Shaw, as he himself put it, wrote "plays pleasant and unpleasant"; Anouilh, in his own words, produced "black plays" and "rosy plays." A. R. Gurney Jr. … should also devise some such hortatory distinction; his black or unpleasant plays are much more interesting than his pleasant or rosy ones (which, by the way, is not true of Shaw or Anouilh). The Middle Ages, which ought to be designated "ever-so-slightly-shocking pink," is subtitled instead "A New Comedy," which is a misnomer….

The play covers a near quarter century in the lives of four persons. The pivot is Barney, the charming ne'er-do-well elder son of Charles Rusher, the urbane president and patriarch of said club, who is being buried in the first scene but who, in characteristic Gurney playwriting fashion, returns in all but the last one (which, chronologically, follows on the first) to enact the gradual humanization of a benevolent...