Merrill: Take Me Along

Take Me Along is a 1959 musical based on the 1933 Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell

The idea to musicalize Ah, Wilderness came to David Merrick when George M. Cohan came through St. Louis with the original production of the O'Neill play. (It was rare of Merrick to mention his hometown, as he hated it, and once he refused to fly TWA to the coast because it flew over St. Louis). While producing The Matchmaker in 1955, he began working on Connecticut Summer. Things came to a halt when lyricist/librettist John La Touche died suddenly in 1956 at the age of 41. But in 1957, an adaptation of another O'Neill play, Anna Christie, came to town, called New Girl in Town. Merrick decided to ask the composer, Bob Merrill, to take another stab at it.