The Playgoer: Glory Days it ain't

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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Glory Days it ain't

It’s been a season of thinking small for the Broadway musical. Two front-runners for the Tony, “In the Heights” and “Passing Strange,” are also intimate, personal shows imported from non-Broadway houses. I can see why the producers of “Glory Days” might have thought this was an auspicious moment for a big-time New York transfer.

Ultimately, though, they have done this little, hopeful show no favors by dragging it into a spotlight that invites close and unforgiving inspection.
-Ben Brantley, trying to be charitable in an otherwise blunt dismissal of "Glory Days," a tiny new musical, transfered from a prominent regional non-profit (who probably only put it on in hopes of its commercial prospects) amidst last-minute Tony hopes.

A lesson for all concerned, I hope.

UPDATE: Uh, it just closed.

3 comments:

Steve On Broadway (SOB) said...

Have you seen the show? Big Ben was being quite charitable.

The producers should have known better than to trot this onto a Broadway stage without better vetting and/or further development.

It could have done better with its target audience had they opted for Off-Off-Broadway instead.

Anonymous said...

Trying to protect and encourage the composers? Meanwhile the same paper matter-of-factly reports stories about kids the same age being blown apart in Iraq.

Sorry if it seems like an apples/oranges rant, but am I the only one who sees the disconnect? But for the grace of god these two would be in uniform, but somehow I'm supposed to care about "what happens when two 23-year old writers create a musical about four 20-year old guys," to quote their lame marketing posters. And it turns out those four 20 year olds are merely waxing nostalgic over high school!

Our culture has got a pedophile's preoccupation with youth and it is sad to see it take over the theater industry.

Anonymous said...

This show would not have done better - or at least SHOULD not have done better -- off or off-off Bway. It was REALLY BAD. Brantley didn't mention the casual misogyny, but apart from ideology, it's just a lousy show. It takes the main character 90 minutes to learn what everyone knows from the git-go: that the glory days weren't so glorious. Never mind that one never cares a hoot about these guys nor that there is no sense that they live in a world outside their petty adolescent guy grudges, a world, for instance, in which they might be in a war, as the above poster noted . . . I feel like I saw this generation's Moose Murders.