Sondheim’s Flat Tire

Reader Diane Berk considers herself one of the “lucky few” who saw the original 1981 Broadway production of “Merrily We Roll Along” (Letters, May 5), but I was there too and I didn’t feel so lucky. The backward story line must have seemed awfully clever on paper, but it just didn’t work on stage. The show flopped--quite deservedly.

Revisionist theater historians have now decreed that the show is a neglected masterpiece, as if the original audiences were incapable of appreciating its greatness. Let’s get past the phony legend and face the facts: Stephen Sondheim is a great American composer, but he drove off the road with “Merrily We Roll Along.”

NEAL McCABE

Los Angeles