Playwright skillfully adapted offbeat material for stage

”Flowers for Algernon,” Daniel Keyes’ novel about a mentally handicapped man who is temporarily transformed into a genius, has been read by millions and re-created in many forms, including the 1968 film “Charly.” But singing along with any version of the story was impossible until David Rogers reinterpreted it as the musical “Charlie and Algernon.”

“Charlie and Algernon,” for which Rogers wrote the book and lyrics (Charles Strouse wrote the music), opened at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway in 1980 and was nominated for a Tony for best original score. It was Rogers’ best-known effort — but it was far from his only unlikely adaptation for the stage.

Rogers, who died June 5 at 85, wrote plays based on Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and the 1973 caper film “The Sting”; musical adaptations of “The Hobbit” (music by Allan Jay Friedman) and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (“The Dream on Royal Street,” music by Alan Menken); and original work like “Not for Keeps” and “Even the Shadows Dance.” Most of Rogers’ stage writing was published or commissioned by Dramatic Publishing, with which he had worked since the late 1950s.

The Broadway production of “Charlie and Algernon” starred P.J. Benjamin as Charlie, Sandy Faison as his teacher and love interest and an uncredited mouse as Algernon. (The mouse and Benjamin shared a vaudeville- style dance number.) Rogers had written “Flowers for Algernon” as a play, which was performed in high school and college theaters, years before he and Strouse worked on the musical.

The show opened to mixed reviews. In the New York Times, Frank Rich called it “a very ordinary and at times very irritating entertainment,” but Mel Gussow called it “a show with a heart about our minds.”

David Rogers was born in New York City on Dec. 15, 1927. He served in the Army Signal Corps during the Korean War before studying drama alongside Jack Lemmon and Lee Marvin at the American Theater Wing.

The Broadway lyricist Nancy Hamilton became his mentor and helped get his material in “New Faces” revues. He also wrote songs and sketches for the revived “Ziegfeld Follies.”

Rogers acted as well. He appeared on Broadway in “As You Like It” at 17 and was later seen in several iterations of “Law & Order” and in the 1987 revival of the 1926 drama “Broadway.” He also wrote five novels. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, the former June L. Walker, who confirmed his death from cardiac arrest; two daughters, Dulcy Rogers Bader and Amanda Rogers; and four grandchildren. He lived in Westport, Conn.

This year Rogers completed the book to a musical adaptation of a beloved television show. (He had written it as a play decades earlier.) “The Beverly Hillbillies: The Musical??!!” has yet to be produced.