Adam Feldman

In this regard, Gold’s An Enemy of the People—notwithstanding its 19th-century costumes (by David Zinn) and sets (by the design collective dots) and elaborate period business (the loading of pipes, the heating of drinks, the lighting and snuffing of lamps)—feels pointedly modern, a quality that is brought to the fore in the production’s pivotal scene: a public meeting at which Stockmann tries to share his findings directly with the populace. The scene takes place after a short intermission during which members of the audience go onstage for free shots of aquavit at a shiny modern bar stamped with the logo of the brand providing the liquor. Breaking from the cozy naturalism of the production’s first half, Gold introduces elements of environmental theater: He brings up the house lights and treats the audience as part of the meeting; the characters address us directly, and a few spectators are even seated onstage to pad out the crowd. Circle in the Square’s in-the-round seating plan is ideal for this scene, a public square within a circle of observers.

And yet: As much as I rolled my eyes at The Notebook, I can’t deny that they sometimes welled up. In this version, it’s the older Noah and Allie—whom Brunstetter draws with the most care, free from the fetters of plot, and around whom Michaelson writes her most touching music—who get to you. Plunkett’s truthfulness pierces through the sentimentality, and there’s something elemental in the combination of love and loss that this pair embodies. As Younger Noah says of Allie’s painting: “It’s sadness and it’s joy, right?” At its best, The Notebook finds a way to deliver both, if only in shorthand.

To populate this parable, Mayer has wrangled a marvelous cast. Dressed in hilariously lumpy clothes, Groff's Seymour is a likable klutz with just a hint of deadpan creepiness. As Audrey's abusive boyfriend, the sadistic biker dentist Orin Scrivello-and in a bevy of smaller parts-Christian Borle solidifies his status as the preeminent musical-theater clown of his generation: His performance is a master class in milking. The three street urchins-cutely named Ronette (Ari Groover), Crystal (Salome Smith) and Chiffon (Joy Woods)-are nicely individuated (though Ellenore Scott's choreography sometimes keeps them too busy). And Blanchard is a revelation. Many actors try to imitate the magical brittle ditziness of Little Shop's original Audrey, and merely wind up somewhere that's not quite Ellen Greene; Blanchard takes the character to a different world entirely. She's earthy and tough, with a bee-stung face and a manner that suggests a world of pain in her past. She's the heart of the production, and she's heartbreaking.

Even if its principal generates less interest, however, the play grows richer every time you see it. On this latest visit—my fifth encounter with Doubt, including the 2008 film with Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman—I wondered if Ellis’s revival, in deference to modern sensibilities, took too clear a position on what has happened between Father Flynn and Donald. But then I remembered that my own convictions on that subject have changed each time I’ve seen some version of this work. My reactions may well say more about me than the production, and they exemplify why it remains so satisfying to sit in the dark with a crowd of people also wrestling with Doubt, divided perhaps in our suspicions but united in a liberating bond of uncertainty.

Farr’s adaptation sidesteps potential evocations of cancel culture, sometimes a bit awkwardly, to allow space for a sharp but tender drama as the story’s focus shifts to Lucas’s sweet dynamic with his son, Marcus (Raphael Casey), who accepts his father’s innocence without question. Yet somehow, even after all we’ve seen with our own eyes, there is a looming discomfort in their father-son intimacy. It might be our own paranoia seeping through, but Goold lets the question linger: Can we ever really be sure?

Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! is not just funny: It is dizzyingly, breathtakingly funny, the kind of funny that ambushes your body into uncontained laughter. Stage comedies have become an endangered species in recent decades, and when they do pop up they tend to be the kind of funny that evokes smirks, chuckles or wry smiles of recognition. Not so here: I can’t remember the last time I saw a play that made me laugh, helplessly and loudly, as much as Oh, Mary! did—and my reaction was shared by the rest of the audience, which burst into applause at the end of every scene.

