Film discussion: The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened

Tuesday night, one of those movies will be The Best Worst Thing that Ever Could Have Happened, a documentary about a very rare occurrence, a Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical … failure.

The year was 1981, the musical was called Merrily We Roll Along, an imaginative remake of a 1934 George S. Kaufman–Moss Hart musical about a man who has lost the creative idealism of his youth.

Sondheim, whose previous Broadway effort was Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (!), wrote some fabulous songs and the cast included a bunch of young performers who went on to become big stars.

But the show closed after fewer than 20 performances. Sondheim was crushed and his young cast was downcast. (Sorry.)

So all these years later, one member of that original cast, finding that he could get access to audition tapes, rehearsal tapes, many of his fellow cast members and Sondheim himself, decided to do a documentary about the experience, the aftermath, the show’s life-after-death and what it all felt like.

It’s a show that critics have loved for its love-letter-to-the-theater quality and the bittersweet memories of the cast. And as someone who once trod the boards myself, I’ve really been looking forward to this.

I hope you’ll give it a try. Either for the love of Sondheim or the love of the theater or just for a chance to talk with other film enthusiasts on a cold winter evening. We will watch the film in The Movie Hall Loft at 7:00 and talk it over immediately after.

And you might also want to mark your calendar for the two other film discussions this month, which include Moonlight on January 24 and Nocturnal Animals on January 31. This should be good!