NEW YORK (AP) ' Shall we start with the distant past? Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along" was one of the composing giant's few flops. And when it opened on Broadway in 1981, even he knew it.

"The theatergoers who didn't leave at intermission did a lot of squirming, and with reason: they felt cheated," Sondheim writes in "Finishing the Hat," the second .....