Four high school besties discover that life after graduation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in Nick Blaemire and James Gardiner’s engaging slice-of-teen-life musical Glory Days, a terrific (and terrifically entertaining) talent showcase for a quartet of up-and-coming triple threats at the Broadwater Black Box Theatre.

Invited by college freshman Will (Gil Dolet) to tonight’s informal one-year reunion are his dorm roommate Andy (Emmon Amid), Ivy Leaguer Skip (Ali Hoghoughi), and Jack (Carlos Cameron), who’s gone off who-knows-where but is back tonight with his three best friends on their high school football field, an initially curious choice given their complete lack of interest in the sport during their freshman-through-senior years.

Soon enough, though, Will reveals his plan—to pull off one major prank on the football heroes who ostracized them throughout high school by resetting the timer that determines when the sprinklers will start dousing the field from well after midnight to the most inopportune moment in tonight’s big game.

Perhaps not surprisingly, things don’t go quite the way Will has planned, and it’s not just the aforementioned prank I’m talking about.

Older audience members might wonder whether a mere year after graduation isn’t rather too short an interval for four college freshmen be looking back at their high school with the kind of nostalgia all four boys express in “The Good Old Glory Type Days.”

On the other hand, anyone who’s left home for the supposed greener pastures of university life and found things to be not at all what they’re cracked up to be will find much to identify with and feel nostalgia for in Blaemire and Gardiner’s slice of late-20-aughts life (their show debuted when the twosome were themselves only a half-dozen years out of high school ) before instant internet access and social media sites and AI changed society as we know it.

It helps enormously that composer-lyricist Blaemire has written one uber-catchy song after another and that the characters he and book writer Gardiner created back in 2008 still ring true almost two decades later.

It helps just as much that director Donnie Riddle not only understands these four young men but has found precisely the right performer to bring each of them to vivid, authentic life.

Dolet is so instantly likable as Will, it’s no wonder his three best chums are drawn to him as their self-proclaimed leader, and the pain and confusion Dolet evokes at seeing them drift away even as Will begins to confront questions about his own sexual identity are palpable.

Recent UCLA grad Amid positively vanishes inside Andy’s proud-to-be-a-hound-dog exterior and achingly conflicted interior.

Cameron gives Jack a genuine sweetness and touching vulnerability that makes Andy’s reaction to his revelation all the most painful to watch.

Last but not least, recent Breakout Performance Scenie winner Hoghoughi expands his rapidly growing repertoire with another engaging star turn, this time as group cynic Skip, who like his three best buds is someone you can’t help but love.

All four up-and-comers reveal powerful, expressive pipes under Riddle’s topnotch musical direction as they execute occasional bits of Ericalynn Priolo’s expressive choreography.

And since creators Blaemire and Gardiner’s dream was “to write something that could be performed anywhere with nearly no production values–just four talented guys, a bench, and a band,” Glory Days proves a perfect fit for a budget-conscious theater company like MouthBone Productions.

 Riddle’s set adds bleachers and a few other assorted set pieces to the mix, Jude Rossotto and Riddle have come up with costumes that suit each character to a T, and Miles Berman’s lighting has been designed to enhance the emotions evoked by each one of Glory Day songs.

MouthBone does cheat a bit by having the cast vocalize to prerecorded tracks, but since these have been expertly mixed with the performer’s amped voices by sound designer Rossotto, it’s no big deal for this reviewer at least.

Glory Days is produced by Rossotto and Stella Mulroney. Mercedes Stafford is stage manager.

 It’s been fourteen years since Glory Days got its Los Angeles Premiere just around the corner from the Broadwater Black Box, and though it’s become more of a period piece in 2025 than the contemporary look at late-teen life it was in 2011, the emotions it both depicts and evokes remain just as powerful and relatable as they were back then.

MouthBone Theater Company’s latest may be operating on a more limited budget than its predecessor, but that doesn’t stop it from delivering the entertainment goods in spades.

The Broadwater Black Box, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd. Los Angeles.
www.mouthbone.com

–Steven Stanley
August 8, 2025

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Tags: Broadwater Blackbox, James Gardiner, Los Angeles Theater Review, Mouth Bone Theatre, Nick Blaemire