Brown’s score, one of his best, has a decidedly ’90s groove, from the plaintive “Now What”—in which Conrad muses on the state of the news industry—to the twangy “So I Came to New York,” a duet that allows Robin to slam her home state (“Everyone’s an asshole in Texas…”) and Ethan to trash his (“Everyone’s a scumbag in Jersey…”). Musical numbers led by Fergie Philippe and Max Crumm, as Ethan’s dubious sources, give the musical space to breathe away from the office. And Jessica Molaskey and Mylinda Hull, as fact-checkers on Ethan’s trail, are so good that you wish they had even more to do, perhaps in a two-act version of this intermission-less show. But then again, in deference to their characters, this particular story might best be served by just-the-facts-ma’am brevity.

Bonds interweaves Ana’s three narratives skillfully, letting the audience piece together what’s happening (and what has happened) as Jonah jumps from one to another, exploring themes of desire, vulnerability and trauma. That’s a big part of what keeps us engaged, so it’s a slight disappointment when the play’s denouement tips into overexplanation. But director Danya Taymor, in her visually spare world-premiere production at the Roundabout, elicits compelling performances from all four actors. The men are believably devoted in very different registers, and Beans—who earned a Tony nomination for her biting Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth—delivers another charismatic and varied star turn. Even when the play is just okay, she shines.

Guettel’s score has the feel of a chamber opera. For moments of drunken euphoria, it dabbles in cocktail jazz: Passages in “Evanesce” sound like vocalese, and in “Are You Blue?” O’Hara scats bebop to herself. But most of it takes an art-song approach, eschewing strong melodies in favor of moment-to-moment expression; some of the lyrics rhyme, some don’t. (The eight-piece band, conducted by Kimberly Grigsby, also plays a lot of underscoring.) This is demanding stuff, both dramatically and musically, but it couldn’t ask for better interpreters than O’Hara and James, two of Broadway’s finest singing actors. Both are superb: Playing “two people stranded at sea,” they navigate their characters’ desperate highs and lows—Joe has a breakdown with flashbacks to his military service, Kirsten hits rock bottom as a slattern in a dingy hotel—with depth, grit and vocal expertise. Byron Jennings, as Kirsten’s heartsick Norwegian father, provides exceptional support.

There is perceptiveness and humor in Prayer for the French Republic, and Cromer’s direction does its best to keep things honest. But as Harmon weighs out the issues, you can sense his thumb on the scale; by the denouement, it feels more like his whole hand, pressing for amens.

The script hits its marks effectively, if not surprisingly, and director Saheem Ali keeps the toggling structure evocative and clear, with valuable help from Arnulfo Maldonado’s set, Dede Ayite’s costumes. But the plot is just a hanger for the musical numbers, which is where Buena Vista Social Club comes to thrilling life. The show makes no attempt to force its score into doing character work; all 15 songs, of which nine were part of the original 1996 recording sessions, are presented as performances in nightclubs or recording studios, sometimes heightened by the six excellent dancers who execute Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck’s gorgeously fluid and individuated choreography. The lyrics are untranslated, but that hardly matters. The music itself is the story.

Directed with sensitivity by Sammi Cannold, How to Dance in Ohio is an underdog itself: a modest production of an original musical that originated in Syracuse, New York, and—like another sincerely inspirational audience-pleaser, Come From Away—rose on its own merits, without big stars, hit songs or well-known pop-culture IP. “Going places / I am going places / There are places I need to be,” sing the actors in the opening number. “But most of the spaces / That I want to get to / Were not designed for me.” Whether it was designed for them or not, they’ve made their own space on Broadway now, and proved that they belong.

In this company of men, however, it is a woman who really dazzles: Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer as the sword-bestowing Lady of the Lake, whom the show depicts as an attention-hungry prima donna. This is the showcase role that longtime Kritzer fans—another group that includes, full disclosure, me—have been waiting for, and she grabs it by the throat in a full-tilt comedic and vocal tour de force, culminating in the delightfully ostentatious “Diva’s Lament.” It’s in the Lady of the Lake’s spotlight moments, the show’s biggest departure from the nearly all-male Grail, that Spamalot comes into its own most effectively and takes flight—not as an African swallow, capable of carrying significant weight, or merely as a parrot, possibly dead, but as what it is: a lark.

