radcliffe), and Mary (Lindsay Mendez) sing ecstatically at the end of “Merrily We Roll Along,” Stephen Sondheim’s much beleaguered musical about three artists and their deteriorating relationships and ambitions. Time in the musical goes backward: we first meet the trio during their lowest point (basically, their forties), so the youthful optimism of those last, hopeful lines is meant to sound false. In this “Merrily,” though, it rings sincere, as if claiming a long-delayed triumph on the musical’s behalf. Anticipation for the new production has been frantic. “I heard the whole run sold out in eight minutes,” someone whispered behind me at the New York Theatre Workshop, as we waited for the show to begin.