Merrily We Roll Along (1981) isn’t Stephen Sondheim’s biggest flop. That honour goes to Anyone Can Whistle (1964), which closed after nine performances. Merrily outlasted it by seven performances, and of the two shows has since gone on to much greater critical acclaim. It’s the better piece; despite some great songs, Anyone Can Whistle is a bizarre outlier in Sondheim’s canon, but Merrily contains all the bitterness and disillusionment fans have come to crave in the composer’s work. A profound sense of sadness surrounds the show; that original Broadway production saw the end of Sondheim’s collaboration with producer Hal Prince, fitting given that the severing of a great professional partnership is the show’s central theme.