When I was in college in the 1990s, my favorite course was The History of the American Musical Theatre. The stories, the evolution of the form, the music, the musicals themselves all played into the interests I had been cultivating for years, listening to cast albums and reading librettos checked out of the local library. I adored this class so much, in fact, that I took it four times, once as a for-credit class within my major, and three other times as an independent study. With each round, the professor catered my experience so that I would hopefully learn something new and not just repeat old material. On round three, he chose musical theatre flops to be my focus. As the class explored musical theatre by the decade, I would study the flops of the same period, often going to the college library and finding old theatre reviews bound in these enormous binders. When we started on the 1970s, this is when I happened upon a show I hadn’t heard of, a charming piece of musical theatre that, although imperfect in so many ways, had little  bursts of brilliance. That musical was King of Hearts.