A jolly group of itinerant actors sing of themselves in The Glorious Ones, a new musical about the roistering life of the clowns who paved the streets of 16th-century Italy with sight gags and sex jokes. Based on the novel by Francine Prose, the musical tells how the troupe came to be and how it captured the public's adoration with its bawdy comedy, before changing artistic fashion altered its life.

With buoyant music by Stephen Flaherty and a bawdy book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens (both of Ragtime and Once on this Island fame), the show mixes the lowdown pratfalls of commedia dell'arte with the rosy sentimentality of classic American musical comedy. It encourages sniggers in one scene, as we watch the players perform classic comic sketches on a scrappy wooden stage, and sympathy in the next, when we sneak behind the scenes to lend an ear to their hopes, fears and heartaches.