Adam Feldman — Theater Critic

I mean that Pass Over is not a play that plays it safe. It's a risky enterprise-a serious non-musical show, opening in the summer amid a public-health crisis-and although Pass Over deals with questions of escape, it is far from escapist entertainment. On the contrary, it grapples head-on with issues that have riven the country during the past two years: police violence, systemic racism, financial inequality. The concept of plague figures centrally.

I was a bit less taken with the Broadway production at the lovely old Belasco Theatre. Winningham remains magnetic; the new cast members are strong, especially Sanders and Scott, and the singing is as beautiful as ever. (Bayardelle sends the audience out on a high note.) But I was more acutely aware this time of how thinly the story is stretched; the gloominess felt heavier, and the enigmatic nature of Dylan's lyrics-which often relate only obliquely to the action-kept me at a distance. There are shows, like places, that you want to revisit again and again. But the chill I admired in Girl from the North Country left me somewhat colder the second time around.

Like much of Ivo van Hove's bold, often thrilling production, this opening sequence is big and small at once. Throughout the show, live sequences coexist or alternate with filmed ones, including many that occur offstage entirely; detail is blown up into spectacle, and spectacle is subsumed into detail. Van Hove's West Side Story functions very differently from any we have seen before. If the result is sometimes murky, it is also frequently revelatory-a major accomplishment in a show whose status as a classic threatens to freeze it in time and relevance.

Grand Horizons is not especially profound, and its women are written more fully than its men. But in Leigh Silverman's production for Second Stage, the gifted cast-which also includes Maulik Pancholy as Brian's would-be hookup and Priscilla Lopez as a blowsy neighbor-keeps the energy high. And the play does have touching things to say about the difficulty of trying to navigate a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of noncommunication and too much information. 'I will be a whole person to you,' Nancy tells Brian. 'I will.' That is one hard lesson of the play, whether Brian is ready to learn it or not: There comes a certain age when, no matter how painful it may be, you have to let your parents leave the nest.

Leon's direction emphasizes the beauty of the men's blackness. At the start of the play and during transitions between scenes, the servicemen-played by Nnamdi Asomugha, Rob Demery, Billy Eugene Jones, McKinley Belcher III, Warner Miller and tap dancer Jared Grimes-raise their voices into rich, deep blues.

Linney comes most alive when she's inhabiting Lucy's mother, pushing her voice into a nasal Midwestern bark and delivering juicy storytelling monologues. It's when she is narrating the story as Lucy that the play runs into trouble. Writing and reading are solitary events; public performance is not, and the literary qualities of the text, though often lovely, prove an obstacle: The very fine Linney works hard to suggest an interior struggle behind the smooth, polished reticence of the words-at several points, she verges on tears-yet it is hard to shake the sense that Lucy is writing for us, not speaking to us.

But Next to Normal has a strong focus on a single story, and an original score created to support that focus. Morissette's songs, most of them cowritten with Glen Ballard, weren't designed for that work. Cody has found clever places for some of them-'Ironic' is framed, self-deprecatingly, as a high school student's gangly attempt at writing poetry-but the balance is off. Two of Morissette's definitive numbers, 'Hand in My Pocket' and 'You Oughta Know,' are assigned to the side character of Frankie's sort-of-girlfriend, Jo (a first-rate Lauren Patten); the latter is a bona fide showstopper, but it's too big a moment for its place in a romantic subplot. And the show's defining incident-the sexual assault of Nick's friend Bella (Kathryn Gallagher) at a house party-is fleshed out much less fully, with a generic rich-white-jock predator as the villain. At a certain point, it starts to feel like several after-school specials crammed into one.

At the Old Vic in London, where Warchus's production premiered two years ago and has become an annual staple since, the show is staged in the round. Perhaps it is more effective in that form; at the Lyceum, even at what should be the joyous climax of the production-when the audience is corralled into helping assemble a massive Christmas feast-the festivity has a faint sense of effort. And just when our spirits have been suitably raised, Thorne's script tamps them down again with a buzzkill of a coda. This A Christmas Carol has many lovely moments and atmosphere aplenty. What it lacks, just a little, is cheer.

