Colin Donnell, Celia Keenan-Bolger & More to Headline Merrily We Roll Along at Encores!

Anything Goes star Colin Donnell will play composer-turned-mogul Franklin Shepard opposite Tony nominee Celia Keenan-Bolger as his collaborator and pal Mary Flynn in the forthcoming Encores! production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along. The show will have an extended run of 15 performances,February 8-19, 2012, at New York City Center, directed by Sondheim’s frequent collaborator James Lapine.

Joining Donnell and Keenan-Bolger will be Betsy Wolfe (Tales of the City, Everyday Rapture, 110 in the Shade) as Shepard’s wife Beth and Elizabeth Stanley (Million Dollar Quartet, Company, Cry-Baby) as actress Gussie Carnegie. No casting has been announced for the central role of Franklin and Mary’s friend Charley Kringas.

Featuring a score by Sondheim and book by Furth, Merrily We Roll Along is a musical about friendship and the compromise of youthful ideals, based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The show moves backward from 1980 to 1955 and examines the lives of three people whose friendship is tested by time, events, ambition and fate. It charts the rise of a songwriting team during the years of Sondheim’s own early career and includes some of his most brilliant and bruising songs, including “Not a Day Goes By,” “Old Friends,” “Our Time” and “Opening Doors.”

Harold Prince's original production Merrily We Roll Along ran for only 16 performances at the Alvin Theatre in 1981. Since then, the show has enjoyed a rise in reputation; Lapine, for example, directed a reconfigured version at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1985.

Donnell is currently starring on Broadway as Billy Crocker in Anything Goes and has appeared on Broadway in Jersey Boys and off-Broadway in Meet Me in St. Louis and Almost Heaven: The Songs of John Denver. He played Young Ben in the Encores! production of Follies.

Keenan-Bolger was nominated for a Tony for her performance in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and played Eponine in the Broadway revival of Les Miserables. She has appeared off-Broadway in A Small Fire, Little Fishes, Kindertransport and Summer of ’42 and in the Encores! production of Juno.

Merrily We Roll Along will have music direction by Rob Berman and musical staging by Dan Knechtges.