| Glory Days |
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| Written by Michael Portantiere | |
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Glory Days Music & Lyrics by Nick Blaemire Book by James Gardiner Starring Steven Booth, Andrew C. Call, Adam Halpin, and Jesse JP Johnson Circle in the Square GloryDaysBroadway.com  GLORY DAYS, photo by Scott Suchman With music and lyrics by Nick Blaemire and a book by James Gardiner, this 90-minute musical is about Will, Andy, Skip, and Jack, who reunite on their high school athletic field one year after graduation. In school, they had all been rejected from the football team and therefore shared the bond of outsiders. Now that they're back together again, if only briefly, Will hopes to enlist the others in a prank to take revenge against the jocks by setting off a sprinkler system during their charity event. But it's obvious that the guys have grown apart in many ways, and that their insignificant story is not going to end happily. As you may have read, the authors of Glory Days are not long out of high school themselves; Blaemire is 23, and Gardiner just turned 24. Presumably, their youth helped them connect with the material, a semi-autobiographical tale based on the experiences of Blaemire and three of his buds. But with extreme youth often comes a lack of basic skill and craft, and that's all too true in this case. Judging on the basis of audience reaction to the performance I attended, Glory Days is not going to be with us for more than a few weeks at most; the applause that followed each number was perfunctory, and the laughter at the supposed jokes was intermittent and half-hearted. Most of the few laughs in the show are easy ones that come from pop-culture references to Superman, Batman, Goonies, Ella Enchanted, and -- wait for it! -- Anne Heche. The writing here is amateurish in the worst sense of that word. Nothing of interest really happens in the course of the show except that one of the guys admits he's gay, but even this potentially dramatic plot twist goes for naught. When Will's journal -- he refuses to call it a diary -- is ripped up by one of the others late in the action, it's supposed to be a wrenching dramatic moment, but it just seems silly because the destructive act is so poorly motivated and so over-the-top. The characters often behave inconsistently; for example, Will appears to be far too sensitive and self-analytical to have come up with a revenge plot. (By the way, his description of that plot sounds like it was lifted directly from It's a Wonderful Life.) Sadly, the score is no better than the book, with music so forgettable that I found it impossible to recall any of the tunes even a few moments after hearing them. (Belated note to Blaemire: If you're going to write a show with music this bland, you probably shouldn't give it a title that's the same as a well-known song by Bruce Springsteen.) As for the lyrics, they're uninspired and badly crafted. Although some of the rhymes are perfect, others are inexact (“all/balls”), and others aren't even close (“sure/more,” “change/same”). Yes, this is also true of Spring Awakening and In the Heights, but the overall quality of the lyric writing in those shows is so far superior to what you'll find in Glory Days that it somehow isn't an issue. Like Blaemire and Gardiner, at least two of the cast members are not ready for Broadway. Steven Booth doesn't have the vocal chops for Will's opening and closing musical monologues, and he isn't a good enough actor to successfully deal with the character's self-contradictions. Jesse JP Johnson makes little impression as Jack, even though he's got the only halfway intriguing plotline. On the plus side, Adam Halpin exhibits a nice, understated stage presence as Skip, and Andrew C. Call is a ball of fire as the hyperactive, randy Andy. There isn't much to the physical production other than the bleachers unit and stadium lights designed by Jim Kronzer. Glory Days seems to have been produced on about one tenth the budget of your standard Broadway musical, but that doesn't mean it's going to be able to run very long in the face of the scathing reviews it's bound to receive. Directed by Eric Schaeffer, Glory Days comes to Broadway from the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, where Schaeffer is artistic director. So he must be held doubly responsible, (1) for having chosen to present this embarrassment at a well regarded regional theater in the first place, and (2) for not having the wisdom to say “no” when two unwise producers, Ricky Stevens and John O'Boyle, offered to help bring it to New York. Look for the Circle in the Square to soon be available for another, hopefully far better show. |
