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 Wasp despot by his son, his daughter-in-law, and changing times….

[In The Middle Ages] Gurney shies away from true and troubling psychological and social issues (although he does throw in some facile liberal-going-on-radical window dressing), he is obliged to write situation comedy and turn the entire play into an extended coitus interruptus that, alas, belongs on television….

There are, as always in Gurney, some droll situations and a sufficiency of funny lines; still, in the shadow of previous Gurneyana that have assiduously raked over the same terrain, they yield diminishing delight…. Place The Middle Ages beside Arms and the Man and Thieves Carnival, and you'll see how Anouilh and Shaw, despite the intervening years, have maintained their comic bite—preferable by far to this sheepishly toothless grin.