NEW YORK — There are few moments in musical theater as heartbreaking as the one near the end of “Merrily We Roll Along,” when the reverse chronology of the storytelling lands us on a Manhattan tenement rooftop in 1957.

We have already lived backward through 23 years of disillusion, as three friends, Frank, Charley and Mary, first seen as hardened adults in 1980, gradually grow younger, shedding their cynicism. Now singing “Our Time” — an anthem that sounds like what dew on a cobweb looks like — they appear in all their unpolluted promise, anticipating important lives and unbreakable bonds.

The only thing sadder than this moment in “Merrily” is “Merrily” itself. A show with one of the richest scores of the 1980s, by Stephen Sondheim — but one of the most problematic books, by George Furth — it has spent the 28 years since its flop Broadway opening on its own backward trajectory to find its best self. On the evidence of its umpteenth unsatisfactory revisal, which opened Tuesday at the Laura Pels Theater, I’m sorry to say that it’s still not “Merrily"'s time.

Maybe it never will be — and I speak as someone who’d gladly patronize a dedicated “Merrily” repertory theater, perhaps on that rooftop, running nothing but reworked versions in perpetuity. Even if all the productions I’ve seen since 1981 have fallen short in some way, each one has added to my understanding of the show, and human nature.

Until now. The current production, a six-actor, eight-musician, one-act reduction by Fiasco Theater, in residence at the Roundabout Theater Company, seems not so much stripped-down as emaciated. All the contrasts of idealism and greed, gloss and substance so central to the story’s effectiveness are flattened under the pressure of forcing it to stand without enough legs.

Purists may focus on the prickly new orchestrations (by Alexander Gemignani) and iffy singing (by almost everyone). And yes, these are problematic, even though you can sense how they reflect the production’s priorities. Fiasco, known for imaginative, fat-free stagings, does not aim for fancy or swell.

That minimalist aesthetic has worked just fine in recent takes on “Cymbeline” and “Measure for Measure” — and, for that matter, “Into the Woods,” also by Sondheim, with a book by James Lapine. Fiasco’s story-theater format was marvelously effective in conveying the complex morality of that tale, regardless of how well any one song came off.

But “Merrily” was written when Sondheim was still mining the rich seam of his peak Broadway style. By the time he wrote “Into the Woods,” six years later, having reconsidered his threat to leave the theater entirely, he had adjusted his palette in response to cerebral new collaborators and stories.

“Merrily” can’t really reach its potential by superimposing that later approach. As indicated by Derek McLane’s warehouse of a set, stuffed with the detritus of decades of showbiz, it is a story about theatrical artists, vivid and nostalgic. Frank (Ben Steinfeld) is a Broadway composer who sells out to Hollywood; Charley (Manu Narayan) is his word man, who loudly doesn’t; and Mary (Jessie Austrian) is a writer trying to figure out where she fits in, which we learn right from the drunken start is nowhere.

Especially as run in reverse, their conflicts over love and work and what it means to stay friends must be dense enough to support the score, which in its original orchestration by Jonathan Tunick had great Golden Age schmaltz in its veins.

Here, something has flipped. The songs, with all their polish removed, no longer reflect the coherent Broadway world of the story but instead try to excavate its various interior workings. Often radically reconceived, harshly truncated or left to dribble away, they no longer ennoble the characters or provide much pleasure for the audience.

So “Now You Know,” Mary’s deliciously brassy effort to buck up Frank and bring down the curtain at what used to be the end of Act 1, is rendered here as a midshow dirge, exposing subtext that was better off sub.

Or take the bitter torch song “Not a Day Goes By,” sung by Frank in the original production. Reassigned to his betrayed wife, Beth (Brittany Bradford), on the eve of their brutal divorce, it makes better sense, in theory; but because of the reverse chronology, it’s pretty much the first thing out of her mouth and thus seems to come from nowhere.

“Why is that lady singing?” you may wonder — just as the conceptual set often leaves you asking, “Where are we?” and the use of three actors to cover the entire ensemble (the original cast numbered 27) has you trying to sort out who’s who.

I’ll let completists detail the many other changes: more cuts than additions, it seemed to me, except for a new scene, near the end, adapted from one in the 1934 Kaufman and Hart play on which the show is distantly based. (Utterly unmusicalized, the scene lays an egg.) The director Noah Brody has also interpolated a lot of business during the inter-scene rewinds; some is succinct and clever (at one point even the lyrics are sung backward), but some just seems like doodling.

Say what you will about the original production, with its just-turned-professional cast and bizarre costume concept, but I found that “Merrily” more coherent and moving than any I’ve seen since. Of course, I was just out of college then, the age of the characters when they sing “Our Time.” So perhaps I’m guilty of the same sin Mary nails in the song “Like It Was”: blaming “the way it is / on the way it was. / On the way it never ever was.”

Even so, one has to stand in awe of Sondheim for his willingness to allow intelligent younger artists to futz with his classic work. (Look for the gender-switched “Company,” now in London, to make its way to New York soon.) One day someone may even get “Merrily” right.

In the meantime I find myself nodding in agreement when Frank says of Mary, “We go way back,” and she instantly zings: “But seldom forward.”

—

Production Notes:

'Merrily We Roll Along'

Tickets: through April 7 at Laura Pels Theater, Manhattan; 212-719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

Credits: Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; book by George Furth; directed by Noah Brody; choreography by Lorin Latarro; music direction, orchestrations and new arrangements by Alexander Gemignani; sets by Derek McLane; costumes by Paloma Young and Ashley Rose Horton; lighting by Christopher Akerlind; sound by Peter Hylenski; music coordinator, Meg Zervoulis; Fiasco Theater singing and Alexander Technique consultant, Kathryn Armour; production stage manager, Mark Dobrow; production management, Aurora Productions; “Merrily We Roll Along” general manager, Nicholas J. Caccavo; Adams associate artistic director, Scott Ellis. Presented by Roundabout Theater Company, Todd Haimes, artistic director/CEO, Julia C. Levy, executive director, Sydney Beers, general manager, Steve Dow, chief administrative officer.

Cast: Jessie Austrian, Brittany Bradford, Paul L. Coffey, Manu Narayan, Ben Steinfeld and Emily Young.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.