l-r: Jesse JP Johnson, Steven Booth, Andrew C. Call, Adam Halpin (Photo: Scott Suchman)

Imagine having a production in your home town leap right from the Beltway to the Great White Way! And when you're in your early twenties!

At a time when getting a show produced anywhere can involve workshop after workshop and a roundelay of having your hopes buoyed and bashed, James Gardiner (24) and Nick Blaemire (23) are a bit like the theatrical equivalent of the computer whizzes who started their enterprises in their family garages. While Glory Days, for which Gardiner wrote the book and Blaemire the songs, took less than six months to make the move from premiere production to Broadway, writing it began seven years ago. Like the four guys at the center of their show, Gardiner and Blaemire weren't their school's big jocks, but, clearly, they've made a touchdown of their own.

Of course getting a Broadway production with only a brief out of town run and without a history of proven hits is one thing. It's quite another challenge to generating enough enthusiasm with New York audiences to keep a big theater filled for as long a run, like its predecessar, another "little engine that could" musical (The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.)

Now that I've seen the show in its hoped for long-term new home, my guess is that it will have a tough struggle to find a large and steady audience— much as its characters have to struggle to deal with with their evolving lives and friendship as they transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Jim Kronzer's unit set —- a grassy floor and a few rows of bleachers backed by a grid consisting of bulbs to suggest a football field lit up for night games fits quite comfortably into its new home. The performers (all of whom, as well as the designers and director, were part of the DC production) are indeed appealingly energetic. The story they narrate and sing isn't exactly earthshaking but they do capture the sense of being in limbo that comes with being old enough to leave the painful insecurity of the high school years but still not quite ready to let go of the " glories" of youthful camaraderie that makes for tightly bonded foursomes like these.

Except for Passing Strange and In the Heights, Glory Days is also the season's rare new musical that isn't adapted from a movie (shades of the season biggies like Young Frankenstein, The Little Mermaid and Cry-Baby). Besides its likely association with Passing Strange, its promotional writeups also brings to mind the still running sleeper hits, Avenue Q and the aforementioned Putnam County Spelling Bee. The problem is that while neither Avenue Q or Spelling Bee involved huge casts, they were more generously populated with more interesting and rounded out characters and more subversively clever plots. There's also the audience appeal conundrum. Spelling Bee appealed to ages 9 to 90 and thus was one of those 4 or more ticket sellers. Avenue Q, while not for families with very young kids, reached a wide spectrum of adult audiences. The audience appeal of Glory Days seems to fall within a rather narrow age range.

Undoubtedly, the good reception and the enthusiasm of DC critics, especially the influential main critic at the Washington Post, went a long way towards attracting commercial producers with yes-we-can determination to turn this little show into the new big thing on Broadway. Rich See, our own man in DC was somewhat more moderate in his enthusiasm. Even though there may have been some tweaking of dialogue and lyrics since Rich reviewed the show, I could see no sign of any major changes to make this the more substantial and Broadway worthy show he thought it might become. The same songs are sung in the same order and, as already stated, the cast and creative team is unchanged. Since Rich has covered the plot, characters and music quite thoroughly, I'm reposting his review with its sum-up and evaluation of the plot, the characters and the music after the production notes in this box.

My own take on Glory Days falls a few notches below Rich's more benign one and so a few additional comments. Rich mentions dancing as part of the active staging. There IS plenty of movement and, being much older than these agile performers, I felt a twinge of envy watching the easy leaps up and down those bleachers. However these are athletic rather than choreographic moves, so don't mistake this for a dance show (there's no listing for a choreographer in the program).

As for the pop-rock music, Rich's comment that the songs have a very similar sound is all too true and he did indeed pick out the best numbers. It would have been nice to be able to hear songs and singers with more subtle amplification than head mikes. The assessment of the plot's weaknesses are right on the mark. The reference "hatchet face" of the girl Will is dating fails to rouse our sympathy for the boys having been outsiders in the dating game as well as on the football field. In addition there's a lyric with a tasteless ethnic line.

Given Rich's reservations about the show, and my own sense that Glory Days is going to have a hard time turning out to be a glorious super hit, his comment about its having "huge potential" seems overly kind and optimistic. But then maybe the numerous politicians who, despite scandals and bloopers, manage to have runs on Capitol Hill that make Phantom of the Opera look like a limited run, has made Washingtonians more optimistic and accepting than their fellow citizens elsewhere.