Adam Feldman

I had a different reaction to the Broadway production, which feels deeper and more fully realized to me. In part, that may reflect the added resonance its themes have acquired over the past few years, when we all became more alert to questions of health, responsibility and isolation that Cost of Living touches on. But this version also benefits from new cast members Young and Zayas, who bring marvelous warmth and personality to their performances. The two original cast members remain strong-Sullivan's voice cuts through the theater like a serrated knife-but the balance of the play has shifted for the better. Majok's tender, tough-loving care for her characters shines out with new life.

DeBessonet hits these serious points movingly and gracefully at the end of the show, without sacrificing the many pleasures that the musical offers along the way. Into the Woods's legion fans are well-served by this revival, and at both the Encores! performance and the Broadway press performance that I attended, the audience response was overwhelming. The show, for all its thorniness, engenders the bliss of re-encountering an old friend who is holding up great. What more, in the end, could you wish?

Broadway's 2021-22 comeback season goes out with a shrug in Sam Gold's production of Macbeth, the kind of passive-aggressive theater party that invites two big stars to attend-Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga as the regicidal title couple-and then makes a point of ignoring them. Short, eloquent, violent and packed with sensational business (murder! witches! madness! ghosts! a decapitated head!), Macbeth is usually one of Shakespeare's most exciting plays. Not so here: Deliberately murky, this anemic modern-dress production creeps at a petty pace from scene to scene, to the last syllable of the tragedy's verse and beyond into a wistful folk-song coda.

Thirty years ago, Crystal wore aging makeup to play this role on film. He doesn't need it anymore, but he never really did: He has Buddy in his bones. Crystal has been playing this alter kocker alter ego since at least Saturday Night Live in 1985, and Buddy's type of Catskills-and-Friars-Club cut-up is embedded in his comic style: He has deep affection and respect for the generation of comedians that Buddy represents, and he keeps their spirit alive in his timing, his rhythms, his soulful aggression. ('Happy anniversary. Forty-five years!' Buddy tells his wife. 'Eleven of the best years of my life.') In Mr. Saturday Night he honors their history with a sweet, slight, nostalgic musical comedy.

Mostly, the jokes in POTUS are less pointed. The White House setting is an excuse for a broad, zany, old-school comedy, which is a rarity on Broadway nowadays-especially in the form of a world premiere by a twentysomething woman. You can feel how hungry the spectators are to laugh together, and they get to do it often in this silly, fast-paced lark. It helps enormously that the production, directed by Susan Stroman (The Producers), is so well-cast. This ensemble makes an implicit argument of its own for female accomplishment: Even when their characters are floundering hopelessly, these ladies are pros.

Jackson has made minor edits to the show since its Off Broadway run, but the biggest change is in the central casting: Originated by Larry Owens, Usher is now played by Jaquel Spivey in a strong Broadway debut. Although he doesn't have Owens's prickly self-assurance or his sometimes scary rawness-his Usher seems younger, less sure, less fully formed-he has a sensitive presence and a beautiful voice. And all six original Thoughts remain the same, and provide terrific support for Spivey even as they undermine his character. All deserve mention by name: They are Antwayn Hopper, L Morgan Lee, John-Michael Lyles, James Jackson Jr., John-Andrew Morrison and Jason Veasey. 'I'm into entertainment that's undercover art,' sings Usher of his ambitions for A Strange Loop. Jackson's musical delivers on that promise. The COVID shutdown had a lot of us holding our breaths that Broadway would dare to offer something bold and new when it came back. This is the musical we've been waiting for.

Based on the number of empty seats at the Vivian Beaumont Theater after the intermission between Act II and Act III-there is also a pause between the first and second acts-many people share her mixture of confusion and dismay. The Skin of Our Teeth was ahead of its time in 1942 but is not ahead of ours; although the text has been tweaked by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins-a quote from Aristotle, for instance, has been replaced with one from bell hooks-it often seems dated, even when the material is startlingly applicable to our particular moment in time. (When a stage manager steps forward to announce that the company has been ravaged by illness and understudies will be stepping into their roles, you may think that's a new addition to the text. It is not.) The repetition gets numbing, and the conceit wears out; by the third act, you acutely feel the nearly three-hour length.

The rain clouds gather early over the misplaced-pride parade that is the Broadway revival of Funny Girl. The audience is primed for a boffo old-fashioned musical comedy, which this production promises. Even before the curtain-which itself depicts a curtain!-goes up, the audience claps at the overture's most famous songs; when Beanie Feldstein makes her first appearance as Ziegfeld Follies comedian Fanny Brice, stares into an invisible mirror and delivers her famous opening self-affirmation ('Hello, gorgeous!'), the crowd goes wild. But then she starts to sing. It is unfair, but unavoidable, to compare Feldstein to Funny Girl's original leading lady, Barbra Streisand, who was not only a fresh comic talent at the time but also one of the greatest vocalists in Broadway history.

