TT: Seven girls grumbling

The 2007-08 Broadway season is now officially over, and in today’s Wall Street Journal column I report on the last show to open in time for this year’s Tony nominations, Top Girls. I didn’t think much of it.
I also had a few words to say about Glory Days, the sensitive-teen musical that opened–and closed–on Tuesday.
Here’s an excerpt.
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I can’t tell you how “Top Girls” looked in 1983, but today it is a creaky period piece, by turns clever-clever and brutally heavy-handed, in which Ms. Churchill strenuously endeavors to portray the upwardly mobile career women of the Thatcher era as bitchy, self-hating beasts who have fallen victim to the virus of American individualism and so lost their souls. Marlene (Elizabeth Marvel), the head of the bitch pack, runs an employment agency that finds high-paying jobs for monsters of ambition. In due course we learn that she has deserted her working-class family–and her illegitimate daughter–in order to come to London to shinny up the greasy pole. At play’s end she visits her home in Suffolk, where her sister (Marisa Tomei) spits venom in her eye: “I suppose you’d have liked Hitler if he was a woman. Ms. Hitler. Got a lot done, Hitlerina.” No doubt Ms. Churchill meant for us to be stunned into agreement by the pungency of this assault on the evils of Thatcherism, but all it did was make me look at my watch….
Many Broadway shows have closed after just one night, but only a few have been musicals. The last new musical to explode as soon as the key was turned was Alan Jay Lerner’s “Dance a Little Closer” in 1983. Thus “Glory Days” has won itself a place in history: Henceforth it will be mentioned alongside such famous flops as Leonard Bernstein’s “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” (seven performances), Mickey Leonard’s “The Yearling” (four performances), Stephen Sondheim’s “Anyone Can Whistle” (nine performances) and “Merrily We Roll Along” (16 performances), Charles Strouse’s “Nick & Nora” (nine performances) and Jule Styne’s “The Red Shoes” (five performances).
What all these older flops have in common is that, like “Dance a Little Closer,” they were the work of distinguished artists, and some had memorable scores to boot. “The Yearling” actually yielded up a standard, “I’m All Smiles,” while “Anyone Can Whistle” and “Merrily We Roll Along” have both turned out to be much hardier than they looked at first glance. As for Nick Blaemire and James Gardiner, the authors of “Glory Days,” they are 23 and 24 years old respectively, young enough to someday earn themselves a second grab at the brass ring of theatrical success. Stranger things have happened: Six years after “Anyone Can Whistle” blew up in Mr. Sondheim’s face, he wrote “Company” and became immortal. So I’ll keep my opinion of “Glory Days” to myself and instead wish its makers the best of luck in their future endeavors. They’ll need it, and maybe they’ll get it.
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Read the whole thing here.