Finn made her Broadway debut at the
Morosco Theatre in
Hugh Leonard's
A Life as
understudy to
Dana Delany. Following
A Life, casting director
Joanna Merlin chose Finn to create the role of Gussie Carnegie in
Merrily We Roll Along. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by George Furth and direction by Hal Prince, this stage production is considered a musical theatre legend in spite of the fact that it closed after 52 previews and 16 performances. Despite a flurry of negative reviews,
Clive Barnes raved in the
New York Post that "A beautifully acrid comic skit is provided by Terry Finn as a producer's wife with even less morals than taste and a turn a phrase that would cause a viper to bite out its tongue in envy," and in the New York
Daily News Douglas Watt wrote "There is also good work by
Jason Alexander and his gushingly imperious wife Terry Finn." Following the brief run at the
Alvin Theatre, the cast gathered at
RCA Records Studio 'A' on November 29, 1981 — the day after the show closed — to record the original cast album. The album's popularity eventually led to a "
Merrily We Roll Along Original Broadway Cast Reunion Concert" which was staged at the La Guardia Concert Hall in
Lincoln Center on September 30, 2002. Following a search outlined in a Broadway.com article entitled "Finding Finn,"
Merrily director
Lonny Price recalled, "Terry was dazzling in the role of Gussie ... I couldn't imagine doing [the reunion] without her and now I'm glad that I don't have to!" as Audrey in
William Shakespeare's
As You Like It with the New York Acting Unit and in regional theatre starred as Constanze Weber-Mozart in
Peter Shaffer's play
Amadeus in The Wells Theatre at The Virginia Stage Company.
The Navy News critic Janet Withers wrote that Finn's Constanze is "beautiful, talented and engagingly saucy." ==Television career==