A certain amount of imperfection is built into ambition on this scale. The Inheritance is longer than it needs to be, yet the discussion of modern issues sometimes feels thin; the second part, which departs more freely from the Howard's End template, is less assured than the first (despite a welcome late cameo by the formidable Lois Smith), and its framing devices are overfamiliar, especially toward the finale. But at its best, as in the unforgettable sequence that concludes the first half, it taps into a profound sense of loss and a yearning for connection. If progress has come at a cost, The Inheritance is a play about remembering and honoring one's debts. As such, it feels-to quote one of its characters-like a necessary haunting.

Foremost, there is Warren, who delivers a performance of superhuman stamina and skill. She's more tightly controlled than the real-life Turner; her movement is sharper, her vocals less raspy, and she barely seems to break a sweat. But she makes the part her own. During the mini-concert that ends the show, in Turner's trademark punk-lioness hair-free from the burden of narrative, and backed by an onstage band-Warren struts with earned confidence. The audience by then is on its feet, and at hers. She has risen.

The Rose Tattoo gets much more pleasurable as it opens into bloom. Tomei is not ideally cast as Serafina-her lightness works against her-and the first act is thick with Italian accents and gesticulation. (You half expect someone to step forward and say, 'Mama mia, that's a spicy drama!') Trip Cullman's staging seems to lean into the potential for camp; the back half of Mark Wendland's abstract set is crowded with dozens of lawn-ornament pink flamingos, and Tina Benko, as Rosario's mistress, looks and acts like a human pair of scissors. But Tomei's great talent for romantic comedy clicks into place in her flirtation with Mangiacavallo. Although the tone of the play and production waver too much to leave a permament impression, The Rose Tattoo has an interesting place in the Williams canon. There is no shortage, in his plays, of lustful, delusional women who fall for attractive younger men. But rarely do they have, as here, even the hope of a happy ending.

Although it sags a bit in places, it coheres in the end, and Barford and Letts give Wheeler precisely the right amount of rot. The play sees right through this guy, and the view behind him isn't pretty.

Brash, smart and gleefully confrontational, this is the kind of show that starts arguments. It starts on a perverse antebellum plantation, but as it moves forward, in three very different acts that successively reframe what we have seen before them, it keeps you off balance; even afterward, you may feel staggered. As I wrote of its incarnation at New York Theatre Workshop, 'Slave Play is funny, perceptive, probing and, at times, disturbingly sexy. It snaps like a whip, and its aim is often outward.' Whatever you think it is, it's almost certainly not what you think.

Special guests each night keep it light and tight as they join Veneziale at the monster-track rally. When I was there, the spare chair was filled by FLS cofounding father Lin-Manuel Miranda-cuddly-cute as a panda, and just the man to land a toss-off joke and lend his hand to his band of brothers at the Booth. They spit some truth, and the consequence is laughter-and after, you may even be inspired to try out your own songs, with your own rhythm and timing. Forget about humming: This show sends you out rhyming.

Whereas Bryan Cranston brought a dogged vitality and wily command to the role, Brian Cox's version, though still spouting folksy Texas wisdoms and capable of manipulating his foes, seems older, wearier and less secure in his power. This is appropriate to Johnson's story during this period of upheaval: The great strong-armer and glad-hander is losing his grip. But in the absence of Cranston's central charisma, the play-already spread thin by the longer time frame-seems even more like an illustrated lecture.

Translated from the original French by Christopher Hampton and staged with commendable directness by Jonathan Kent, The Height of the Storm might seem merely a clever exercise were it not for its highly distinguished stars. In the flashier role, Pryce deftly navigates André's slippery landscape of paranoia, confusion, shame, loneliness and anger, while Atkins-like Madeleine-provides staunch, secure, unfussy support. If there is a picture to this puzzle after all, it is the portrait of a marriage that stretches on till death do them part and beyond.

The secret of Secret's success lies not in the big-reveal tentpoles of the act (which are highly skillful variations on standard mentalist routines) but in the partly improvised patter that cloaks them in genuine risk and spontaneity. When things don't go perfectly smoothly-when the good-natured and self-assured Brown bobbles a prediction or two-the hitches only add to the tension and impressiveness of what he is doing, as when a juggler's dropped ball reminds you how many are still in the air. The show leaves you in a state of joyful bafflement. Can you believe it? You don't have to, and that's the fun. It's a con game, and Brown is a consummate pro.

