Adam Feldman — Theater Critic

After a long gestation and a difficult labor, including a last-minute funding scare, Breakfast at Tiffany's arrives on Broadway meager and stillborn. Here is a story that-in both Truman Capote's 1958 novella and Blake Edwards's 1961 film-relies on the restive charm of its central figure: Holly Golightly, a beauteous young courtesan in 1940s New York, who conceals her hillbilly roots beneath a blithe, insouciant manner and a cultivated voice flecked with faux French. 'She isn't a phony because she's a real phony,' as someone explains to the writer who lives next door to her. 'She believes all this crap she believes.' In the Broadway version, she never seems to believe it for a moment; Breakfast at Tiffany's is phony through and through.

Has any musical so essentially ridiculous been graced with a revival? Yet Wildhorn, the Stephen Sondheim of Bizarro World, continues to be produced despite a string of flops, and Jekyll & Hyde has accrued a following. So here it is again, in a form that will satisfy few. Director Jeff Calhoun and his cast struggle bravely and pitiably in the straitjacket...Accenting Jekyll & Hyde's best asset-Wildhorn's rousing melodies-and hitting the rest at off angles whenever possible, Calhoun and his crew excise much of the original production's most ostentatious terribleness, leaving mere very-badness in its place.

Richard Greenberg's elegantly moving The Assembled Parties is somewhere between a slice of life and a slice of mille-feuille...A brisk draft of intelligence blows straight through the script, tempering moments of sentiment with astringency and surprise. In Lynne Meadow's lovely Manhattan Theatre Club staging, the first act is a whirl of quips and overlapping scenes-Santo Loquasto's ingenious set spins the stage from room to room-and the second is ominously still, shadowed by past and future death. At the center of both is Julie, played with feathery otherworldliness by Jessica Hecht in one of the year's most absorbing performances.

Motown-The Musical left my eyes tired. For half of the show, they were glued to the stage; for the other half, they rolled up in disbelief to the farthest reaches of their sockets. Rarely has a Broadway musical offered such extremes of talent and inanity. The mountains are thrillingly high: glorious snatches of more than 50 classic pop songs from the catalogs of such Motown artists as Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations and the Jackson 5. But the valleys are abysmally low. The book sections of the show, in which Motown founder and Motown coproducer Berry Gordy Jr. traces 45 years of his own journey, is a compost heap of dubious history, wooden acting and risible dialogue...

Yet the musical holds up for the same reason Price & Son's products do: solid craftsmanship and care. Lauper is a musical-theater natural, combining bright, infectious melodies with simple but effective lyrics. As each act progresses, the energy rises palpably, boosted by a heart-strong cast. Porter brings tough sass, wounded dignity and husky vocal authority to a part he has seemingly been training all his life to play; and as Charlie's lovelorn underling, the sweetly tart Annaleigh Ashford-she of the perfectly timed comic take-adds another stolen show to her rap sheet. The overall effect is nigh irresistible; if you've been low about this season's musicals, Kinky Boots may be just the thing to get you back on your feet.

The Performers squeezes quite a few dirty laughs from crude, XXX double entendres—and Henry Winkler plays an aging cocksman, which is great news for anyone who wants to hear Henry Winkler talk about his dong a lot. But the raunch turns out to be mere dressing for a soggy rom-com salad...

Like its spiritual grandchild The Normal Heart, Ibsen’s drama scores hard points against real social ills while also suggesting that a passionate crusader, frozen in the spotlight of his truth, can sometimes be his own worst enemy.

That Bennett performs this show eight times a week is a marvel indeed; seeing it just once kind of wore me out.

Audiences must pass through a similar dry stretch at the start of The Road to Mecca, directed with a reverent air by Gordon Edelstein in the Roundabout’s Broadway space, which seems somewhat too large for the purpose. Load up on coffee before you embark on the dozy-cozy first act, a virtual sleeping draught of dim lighting, tea service and puttering exposition.

