Like It Was
How Sondheim depicts mental illness in Merrily We Roll Along
Today I’m pleased to introduce a second guest post written by Christina Baker, an NYC-based journalist who writes about state and local government, disability, drug policy and more. She covers the Northeast region of the municipal finance industry for The Bond Buyer. You can follow her on Twitter/X at @christy_bakery. Her essay, on depictions of mental illness in Merrily We Roll Along, begins below:
There’s a lot of media these days that’s “about mental health.” Characters go to therapy for maybe the first time, they solemnly declare that they have depression or anxiety, they tell each other (and the audience) that they are loved.
As a veteran of Being Mentally Ill, I avoid this genre. I see how it could help people, but usually, anything a mainstream book or movie has to say about mental illness is something I learned in high school.
When I want to think about mental health, I turn to Stephen Sondheim.
When I started listening to his lyrics, I immediately recognized that this man had served in the Mentally Ill trenches.1 Sondheim’s works aren’t “about mental health.” They’re works about being human from someone who has very seriously considered how mental illness can interfere with that goal.
Mental illness in Sondheim’s shows can be funny, scary, endearing or heartbreaking. It comes with no attempt to justify, and little attempt to explain. The characters’ neuroses are not only accurate,2 but central to the story.
Merrily We Roll Along, for instance, contains layers upon layers of commentary on psychology. On the surface level, Merrily’s characters make explicit references to mental health.
We have Mary in “That Frank,” drunkenly humiliating herself at a party:
I never drink coffee. Caffeine isn’t good for you.
Charley in “Franklin Shepard, Inc.,” melting down on national television:
He flies off to California. I discuss him with my shrink.
And I’ve got a little sailboat. And I’m into meditation. Right.
And Mary in “Opening Doors:”
My parents are coming. I called the musician. I’m having a breakdown.
One thing you might have noticed about these lines is that none of them come from Frank.
In fact, outside of “Our Time,” Frank pretty much never sings about his mental state at all; other characters, awed by his genius, try to manage his headspace, and he follows them. In “Growing Up,” Frank’s other attempt to discuss his feelings, he’s conflicted and deflecting; he borrows Gussie’s melody for part of the song, and she quickly interrupts and reroutes him.
The other noteworthy thing about these references to mental health: they’re all jokes.
The purpose here, besides being entertaining and accurate, is to show us that it’s futile to know about therapy and mental illness if you can’t bring yourself to work on your problems. Mary and Charley are almost distancing themselves from their struggles in these lines.
The real, meaty treatment of mental illness comes outside the explicit references. In “Like It Was,” Sondheim shows us the core of Mary’s character: she’s probably the smartest and most insightful of Merrily’s central trio, but she gets paralyzed and retreats into denial when things become painful.
She’s already displaying this when she starts out the number with “Old Friends”:
Why so grim? We’re going on forever. You. Me. Him. Too many lives are at stake.
Mary’s fully aware of the conflicts between Frank and Charley (and aware that Charley is right), but the consequences will be so dire that she can’t accept what’s about to happen.
When she starts “Like it Was,” transitioning from the trio’s problems into her own, she becomes plaintive and withdrawn in a way we never see from her either before or after this moment. She retreats into remembrances of the past, a subject about which she has, currently, nothing of substance to say: “It was good, it was really good.”
She seems to recognize the futility of this exercise (“help me stop remembering then”) but abdicates all responsibility to escape it.
This version of Mary is diminished. We’ve already seen her slinging barbs at Frank’s party; she was a mess, but a funny, witty mess. Later in the musical, the younger Mary pulls out lines like
It’s called flowers wilt
It’s called apples rot
It’s called thieves get rich and saints get shot
It’s called God don’t answer prayers a lot
And here, she’s reduced to
You and me, we were nicer then
We were nice
Kids and cities and trees were nice
Everything…
Beyond the simple words and lack of rhyme, this line also shows Mary’s denial. She is smart enough to know that being less “nice” is not the root of the trio’s problems, and she’s definitely smart enough to know that “kids and cities and trees” are no different now than they were in her young adulthood.