The six actor-singers who play the Comedian Harmonists—Sean Bell, Danny Kornfeld, Zal Owen, Eric Peters, Blake Roman and Steven Tesley, five of whom are making their Broadway debuts—blend together beautifully without disappearing into anonymity; each of them gets a song in which to shine as a soloist, including a standout proposal song for Kornfeld as the younger Rabbi. This is admirable, but it is also perhaps one of the show’s limitations. Manilow’s music, an attractive blend of old and new sounds, is mostly well served by Sussman’s lyrics, and the result is a series of entertaining moments. But the show’s determination to give everyone equal time spreads the storytelling thin; major potential plot lines about divisions within the group, such as a romantic triangle and a temptation to collaborate with the Nazis, are raised and then abandoned. And when Harmony arrives, inevitably, at the Holocaust—when it moves from show-off to Shoah—the show’s tone gets pitchy.

Here We Are is meticulously assembled—including by choreographer Sam Pinkleton, lighting designer Natasha Katz, and sound designer Tom Gibbons—as well as cleverly written and wonderfully performed. It also, at a certain point, runs out of music. About 15 minutes into Act II, the onstage piano goes dead quiet. “Rest in peace,” says the Bishop, and as Pierce says the line he looks out and up, as though acknowledging a greater loss. And that seems to be the overall attitude of Mantello’s production: recognizing, and moving forward. This is what we have, it seems to say, and this is better than nothing. It is what it is. We are where we are. Here we are. Here we go.

The result suggests a cross between Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman and the beloved cult musical [title of show], which also began at the New York Musical Festival in the 2000s. Affection is the key that opens the show’s comedy: As ridiculous as Doug and Bud may be, you feel for these guys and even root for them. As stupid as their historical musical may be, you can’t deny that they’ve got heart.

Merrily We Roll Along is the femme fatale of Stephen Sondheim musicals, beautiful and troubled; people keep thinking they can fix it, rescue it, save it from itself and make it their own. In the decades since its disastrous 1981 premiere on Broadway, where it lasted just two weeks, the show has been revised and revived many times (including by the York in 1994, Encores! in 2012 and Fiasco in 2019). The challenges of Merrily are built into its core in a way that no production can fully overcome. But director Maria Friedman’s revival does a superb job—the best I’ve ever seen—of overlooking them, the way one might forgive the foibles of an old friend.

Ossie Davis’s 1961 play—in which the actor and activist originally starred opposite Ruby Dee—may not seem a likely candidate for revival. Comedies often age badly, and comedies about race are even riskier. But Purlie Victorious doesn’t crack: Directed knowingly by Kenny Leon, the show’s new Broadway production is a joyous affair, broad in comedy and in spirit. Davis populates his play with deceptively familiar types (the simple-minded country girl, the loyal mammy, the villainous Confederate, the simpering Uncle Tom) who have more dimensions than expected; the actors who inhabit them take manifest delight in subverting stock figures from the inside out.

If you can catch El Mago Pop during its too-brief run, you will be well entertained. Between his more spectacular setpieces, the winsome Diáz—a compact cutie who is billed as Spain’s top-selling artist of the past five years—proves his bona fides with dextrous ventures into card and ball manipulation. (Time-filling video sequences depict him in comic-book graphics, like a modern-day superhero.) A few of the tricks will be familiar to magic fans, but Diáz puta clever spins on some of the more familiar routines: a standard torn-newspaper bit is subsumed into a larger sequence that takes you aback, and a moment of quasi-levitation is berthed in elegant shadow play. Broadway hasn’t hosted a magic show since before the pandemic shutdown, and it’s good to have some illusions again. For 75 delightful minutes, you may feel a little transported yourself.