The problem with Lysistrata Jones is not just that it has overstepped its bounds. The show’s harmless Broadway incarnation, energetically coached by Dan Knechtges, is in several ways superior to its humbler predecessor: The male cast has upped its game, the ladies stay strong, and Douglas Carter Beane has given a better backstory to his title character (Murin), who organizes a chastity strike to spur her boyfriend (Segarra) and his apathetic college team to victory. But the plot remains silly, the music humdrum and the characters trite; the Latino figures have little but accents to define them, and not even the imposing Liz Mikel can rescue her weary-wise prostitute character from the sassy molasses of big-black-lady stereotype. For a show that is supposedly a paean to passion, Lysistrata Jones seems happy enough to let its earnestness go to camp.

Skillfully directed by Jeff Calhoun, Bonnie & Clyde doesn’t glamorize its subjects, as Arthur Penn’s 1967 film was accused of doing, but it does sentimentalize them; they are introduced to us as children, dreaming of fame, and never grow far beyond that. No matter how many innocent people they kill, this musical’s Bonnie and Clyde remain—like the show itself—not great, but not that bad.

There must be people somewhere who don't enjoy Hugh Jackman, but if so, I don't want to meet them. What more could a person reasonably want than this twinklingly studly Aussie showman, who seems as comfy tapping through a medley as clawing his way through the Wolverine franchise? In his blazing new concert, Jackman is his own special effect: a musical-theater superhero swooping in just in time to rescue Broadway from its seasonal doldrums.

Reorchestrated and sound-designed for young, modern ears, this Godspell sounds like a born-again Glee, and several performers have moments to shine (including Uzo Aduba, Telly Leung and the wonderful Lindsay Mendez). Capering through Christopher Gattelli's joyous choreography, on David Korins's continually surprising set, the actors are nothing if not energetic. But for all the copious tributes paid to him, Jesus is a thankless role, and Hunter Parrish is this production's sacrifice to it; with a voice and presence as light as his ultra-blond locks, Parrish preaches softly and wears a creepily forced smile. This is Jesus as Stepford twink, and it's regrettably in keeping with a show that, in its combination of bathos and kitsch, is a model of bad faith.

But this is a show no grown-up should miss; after 40 years, it remains a piercing stare of hope and regret, longing and compromise. The kind of musical theater it dissects and eulogizes may be vanishing from Broadway, but Follies is still here, and it's gorgeous.

Lacking Callas's elegance, the estimable Tyne Daly nonetheless controls the stage and the audience with command, and lends shading to the writing wherever she can; less successful are the three actors playing her students, guided with a heavy hand by Stephen Wadsworth. The pedagogical sequences, at least, have a patina of high culture, unlike the pair of vulgar, melodramatic flashbacks about Callas's doomed affair with Aristotle Onassis that form the climaxes of both acts. 'This is a master class, not a psychiatrist's office,' she announces early on-to no avail. Stripping La Divina of both mastery and class, McNally shrinks her with a vengeance.

Homey and nostalgic, this musical means to emphasize the importance of laughter in the face of tragedy. But the sob stories overwhelm the charm. A dying old woman, a child ripped from her parents, a lovable zany killed by thugs, a nation herded like beasts to the slaughter: These are just a few of the show’s many tugs at our emotions. By the time we find Raisel in the Warsaw Ghetto, clutching a rag doll stained with the blood of a murdered Jewish friend, even the softest touch in the audience may grow wary of Dart’s hard sell. The People in the Picture reminds us of the Holocaust’s bitter injunction to never forget. It’s a worthy effort, but work this blunt can’t pierce very deep; the tears the show elicits are too easily wiped away.

