Two things set ["Merrily We Roll Along"] apart right away. It is a Hal Prince-Stephen Sondheim collaboration and it tells its story backward…. The notion of moving backward comes from the 1930s play by Kaufman and Hart from which the musical is derived.

Unfortunately, this pedigree does not help. Neither the impressive talents of its creative team, nor the device of reversing the chronology can camouflage the commonplace nature of the story….

The story of success corrupting a young idealist is all to familiar and the creators have been able to do very little to make it seem new or to make us care about the characters involved.

Edwin Wilson, "Broadway Rolls Along, Not Always Merrily," in The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 1981, p. 26.∗