After his success in film, including Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, McDonagh seems to relish the chance to work in a less realistic medium (though that movie was hardly cinéma vérité). But rather than pushing that potential into new territory-as in his 2003 masterwork, The Pillowman-McDonagh winks at conventions even as he uses them to cover up a thin and implausible story. Dunster's staging adds to the sense of artifice, with lurching shifts of mood lights, Taratino-esque music cues and a physical space that works directly against the would-be suspense of the play's denouement. For a while, yes, it seems cool: Hangmen has plenty of twists. But the twists wind up forming a sloppy noose that is strong enough only to leave the play dangling, without a lethal snap, when the bottom falls out in the end.

Most good theater lives on, if it's lucky, only in the memory of those who saw it. Manhattan Theatre Club's revival of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, one of the signal plays of the 1990s, represents an exception. With a firm eye on the rearview mirror, this production reunites director Mark Brokaw, who helmed the show's premiere at the Vineyard in 1997, with its two exceptional original stars, Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse; also along for the ride is Johanna Day as the principal soloist in the show's Greek Chorus of three, plus lighting designer Mark McCullough and sound designer David Van Tieghem. After more than a quarter of a century, they all move assuredly in old roles as the play shifts back into gear.

Directed by Neil Pepe with the expert eye for appraisal that the characters lack, this production is vastly superior to American Buffalo's last Broadway incarnation, which ran briefly back in 2008. The play itself, which marked Mamet's breakthrough, is as thin as a dime, but it's got great atmospherics. Scott Pask's set and Dede Ayite's costumes plunge us into the shabby world of the action; seated around the thrust stage at Circle in the Square, the audience can almost smell the mix of dirt and desperation. Although not much happens in the play, which is less a thriller than a loiterer, it somehow seems fast-paced, thanks in large part to the three crack performers who bring it to life. They stride the stage with the game confidence of actors who know exactly how to make Mamet's monte look full.

On the night I saw the show, the crowd was not pleased. 'What the hell was that?' said a friendly-faced lady to her husband and children as the four of them stood outside giggling during intermission at The Little Prince, having decided not to return for the second half. 'Are you guys leaving, too?' asked a nearby woman. 'Oh good! Now I know I'm not crazy!' (She wasn't crazy.) As another couple put it as they crossed the street as fast as they could, 'We could've stayed home and watched Tammy Faye Bakker!' In these troubled times, it is heartening to see so many people agree about at least one thing: The Little Prince is quite confoundingly bad.

In Noah Haidle's thin and drippy Birthday Candles, the earnest Ernestine (Debra Messing) prepares and bakes a cake in 90 minutes of real time, as 90 years of her life pass by. A smell of baking thus wafts through the theatre, providing one of the production's few whiffs of reality. Haidle means to suggest that the specific is universal- Christine Jones's set is a kitchen that floats in the vastness of the cosmos, with household objects hanging over it like stars- but he forgets to be specific. It's Thornton Wilder without the wildness or the thorns.

Ellis's ensemble cast-which also includes Julian Chi as a Japanese pitcher, Hiram Delgado and Eduardo Ramos as macho Empires, and Ken Marks as their manager-is a model of teamwork, with the main cast leading the charge. The role of Darren is challenging because the character is such a cipher ('I don't have a secret, Kippy. I am a secret'), but Williams balances believable swagger with lovely shades of growing self-awareness. Oberholtzer brings high low-life intensity to his performance as the foolish Shane, and Dirden is a pillar of testy rectitude as the pious Davey. But Mason is by far the play's best role, and Ferguson-warm, sweet and infectiously enthusiastic-is the show's most valuable player. In every moment he spends onstage, with every perfectly timed aperçu, he wears the audience like a glove.

It's a handsome production, with a talented and notably large cast; the exciting dance sequences, choreographed by Bill T. Jones, are among the show's highlights [...] The problem is that the writing doesn't support the spectacle, yielding a ponderous hash of good intentions that often feels like a training-wheels version of Ragtime. The disjointed script hops among scenes and tones, and while one understands the impetus behind ditching Foster's catchy but plantation-flavored songs, the score that has replaced them-by Jason Howland, Nathan Tysen and Masi Asare-is mostly unmemorable.

Neil Simon's Plaza Suite is back on Broadway, and the title character looks great. When the curtain goes up, the set gets entrance applause; designed by John Lee Beatty, that master of envy-inducing decor, it has a golden glow of classic luxury. Simon's hit 1968 trilogy of short comedies, about three different couples in Room 719 of the ritzy Manhattan hotel, is perhaps less timeless in its appeal. Its main characters are mostly middle-aged, and so is the writing; it is now over 50, and its comic cheek is showing some laugh lines. But the vestiges of laughs are nice wrinkles, as wrinkles go, and while this production doesn't leave you rolling in the aisles, it is likely to at least leave you smiling.

Marian's 'My White Knight' has been expanded by restoring a long and busy introduction that was cut from the original production. Foster speeds through the latter song so fast you'd hardly recognize it as one of The Music Man's oases of dreamy lyricism. What you get is comedy; what you lose, here and elsewhere, is the contrast of opposites-and attendant sexual chemistry-between Marian and Hill. Foster and Jackman seem to have fun together in the curtain call, tap dancing in matching white bandleader outfits, but their romance is otherwise half-hearted.