The faultless ensemble includes an impeccable John Benjamin Hickey as the first man to break through Ned’s defenses and Ellen Barkin as an early AIDS doctor, who brings down the house with a frustrated tirade about the slow official response to the epidemic. Pace commands tears with a superb account of the death of his lover, a passage that holds its own against the most gruesome messenger monologues of Greek tragedy. Jim Parsons provides exemplary comic relief and unexpected depth as a Southern activist in Ned’s group, and Patrick Breen, Mark Harelik, Luke Macfarlane, Richard Topol and Wayne Alan Wilcox offer admirable support. The entire company acts up a storm, and the production leaves you drenched. The Normal Heart is hectoring, stiff and one-sided; it is also raw, scary and galvanizing. That’s Kramer in a nutshell, and his kind of nuts we still need.

Directed with an elegant touch by Doug Hughes, Arianda’s Billie Dawn is a take-charge dame, carnally aggressive and self-delighted. Clomping around in Catherine Zuber’s exuberant costumes, on John Lee Beatty’s beauty of a set, she’s a sex toy by way of Shirley Booth; this braying, unapologetic bimbo—“I’m stupid and I like it!”—may be a cousin of Jennifer Tilly’s sour Olive in Bullets Over Broadway, but she’s utterly adorable instead of appalling. This is the part that made Judy Holliday’s career, and Arianda claims it all to herself. She succeeds where many would-be Billies, such as Madeline Kahn and Melanie Griffith, have failed: This is the era of a new Dawn.

The part of Deloris Van Cartier was written for a personality performer, and though Patina Miller has many talents-and a voice like a soft-serve ice-cream swirl-she isn't funny in a specific way. (The show may be keeping its heroine's sassiness in check to avoid African-American stereotypes, but it hasn't given her anything else to fill the void.) Victoria Clark is her trusty self as the crusty Mother Superior who butts wimples with Deloris, but the show's only real color is provided in smaller comic roles, such as Demond Green's dim-witted thug and Audrie Neenan's rigid sister. When the show sticks Neenan with rapping-old-lady shtick-both anachronistic and passé-it gives itself over to the sin of inanity, but otherwise it's harmless Broadway filler: an underseasoned Philly cheese steak.

'Tis Wildhorn, and the hapless cast Does direly gambol on the stage. All flimsy is the plot half-assed, Not right for any age.

The only thing holding the show back, alas, is Rock. In the pivotal role of Jackie’s AA sponsor, Ralph, the gifted stand-up comic seems ill at ease; he doesn’t know how to hold his body onstage, and his awkwardness is damaging to a character defined by his charisma. (One can’t help feeling that the show might be even more powerful with his understudy, Ron Cephas Jones, in the part.) Each time Rock has a scene, The Motherfu**ker with the Hat falls off the dramatic wagon and takes a while to recover. But it finds its footing every time—with strength enough to kick.

Below the title, things start looking up. Colin Donnell is a deft, full-voiced and romantically persuasive Billy; as Hope, the pretty young lady he pines for, Laura Osnes knows how to give an ingenue some spine. The gangling Adam Godley nearly steals the show as her befuddled British fiancé—he’s a terrific comic dancer—and Arrested Development’s Jessica Walter is enjoyably tart as her mother. Rounding out the cast with aplomb are Jessica Stone as a sailor-friendly floozy and the invaluable John McMartin as a perpetually sloshed millionaire.

Yet the thing that makes Radcliffe appealing as the amoral Finch is also a thing that limits him: You can tell that he is really trying. His timing is sharp, his dancing precise, his American accent impeccable; but his singing is shaky, and he doesn’t quite have the demonic spark of self-assurance that made Robert Morse a star in the role. (When he sings “I Believe in You” to himself in the mirror, it seems less a self-love song than a pep talk.)

Priscilla Queen of the Desert has all the shimmer and all the substance of a mirage. First things first: The costumes are sensational. Designers Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner won an Oscar for the 1994 Australian film on which this show is based, and will surely win a Tony for their work here as well. But when the costumes come first in a musical, that’s a bad sign—especially when nothing comes second.

In the current economy of scaled-back American dreams, when the role of class is too often dismissed, Good People has a quality rarely seen on Broadway: It seems necessary.