"Like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic…"

Whole songs and chunks of dialogue disappeared and new material had to be learned. Sets and costumes changed. “It was Dunkerque,” recalls [Patricia] Routledge. “I never knew how I would get to the end of the show. Sometimes I didn’t know which way I was facing.” Adds [Ken] Howard: “I couldn’t sleep or eat. I found it hard to focus my mind on what I was doing onstage. I became a zombie, an automaton.” But, says Howard, the endless changes that were made in the show were only “like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

– The two stars of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on the chaos of the experience in an informative article documenting the show’s failure from the May 31, 1976 edition of Time Magazine.