In their now three-decade-long collaboration, Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens have transported us to the Caribbean (Once on this Island), Monaco (Lucky Stiff), Ireland (A Man of No Importance), and even New Rochelle (Ragtime). For their long-aborning musical, The Glorious Ones, now getting its New York premiere at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater, the destination is 16th-century Venice, Italy, and the beginnings of the theatrical art form known as commedia dell'arte.

While this gentle and loving valentine to actors doesn't rank among the pair's more substantial achievements, it's nonetheless a generally pleasing and occasionally effervescent diversion. Much of the credit for the su[...]