Lakeland Civic Theatre’s ‘Merrily’ rolls along Bob Abelman Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal Member, International Association of Theatre Critics Martin Friedman, the director of the Lakeland Civic Theatre, is a sucker for Sondheim. He has not only staged the composer/lyricist’s most popular works – including “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Into the Woods” – but he’s also mounted “Anyone Can Whistle,” one of Sondheim’s earliest and most commercially unsuccessful musicals. So it was only a matter of time that Friedman would return to a personal favorite, the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” which lasted on Broadway for 16 performances in 1981 despite possessing many of Sondheim’s greatest songs and one of his most complex scores. For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/