I’d be curious to know if Sondheim is on record talking about why he felt the need to tinker with ITW. Because it’s true that there have been a number of alterations to the text over the years, even aside from the ones with radically altered directorial interpretations.
In several other cases where Sondheim has made changes to a show later on, he has implemented those changes as mandatory in the officially-licensed versions (Merrily, Company, Assassins, Bounce/Road Show). Presumably it’s because he stood by those changes, and wanted them to be officially part of the text in their “final” form.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case with ITW, or with Sweeney Todd (which has a number of optional songs/verses). Which probably indicates that he wanted to try things out, but wasn’t necessarily DISsatisfied with the original versions enough to “ban” them. I wonder if he would even stand by the 2002 changes.