George Furth's book for the 1981 musical adapts a play with the same title. Kaufman and Hart's Merrily We Roll Along opened at the Music Box in 1934 and ran 155 performances, told in reverse chronology, and the musical kept that structure, telling its own story in reverse order too. Ken Bloom's Broadway encyclopedia records that audiences of the 1934 play "were not completely confused by the strange construction, but they certainly did not care for any of the cynical, disillusioned characters." (At This Theatre 100 Years of Broadway Shows Stories and Botto Louis Viagas Rober, p. 166; Broadway Its History People and Places An Encyclopedia Bloom Ken 1949 2nd Ed New, p. 385; Broadway Its History People and Places An Encyclopedia Bloom Ken 1949 2nd Ed New, p. 523)

Ken Bloom's encyclopedia says the Sondheim-Prince partnership "ended with the ill-fated Merrily We Roll Along": it opened at the Alvin on 16 November 1981 and closed twelve days later, after 16 performances. Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows praises the score in the same breath, calling Sondheim's music "thrilling" and Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations "incredible" and "brassy." The passage runs out before it says what it thought of the production itself, so that's where we leave it too. (Broadway Its History People and Places An Encyclopedia Bloom Ken 1949 2nd Ed New, p. 445; Broadway Musicals the 101 Greatest Shows of All Time Bloom Ken 1949 Vlastnik Fra, p. 25)

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