Director Jamie Lloyd's production, the play's third Broadway revival in 18 years, is capably acted but spare, gray and chilly; there is no set but two wooden chairs, a small folding table and a back wall that sometimes moves forward or backward. In each of the two-person scenes, the absent character lingers onstage like a gloomy ghost, sometimes nursing a drink. Everything seems intended to suggest the very English repression of great passions that the play never actually conveys. At the performance I attended, Hiddleston's icy facade cracked-during the scene in which he discovers his wife's adultery-to release a physical outpouring of fluid so profuse that it seemed like a magic trick, as though the actor had swiftly turned on and off a faucet that was hidden in his face. It was a strange and incongruous moment, and it provided a welcome burst of surprise in a production that is otherwise a chic and dreary affair.

At one point in Sea Wall, Alex refers to the cruelest thing he ever said; in A Life, Abe mentions the kindest thing anyone ever said to him. The difference between these two moments-the mystery and pain of the first, the sheer banality of the second-is the difference between the two components of this uneven evening.

Red alert! Red alert! If you're the kind of person who frets that jukebox musicals are taking over Broadway, prepare to tilt at the windmill that is the gorgeous, gaudy, spectacularly overstuffed Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Directed with opulent showmanship by Alex Timbers, this adaptation of Baz Luhrmann's 2001 movie may be costume jewelry, but its shine is dazzling.

When Johnny refuses to leave Frankie's apartment, even after she threatens to call the police, the creepiness factor is hard to avoid, especially since Shannon has used his lanky frame and craggy face to convey menace so successfully in the past. But for more than two hours, these highly gifted actors-directed by Arin Arbus, and beautifully lit by Natasha Katz-keep a sensitive focus on the gawky humanity of their characters, holding steady through the ups and downs of McNally's emotional ride. They connect, and they draw us in.

Whatever else it may or may not be, Beetlejuice is spectacularly weird. The best creative work in this musical adaptation of Tim Burton's 1988 film-about a pair of sweet ghosts trying to rid their house of its distasteful new inhabitants-has gone into its physical form: The designers come at it from all kinds of crazy angles. David Korins's haunted-house set seems to buckle in the middle and stretch at the edges; William Ivey Long's costumes are a batty vision of colors and patterns at war. There are magic tricks and giant worms and a starkly linear idea of the afterlife that contrasts well with the chaotic world of the living. If only so much of the rest of Beetlejuice were not a busy mess.

The most glorious words in the English language, the director of the show-within-a-show in 42nd Street once declared, are musical comedy. But few musicals on Broadway these days live up to the second part of that term: They evoke fond chuckles of appreciation, but they don't suck the laughs from your belly. Enter Tootsie, all dolled up in a red sequined gown, to drag out the real comic goods. Let other shows mope or brood or inspire, as some of them do very well. This one is out to give you a good time, and that's just what it does. Tootsie rocks. Tootsie rolls. Tootsie pops.

Gary, in other words, isn't fooling around. Like its hero, it has big plans, and like its hero, those plans do not come off with perfect smoothness. Lane is tremendous, and Julie White is screamingly funny as the play's third character, Carol: a middle-class midwife racked with guilt over her bystander role in one of Titus's many subtragedies, in which her own throat was nonfatally slit. (She's a bleeding-neck liberal.) But although Nielsen-who took over the role of Janice just before previews-wrings laughs from her signature facial aftershocks, the performance lacks variety; not all of the story's beats play out clearly, and while George C. Wolfe's production delivers all the flatulence a person could desire, there are stretches where it runs out of gas.

Like Hnath's A Doll's House, Part 2, this play is also a protrait of a complicated marriage, loving but not fully satisfying, and of a woman's attempts to define herself beyond it; her agitation is adeptly contrasted with Bill's wounded slickness and the smooth confidence of her primary opponent, Barack Obama (Peter Francis James). Directed firmly and dryly by Joe Mantello, Hillary and Clinton is cogent, snappy and perceptive about political and emotional realities. Much of the ground it covers might seem old to those who follow the news, but the play has now, as it could not have had in 2016, a looming sense of tragedy. Its final line, a shiv to the gut, sends you out hurting into the universe, outside the theater, where we somehow find ourselves now.