Adam Feldman — Theater Critic

Fortunately, 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 rope its score into character work; all 15 songs, of which 10 were part of the original 1996 recording sessions, are presented as performances in nightclubs or 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.

Juggling characters can often look frantic onstage, but it doesn’t in Vanya. Nothing about Scott’s performance feels hurried; he is unafraid of long silences, like the ones between Michael and Helena that practically heave with the heat of what they can’t say. In that sense, it is of a piece with the use of negative space in Rosanna Vize’s set.

The Streetcar revival now playing at BAM, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, doesn’t have much truck with magic; it does not invite the audience, even momentarily, to share the nympho- and dipsomaniacal Blanche’s delusions of gentility. But neither does it go for realism: There is barely any set, and nearly all of the action is squeezed onto a central square platform on cinderblocks that suggests a boxing ring minus the ropes; an onstage drummer sometimes bangs loudly on his kit, like a migraine in Blanche’s head, and there are occasional shifts into dancey stylized movement.

Purpose is a big swing, but that’s what it takes to get a big hit. Jacobs-Jenkins’s breakthrough play, An Octoroon, was a rejection of old theatrical conventions. This one takes a seat at the table, where—rising to the occasion—it makes speeches, makes trouble and makes excellent theater.

Where Redwood really shines is in the physical. As she proved with the underrated SpongeBob SquarePants, Landau has a fine sense for spectacle, and much of this show is lovely to look at. Hana S. Kim’s video design, rendered on tall and curved LED columns, has a vertiginous majesty, and the gigantic central tree, designed by Jason Ardizzone-West and lit by Scott Zielinsky, is a wonder. As in 2007’s unfortunate King Kong, the colossal title character of Redwood (whom Jesse christens Stella) is the best thing about this musical, even though—or maybe because—it doesn’t sing. But arboreal splendor can’t compensate for the blandness that surrounds it. The show is all bark and no bite.

If Toossi’s thoughtful and searching play has things to teach us—about character, culture, postcolonial identity—it does so through immersion. We first see Marjan’s classroom from the outside, through a window. But Marsha Ginsberg’s boxed set soon rotates to invite us inside; it keeps turning throughout the play to give us new angles, and Toossi does the same. Like any grammar, English has rules and structures that it carefully maintains, but enough exceptions and variations to provide character and texture. It unfolds fluently, but not glibly; its choices of word have purpose and care.

The show is not a comedy per se, but an anthology of comedy writing: short humor pieces by Simon Rich, performed script-in-hand by a rotating cast of actors. And while all of these pieces touch on awkward modern love in some way, that love is not always romantic; it can also be parental or familial or universal. But although the stories tend to resolve on awww-inspiring notes, All In is first and foremost funny—often very, very funny.

The show is not a comedy per se, but an anthology of comedy writing: short humor pieces by Simon Rich, performed script-in-hand by a rotating cast of actors. And while all of these pieces touch on awkward modern love in some way, that love is not always romantic; it can also be parental or familial or universal. But although the stories tend to resolve on awww-inspiring notes, All In is first and foremost funny—often very, very funny.

In many ways, this Gypsy is grandly old-fashioned: It has a cast of 30 and an orchestra of 25; the set (by Santo Loquasto), costumes (by Toni-Leslie James), hair (by Mia Neal) and lighting (by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer) are worthy of the Majestic Theatre’s name. This is a tree with all the trimmings—including restored bits of text that Laurents trimmed from previous revivals; here’s even new musical material, such as a brief introductory duet for “Small World.” Many of its pleasures are traditional ones, such as the excellent supporting performances: the ideally cast Danny Burstein as Rose’s put-upon lover and manager, Herbie, a mensch with a core of moral strength; Tyson as a June whose potential this production takes seriously; Mylinda Hull, Lili Thomas and the uproarious Lesli Margherita as a trio of dilapidated strippers who show Louise the ropes. This Gypsy has a running time of nearly three hours, and it luxuriates in its own length; it wraps around the audience like a mink stole, and none of it drags.

Eureka Day was already timely when it made its local debut Off Broadway in 2019. It is even more so in this Manhattan Theatre Club revival, now that vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy has been chosen to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the next administration. It seems more important than ever to engage with this issue and to understand the views of those who disagree. Eureka Day is often very funny, but it also contributes valuably to that discourse. Even as it needles the left, it offers an invigorating shot in the arm.