When the song is done, Michael speaks with an MTV reporter (Whitney Bashor) who has landed a rare interview with him. 'With respect, I wanna keep this about my music,' he says. 'Is it really possible to separate your life from your music?' she asks, preempting a question on many minds, and his reply is a slice of 'Tabloid Junkie': 'Just because you read it in a magazine / Or see it on a TV screen, don't make it factual.' And that, more or less, is that. Expertly directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, MJ does about as well as possible within its careful brief. In and of itself, it is a well-crafted jukebox nostalgia trip. Lynn Nottage's script weaves together three dozen songs, mostly from the Jackson catalog. The music and the dancing are sensational. And isn't that, the show suggests, really the point in the end? Doesn't that beat all?

If some of the grit has been lost in Skeleton Crew's refurbished Broadway form, which also includes flashy video effects, Morisseau's play remains firmly based in the lives and evocative language of its characters, whom Santiago-Hudson treats with the respect they deserve. They're flawed but decent people, driven by forces that may or may not be beyond their control.

The Lincoln Center production has real pleasures: Yazbeck shares a thrilling musical-hall duet, choreographed by Michelle Dorrance, with his younger self (Atticus Ware), who is dressed as a girl; Cusack sings as beautifully as always, as does Laura Shoop as Huxley's wife. And the staging is very handsome indeed: Beowulf Boritt's expansive set, Toni Leslie-James's costumes and Bradley King's lighting are all first-class. But these elements can only distract so much from a show that would probably make more sense as a one-act in a smaller space. What a long, strange trip it is.

The modern setting and gender switches help; with a woman as Bobbie, and the sexes of several couples swapped around, the text plays out in exciting new ways. (The sequence for the instrumental 'Tick Tock,' for instance, now evokes the notion of a biological clock.) The comedy of the modernized book scenes is squeezed to the hilt by a cast that includes musical-theater überdiva Patti LuPone, harnessing her imperious earthiness to outstanding effect, and Broadway pros like Jennifer Simard-who can make any line a laugh line-Nikki Renée Daniels and the Christophers Sieber and Fitzgerald. The show's surreal aspects are realized in designer Bunny Christie's fantastical urban set: a constantly shifting wow of claustrophobic frame-lit boxes, monochromatic interiors, elevators going up and down, Alice in Wonderland-style shifts of scale.

Have I seen the new Broadway musical Mrs. Doubtfire? At this point, I am fairly confident that I have; ask me in three months, and I'm not sure what I'll tell you. This pleasant and forgettable show at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre is the epitome of what Sondheim (citing his friend Mary Rodgers) called a 'Why' musical: 'a perfectly respectable show, based on a perfectly respectable source, that has no reason for being.' Mrs. Doubtfire hopes to draw on audiences' residual affection for the 1993 Robin Williams film comedy, in which a divorced dad named Daniel disguises himself as a hearty old Scottish nanny so he can spend time with his kids. We've already had musical versions of Tootsie and Mary Poppins; now we have the hybrid we never knew we needed and, as it turns out, we don't.

'We have what we need. So, let's cook.' And cook they do, bouncing off each other's rhythms like an expert jazz combo. Jones is a model of soulful grace, and Kara Young and Reza Salazar bring charm and humor to their roles as, respectively, the young mother of a disabled child and a recovering addict with a romantic streak; Edmund Donovan is terrific as a laconic newcomer, tense with guilt and shame, whose racist tattoos testify to a past he can't escape. (Not since Adam Driver has an actor risen so swiftly through the ranks on the strength of troubled tenderness.) But the wonderful Aduba, in her first starring Broadway role, has the plummiest role; she cuts through Clyde's like a serrated knife. The stage is her sandwich, and she slathers it with relish.

Trouble in Mind puts its main spotlight on LaChanze, who holds the whole play firmly in hand. She is this production's other revelation: Although she has played serious roles in musicals over the course of her 35-year career, this is the first time she has had the lead in a Broadway play. 'I want to be an actress,' says Wiletta. 'Hell, I'm gonna be one, you hear me?' An actress LaChanze proves herself to be, and not just when she's singing, and a hell of a good one at that.

This number, titled 'The Dress,' encapsulates the combination of bad taste and tasty badness that is Diana, one of the most enjoyable Broadway farragos of the 21st century so far. The real Princess Di died in 1997 at the age of 36, and her story might be the stuff of opera. Instead, in defiance of the potential gravity of their subject, book writer Joe DiPietro and composer David Bryan-who share blame for the show's lyrics-have opted for a campy, dishy pop-rock clip job of memorable moments from Diana's life, rendered in a stream of ploddingly banal rhyming couplets set to tunes that sometimes assume a vaguely 1980s accent. (Don't think New Wave; think Starship and Sheena Easton.) When the lyrics stray from the generic, it is often for the worse. 'Wasn't I the most beautiful bride? A glittering jewel right by his side,' sings Diana when she begins to wise up. 'Serves me right for marrying a Scorpio.' This may have been one of the half-dozen times when a gentleman in back of me at the theater uttered a sassy 'Period!' in response to a line onstage.