If not for our ongoing fascination with Jaws, The Shark Is Broken would be of limited interest: three men in a boat reading newspaper articles (“NIXON RESIGNS”), reminiscing about their childhoods, bickering about Hollywood and drinking a whole lot more than they should. But since the movie remains a cultural touchstone, the play makes for pleasant entertainment. Director Guy Masterson does an admirable job of finding tension and variety in a very low-stakes situation; scenic designer Duncan Henderson’s cross-section of a boat is effectively nested in Nina Dunn’s video design, a curving backdrop of water and sky.

What makes Back to the Future so confusing, aside from the general ineptness, is how little it seems to understand its own relationship to the material it is trying to exploit. The show spends half of its time slavishly reproducing lines and details from Robert Zemeckis’s 1985 film—Likes has even been directed to imitate the catch in Michael J. Fox’s voice—and the other half treating its own story like piffle, with corny added jokes and broad metatheatrical references and gags; in a ludicrous outer-space number for Doc Brown that opens the second act, it abandons all trappings of sense altogether. A similar fate befalls too many shows that try to cash in on cinematic IP, and the Broadway musical, as an art form, can’t keep getting lost on these roads. If this is the future, please send it back.

The Cottage may look like a throwback to the tony sauciness of Noël Coward’s plays in the 1930s—in a nod to the Master, Beau’s secretary is named Mrs. Worthington—but it is broader in character and characters, and less sophisticated in language. Some of the play’s biggest laughs come from outright spoofery of its period and genre, like a running joke that finds cigarettes and lighters concealed in unexpected parts of Paul Tate dePoo III’s well-stuffed set. (These cigs rarely stay lit for long; they are alway being stubbed out in some dramatic gesture.) Amid the old-fashioned trappings, Rustin nestles a welcome modern sensibility to the plot’s skirmishes of the sexes; Sylvia’s dissatisfaction hints at the growing agency of post-Victorian Englishwomen. While the architecture of the plot is solid, what really keeps The Cottage up is the comedic industry of its cast. Directed by Jason Alexander, a seasoned hand at classic timing, the actress leap gamely into their funny business. McCormack’s vain Beau is smoothly caddish and twittish; Moffat, leading with his chin, has some inspired physical horseplay, and Steingold packs a lot of power into her small frame. And Bundy, who looks smashing in Sydney Maresca’s costumes, holds the play’s center together with considerable appeal. It’s sex, sure, but more than that: It’s charm.

The groundbreaking, floor-shaking Here Lies Love makes space for itself like no Broadway show ever has. David Byrne’s concept musical about the rise and fall of the former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos was a hit in its 2013 run at the Public Theatre, but those who saw that immersive production may have wondered how it could possibly translate to a traditional proscenium theater. The trick, it turns out, was to remake the venue instead of the show: Director Alex Timbers and set designer David Korins have revolutionized and radicalized the capacious Broadway Theatre into a gleaming dance club, walled by dozens of video screens, where audience members—often literally standing in the middle of the action-get swept up in the shifting tides and undertows of history.

Edelman performed Just for Us Off Broadway last year. It's a mitzvah that the show has now moved to Broadway for a summer engagement, so more audiences can sit with his uncomfortable truths in a time of increasing anti-Semitic hate. Under Adam Brace's well-calibrated direction, and employing just one mic and three stools, Edelman conjures a roomful of enemies he naively believes he can charm. They don't succumb, of course, but theatergoers do.

Amid all the bright lights, loud sound and frenetic staging—at one point, Guarini swings from a chandelier—the musical’s most powerful weapon is its least effortful one: musical-comedy genius Jennifer Simard’s thoroughly original spin on Cinderella’s devious stepmother. With deadpan command and a somehow lugubrious flounce, she brings wit to each word she speaks or sings, whether laying waste to “Toxic” or, flanked by her washout daughters (Tess Soltau and Ann Hillner Larsen), telling the not-yet-liberated Cinderella to “Work Bitch.” Simard is delicious; the rest of the show, if you turn off your brain, is merely yummy in a candy-coated way. That’s not nothing: Once Upon a One More Time is a well-assembled and entertaining diversion. But this is now the third musical currently running on Broadway that features at least one Britney song, and that should give theater lovers pause. Musicals are capable of more ambitious roles than merely carrying Spears.