I suppose the question most frequently asked around town these days is why Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim should have risked trying to fashion a musical out of "Merrily We Roll Along"…. In effect, Prince and Sondheim were starting out with a known quantity: a weak book. (p. D3)

I think they picked "Merrily We Roll Along" because it was precisely what they wanted to do, precisely what they had been doing for most of their distinguished, if not always rewarding, collaboration. "Merrily" offered them the one thing they seem determined to sell: disenchantment.

"Company" was a technically fascinating musical devoted to exploring total disenchantment in marriage, climaxed by the hero's now utterly inexplicable decision to marry. "Follies," heralded by a poster displaying a disastrous crack in the facade of a theater, examined the death of enchantment in marriage and in the theater both. "Pacific Overtures" is harder...