Larger themes notwithstanding, Cult of Love is mostly concerned with exploring just such complicated smallness. With an analytic precision that is tempered by sympathy and humor, Headland expertly renders the shifting dynamics and allegiances within the family and the couples: the gang-ups and ambushes, the protective measures and defensive thrusts. And Trip Cullman’s Second Stage production captures that complexity beautifully. It’s there in every inch of John Lee Beatty’s detailed farmhouse set and in Sophia Choi’s perfectly chosen costumes, and especially in the first-rate work of the large cast. Whether singing or sniping or merely stewing, these ten actors don’t hit a false note, and they blend together seamlessly. It's ensemble acting at a shared high level. They do themselves proud.

Death Becomes Her’s deft score, by Broadway newcomers Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, gives the performers plenty of humor to play with, along with nicely overblown strains of mystery and grandeur when called for. The book by Marco Pennette, a veteran TV comedy writer, preserves key jokes from Martin Donovan and David Koepp’s screenplay while adding solid zingers of his own—when Madeline condescendingly suggests that Helen should change jobs, she notes that being a pharmacist is “like being a doctor and a cashier”—and only minimal injections of filler. (Don’t think gay audiencewon’t notice when you crib a joke from Maggie Smith!) Pennette’s most significant changes to the story, at the end of both acts, have the salutary effect of keeping the show’s focus securely on the two main women. Sieber stops the show in a drunken and frantic second-act number, “The Plan,” but in the end this Ernest is just not important.

Although I admire Swept Away’s sincerity, however, I must admit that I was not ultimately very moved by it. The Avett Brothers’ voice is richly conflicted and specific, but the characters in this show are not; they are generic in their typology, and the story doesn’t quite support the framing of Mate’s deathbed confession and conversion to spreading the truth. Swept Away made me want to listen to more songs by the Avett Brothers, but I wasn’t sold on its larger points about brotherhood. For others, perhaps, the sense of redemption Mate lands on will seem worthier of his grim trip of guilt.

Christmas has come early to Broadway this year. Previous productions of the family-friendly comedic yuletide fable Elf The Musical, though pleasant enough, have seemed short on the very Christmas spirit—an ineffable sense of animating joy—that the musical is about. Its current revival, however, is another story entirely. To be honest, I wasn’t eager to see Elf get taken down from the shelf yet again. But my grinchiness soon vanished, to be replaced with a big wide grin. For the first time in my experience, this show is really elfin’ good.

Christmas has come early to Broadway this year. Previous productions of the family-friendly comedic yuletide fable Elf The Musical, though pleasant enough, have seemed short on the very Christmas spirit—an ineffable sense of animating joy—that the musical is about. Its current revival, however, is another story entirely. To be honest, I wasn’t eager to see Elf get taken down from the shelf yet again. But my grinchiness soon vanished, to be replaced with a big wide grin. For the first time in my experience, this show is really elfin’ good.

The trouble with this conception is that Tammy Faye herself is almost the least garish thing about it. Brayben won an Olivier Award for this role, but there’s a fundamental Englishness about her that she can’t quite shake; she’s solid and sympathetic, and sings extremely well, but she doesn’t access Tammy’s rawness and almost childlike ebullience—the personal charisma at the center of her brand of Charismatic Christianity. And the musical doesn’t help her get there. The qualities that made Tammy Faye a gay icon—the cosmetics, the pills, the excess, the tears—are addressed only glancingly; we don’t get inside her head about them. Instead, Tammy Faye serves us a likable, sincere gal doing the best she can in a world whose machinations she doesn’t understand. But does Tammy Faye understand them any better? Its point of view is hard to discern. The eyes may be a window to the soul, as Tammy was wont to say, but it’s hard to see the soul through eyes that can’t decide if they’re glaring, winking or crying.

Can a show as strange and special as Maybe Happy Ending find a place for itself on Broadway today? I like to think that maybe it can. But as the show reminds us, everything is ephemeral: “We have a shelf life, you know that,” says Claire. “It’s the way that it has to be.” The fact that this show is casting its firefly glow on Broadway at all feels like a gift. In its gentle robot way, it helps us see ourselves through freshly brushed eyes.

The outstanding James Monroe Iglehart, who plays Armstrong, has that smile down: a grin so wide and bright that, when the lights go out, you half expect it to linger behind like the Cheshire Cat’s. Iglehart has mastered Armstong’s mannerisms, too, and the churning gravel of Armstrong’s unmistakable voice (to an extent that makes you fear for his long-term vocal health); in Toni-Leslie James’s snazzy costumes and a series of first-class wigs, he summons Armstrong to life like the Genie he once played in Aladdin. But the performance goes beyond expert impersonation. Whether Armstrong is on stage or off, Iglehart infuses him with bluff, buoyant charm.

