StageRage

The Glorious Ones is musical theatre as only Lincoln Center Theater could present it. It’s interesting if you live between 61st and 82nd streets on the West Side. It’s funny if the last piece of comedy you experienced was Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor. It’s bawdy if you actually use the word bawdy or if you’re deceased.

The new musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty continues the trend in their careers of major LCT productions of their minor works. And make no mistake about it: The Glorious Ones joins the ranks of A Man of No Importance and Dessa Rose as heavily-flawed shows with some okay tunes. The latter two suffer from the same profound issue: they needed a playwright and Lynn Ahrens is not a playwright.

She is a pretty good lyricist but songs don’t matter when they’re in the wrong place and it’d be difficult to find more than a couple songs in the right place when it comes to The Glorious Ones. The show has such glaring structural flaws that one wonders how no one – Ahrens, Flaherty, Graciela, Andre Bishop – could point these things out in the lengthy rehearsal process. Not just songs in the wrong place, either, but songs avoiding drama altogether. Consider the following:

- We are introduced to every member of the company in an opening number but half of these individuals have no storylines at all. Ahrens then forces their stories to wrap-up via narration in the show’s finale (more on that to come).

- Instead of developing the relationship of our “lead” Flamenio Scala and his protégé Harlequino, the latter turns to the audience and sings a third person number about father/son relationships. It’s this kind of distance from her material that keeps Ahrens from finding the soul of the material.

There are many more issues throughout construction of the piece (most notably Ahrens’ use of narration over drama) but to breakdown such a mess of a musical feels like a waste of time at this juncture. The ending of the show needs to be discussed for its so laugh-out-loud obnoxious and stupid, one wonders how none of the aforementioned LCT intelligentsia ever said, “You know? We don’t need this. This is stupid.” After the musical actually ends, it ends for another twenty minutes, including an grotesquely titled number called Flamenio’s Sack and the entire company then rationalizing the very existence of the musical (which, if you listen closely, reveals that the show’s creator are actually unaware of comedy since the late 70s). Any of the dramatic relevance of the show’s finest, goose-bump inducing number “I Was Here” is washed away in a sea of safe drivel. But haven’t you heard? Ahrens and Flaherty aren’t allowed to end their tragedy with sadness. For A & F, both of the masks have bright happy smiles.

Someone must call into question these two writers before it’s too late. As one of the only living teams of musical theatre writers whose very name on the title page denotes the show will hit a major American stage, A & F have a responsibility to reach higher than this and – perhaps more importantly – try harder than this. The truth seems to be that LCT’s dedication to the writers has been bad for their artistry, as they’ve been unable to write a show of significant mention since Garth Drabinsky was riding their asses in the lobby of the Ford Theatre. Instead they’ve written some nice numbers for forgettable shows. A & F are rumored to be working on a musical version of Rocky. Wow. Because when I think of the gritty streets of Philadelphia, these two people are the first names that come to mind. I fear if these stories are true and these two venture into the world of Rocky Balboa, their careers might be on the mat.

5…6…7…8…