AS BEANIE FELDSTEIN, star of forthcoming musical Merrily We Roll Along, puts it, “It is a real lesson in delayed gratification!” She’s not kidding: the word “forthcoming” is doing a lot of work there.
The Broadway musical, written by the late Stephen Sondheim, tracks the lives of three friends, beginning in 1976, and working backwards through their lives to 1957. On stage, this meant a lot of make-up for the actors. On screen, director Richard Linklater (who previously spent 12 years making Boyhood) is doing it for real, filming in chunks every couple of years for the next two decades.