Mary isn’t saying these things because she thinks they’re true, she’s saying them as a cry for help. They’re followed by an even clearer cry for help:
She sings this on an ascending melody, and it’s the only real point where tension builds in the song. As it should be -- she’s identified the root of Frank’s problems, and his ambivalence could swallow her and Charley, too, if they let it.
But after these flashes of insight, she retreats back into the repetitive pleas for the old days until Charley gives her a reality check (“It’s not the three of us anymore.”)
There are almost no real rhymes in “Like it Was,” a frequent indicator in a Sondheim show of diminished mental capacity. The only rhyme comes in Mary’s conclusion, as she drifts back into self-awareness:
Trouble is, Charley,
That’s what everyone does.
Blames the way it is
On the way it was
On the way it never, ever was
She finishes by asking Charley to save her, but of course he can’t.
It's hard to explain how good this is. The song goes on a journey -- Mary cannot articulate her problems in a clear or linear way, so the song dances around them, tracing the footsteps of her thought patterns, revealing her to the audience with subtlety and restraint.
But Sondheim’s genius in depicting mental illness goes even deeper, as we see when we put the song in context. Merrily’s plot is driven almost solely by its characters’ psychology.
Merrily’s reverse linear structure means it opens with each of the characters at their breaking points, driven to decisions that blow up their lives.
Charley’s breaking point is obviously “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” Frank’s is the destruction of his party after “That Frank.”3 The first time you watch the play, you assume that Mary’s is her meltdown in the same scene, but she says in “That Frank” that she’d already given up hope. Really, her breaking point is “Like it Was.”
After these explosions, the characters’ lives aren’t necessarily ruined (Charley wins a Pulitzer) and they haven’t necessarily abandoned their dreams (once again, Pulitzer). What’s destroyed is their relationships.
In 1957, they “picked a road,” and decided that their dreams would come true through their trio. As their lives progress, Frank becomes more corrupted and the other characters recognize this, but all three cling to what they felt on the rooftop. “The way it was. The way it never, ever was.”
Their three breaking points come when they’re finally forced to be honest with themselves, leave the delusion of the trio behind, and get back on the road, individually.
So, besides sheer skill, what’s here that other media “about mental health” is missing?
Part of the difference might be the era. Sondheim was unencumbered by our century’s zeitgeist. He didn’t expect the audience to know much about mental illness, and his audiences had no expectation that he’d provide representation for their experiences.
Moreover, he wanted to buck his audience’s expectations. All his shows were somehow personal and experimental, and Merrily, famously, flopped.
But the biggest difference is the message. In a lot of recent “mental health” media, the goal is to impart hope. The theme is “you will be found,” “you’re not alone,” “things will get better,” et cetera.
Merrily’s theme is more like “your life will not turn out the way you wanted it to in your 20s.”
I completely understand the need for soothing works about mental health. For comfort, for a sense of being seen. But once you’ve learned that your feelings are valid, what’s next?
That’s where Sondheim comes in.
Merrily asks me to keep track of my morals, dreams and relationships. Follies asks me to interrogate my nostalgia and how I cope with my past. Passion urges me not to wallow in my desperation, to have dreams even when it's painful. (Recently, while navigating dating in New York, I’ve found myself thinking, “Oh no, I’m Bobby in Company.”)
The questions Sondheim asks are challenging. They’re productive. They’re the kind of things you work on in therapy. They’re gratifying, at least to me.
Mentally ill people need art that’s more challenging, not less.
Merrily We Roll Along is bookended by a piece of writing advice. “Don’t write what you know,” (the characters gesture to their heads at this part) “write what you know” (here they point to their hearts.)
When I listen to Sondheim, I think, “Finally. Someone who knows.”
I don’t think Sondheim’s skill at writing mental illness can be solely credited to his personal experiences. With that said, his problems with mental health are pretty well-documented -- he reportedly spent decades in therapy.
I mean, “I telephoned my analyst and he said I should meet with him on Monday but by Monday I’ll be floating in the Hudson with the other garbage?” Remove the two 70s-era words and that is scarily relatable.
Note that Frank is so emotionally detached he can’t even express this through song.