The outstanding James Monroe Iglehart, who plays Armstrong, has that smile down: a grin so wide and bright that, when the lights go out, you half expect it to linger behind like the Cheshire Cat’s. Iglehart has mastered Armstong’s mannerisms, too, and the churning gravel of Armstrong’s unmistakable voice (to an extent that makes you fear for his long-term vocal health); in Toni-Leslie James’s snazzy costumes and a series of first-class wigs, he summons Armstrong to life like the Genie he once played in Aladdin. But the performance goes beyond expert impersonation. Whether Armstrong is on stage or off, Iglehart infuses him with bluff, buoyant charm.

Gold’s in-the-round staging makes dynamic use of side areas, including the aisles and the catwalk above the stage, but the environment it creates is hermetic. There’s little sense of a Verona beyond this Instagrammable party space—or of its rules. And ultimately, I think, that undermines the play; it accentuates the role of simple bad luck in Romeo and Juliet’s fate, and detracts from the larger point. This production seems intent on appealing to TikTok audiences who don’t know much about the play going in, which is a laudable goal, and I think it will succeed. But those newcomers may be surprised to find that what they thought was a tragedy about young people crushed by societal constraints is actually the sad tale of two nice kids who died from a lack of adult supervision.

Margulies’s Ephron is too glossy to believe, as though this production didn’t trust the appeal of its own story. “No one wants to hear about older people getting it on,” Delia says—“Yes, that’s true!” said an elderly woman behind me, loudly and conclusively—so instead of the adorable real people of Ephron’s memoir we get famously attractive actors getting it over with. Aside from them, however, the show is not very pretty. Directed by Susan Stroman, Left in Tenth has the energy and the color scheme of a drugstore greeting card: This is a cheap-looking production, from Beowulf Boritt’s jankily angled set to Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s blotchy projections and the least realistic prop drinks you’ll ever see.

Thus described, Lloyd’s approach may sound academic—but in practice, it is often thrilling. The original production was famous for the lavish excess of its set and costumes. Here, by contrast, designer Soutra Gilmour’s set is mostly blank space, and she costumes most of the cast in basic black and white streetwear, sometimes with athletic socks pulled high. (When the ensemble performs Fabian Aloise’s sharp choreography, it looks a bit like an updated Gap ad.) Even Norma wears just a satiny black slip. This is Sunset, stripped. But you don’t miss the frills: Jack Knowles’s excellent lighting—and the video design by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom—fill out the scenes with ample film-noir atmospherics and help Lloyd shape the staging for maximum narrative and emotional impact. Not for nothing has the title been tightened to Sunset Blvd.

Thus described, Lloyd’s approach may sound academic—but in practice, it is often thrilling. The original production was famous for the lavish excess of its set and costumes. Here, by contrast, designer Soutra Gilmour’s set is mostly blank space, and she costumes most of the cast in basic black and white streetwear, sometimes with athletic socks pulled high. (When the ensemble performs Fabian Aloise’s sharp choreography, it looks a bit like an updated Gap ad.) Even Norma wears just a satiny black slip. This is Sunset, stripped. But you don’t miss the frills: Jack Knowles’s excellent lighting—and the video design by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom—fill out the scenes with ample film-noir atmospherics and help Lloyd shape the staging for maximum narrative and emotional impact. Not for nothing has the title been tightened to Sunset Blvd.

Tears were streaming down my face for much of the last half hour of this revival; perhaps you will feel the same way. But while we in the audience might weep, Wilder's view, though always sympathetic, stays clear and dry. He has a eye on the eternal.

Hwang has given Yellow Face a minor face lift since the original New York production. It’s good work: Minus its intermission and a few inessential scenes, the play seems tauter and smoother, but not unnaturally so; its wrinkles and laugh lines remain. Kim, whose only previous Broadway experience was a brief stint in the King and I role originated by the non-Asian Yul Brynner, capably holds the show’s center as DHH, with an appealing layer of fluster behind his veneer of success. Three versatile actors—Marinda Anderson, Shannon Tyo and Some Like It Hot’s expert Kevin Del Aguila—fill out the many minor roles, often playing against ethnic type; these include quick, insider-y sketches of real-life journalists, activists, theater creators and (such as BD Wong, Margaret Cho and Jane Krakowski).