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| D'Jamin Bartlett, George Riddle, Barry Pearl, Paul Kreppel, Clyde Laurents, Carol Swarbrick, Laurie Faso, Stuart Pankin. |
THE GLORIOUS AGE
[Musical/Period/Romance] B: Cy Young i/c/w Mark Gordon; M/LY: Cy Young; D:
John-Michael Tebelak; S: Stuart Wurtzel; C: Jennifer von Mayrhauser; L: Barry
Arnold; P: Jane Manning and Carol McGroder i/a/w Wendell Minnick; T: Theatre
Four (OB); 5/13/75-5/18/75 (14)
The middle ages, for some reason, formed the background to
several 70s musicals, most of them (unlike Pippin) flops. One was The Glorious Age, a
show set in a medieval village during the Crusades. This “utterly inglorious
musical,” as Douglas Watt termed it, was chiefly about a young man (Don
Scardino), home from university, who must now assume the role of his town’s “witchmaster-general”
and prosecute a witch girl (D’Jamin Bartlett) he loves.
Martin Gottfried said the “story . . . seldom holds together
and is foolish when it does.” Called an “abomination” by Watt, the show
caused Gottfried to announce: “It has nothing. . . . The music
is sometimes ambitious and sometimes simple, sometimes melodic and sometimes
bland, sometimes rock and sometimes show tunes.” Watt thought there was merely “a
string of trite songs.” Clive Barnes looked askance at “the general musical
miasma and dirgelike sludge” of the score.
Bartlett was the most appreciated performer in this poorly assembled
contrivance.