Now Is The Time For All Good Men (musical)

Now Is the Time for All Good Men
Music	Nancy Ford
Lyrics	Gretchen Cryer
Book	Gretchen Cryer
Productions	1967 Off-Broadway

Now Is the Time for All Good Men is a musical with music by Nancy Ford, book and lyrics and by Gretchen Cryer. The show premiered Off-Broadway in 1967.

The musical premiered Off-Broadway at the Theatre De Lys on September 26, 1967 and closed on January 16, 1968.

The school board for the Bloomdale, Indiana, high school quickly sizes up Mike Butler (David Cryer), the new English teacher, as the kind of brash freethinker who wants to let kids mark in their books, read novels, and think for themselves. He even teaches poetic scansion with a basketball.

But Albert McKinley (David Sabin), the principal, defends him. Albert is a very kind man. He has a habit of picking up strays and defending, or exploiting them, depending on how you look at it. And Mike has a shady background. He was court-martialed from the U.S. Army after duty in the Vietnam War. Just why isn't yet clear. Sarah Larkin (Sally Niven), music teacher and church choir leader, is another of Albert's foundlings. She isn't exactly qualified to teach. But she's a young widow, and Albert is fond of her. Quite fond. Mike and Sarah meet and are attracted to each other, Sarah wistfully and slightly disapproving, Mike desperately trying to reach what's left of her understanding and vitality.

For a while Mike and Sarah enjoy their teatimes and hayrides left alone. But Sarah has an enemy, her own sister, Eugenie Seldin (Judy Frank), a lively and outspoken waitress at the local truck-stop eatery. Eugenie spots Mike right away and sets her sights. After all, hadn't she known Sarah's late husband in ways Sarah never did?

And soon enough, Mike develops an enemy of his own. The brightest kid in class, Tommy (Steve Skiles) is the son of the athletic coach, Herbert Heller (Art Wallace), who doesn't like English teachers to begin with because their drama classes mess up his gym floor. When he finds out that Mike is encouraging young Tommy to read Thoreau and think for himself, well, he can spot a Commie pretty far off.

And Herbert Heller is a real "Americun". Only once a year he's apt to get drunk and shoot up the place. This year, as Mike and Sarah stand listening to Christmas carolers and enjoy being together, he comes upon them, carrying a shotgun in one hand, and Old Glory in the other. When he demands that Mike pledge allegiance to the flag, then and there, it gets kind of tight. Luckily, Herbert is too drunk to be effective and falls down. Mike carries Sarah off over his shoulder and Herbert is taken away for another year.

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