Adam Feldman — Theater Critic

Here's my advice: Go to hell. And by hell, of course, I mean Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell's fizzy, moody, thrilling new Broadway musical. Ostensibly, at least, the show is a modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy goes to the land of the dead in hopes of retrieving girl, boy loses girl again. 'It's an old song,' sings our narrator, the messenger god Hermes (André De Shields, a master of arch razzle-dazzle). 'And we're gonna sing it again.' But it's the newness of Mitchell's musical account-and Rachel Chavkin's gracefully dynamic staging-that bring this old story to quivering life.

Pale is the kind of steamroller role that is irresistible to actors-a sexy beast whose brutish pride masks a deep well of pain-and Driver gives it everything he's got. He's terrific, and slightly terrifying. Even in the vastness of Anna and Larry's open, spare, high-ceilinged loft, there seems barely enough space to contain him.

Director Daniel Fish's bold, spare revival of Oklahoma! gives us the ranch but not the dressing. The musical's cast of 12 performs in modern clothing, mostly without microphones, with the audience seated on either side of the minimal stage. The house lights are often left up, letting us take in the homespun Western feel of Laura Jellinek's set: wooden risers, colorful banners, racks of guns on one wall. But sometimes the room goes pitch-black, as when Laurie (a wary, ungirlish Rebecca Naomi Jones) is alone with her would-be suitor, Jud (the lanky Patrick Vaill, tense with incel self-pity), or when Jud's rival, Curly (Damon Daunno), visits him in his creepy smokehouse. There are pockets of dark menace in the show's wide-open spaces.

Gold's production is full of interesting directorial choices that do not quite cohere into a shared universe for King Lear's characters to inhabit. The subtle Ruth Wilson plays Cordelia with soulful, depressive interiority-in a wise stroke of casting, she doubles as the Fool-while the hyperintense Aisling O'Sullivan, as Regan, looks at every moment like lasers are about to shoot from her eyes. Jayne Houdyshell, John Douglas Thompson and Dion Johnstone offer conventional turns as the play's Lear loyalists; Sean Carvajal flails through the thankless role of Edgar. The Duke of Cornwall is played, in a kilt, by deaf actor Russell Harvard, with Michael Arden signing translation.

It is Motown the Musical by way of Jersey Boys, with a soupçon of Dreamgirls in the Act One finale that makes you wish that the intragroup dynamics were more fully developed throughout. But Des McAnuff and choreographer Sergio Trujillo, who also collaborated on Jersey Boys, keep things speeding along: The conveyer belts and turntables of Robert Brill's set are hardly ever still, and the dancing represents a highly amped-up version of the Temptations' actual moves (sometimes at a slight cost to vocal precision). The songs do their work, and the ensemble casts shines whenever it gets a chance; Rashidra Scott makes an impression as Otis's ex-wife, for example, as does Saint Aubyn as Ruffin's peevish replacement, Dennis Edwards. As musical theater, Ain't Too Proud could generously be described as shameless. But as an evening of musical entertainment, it ain't too shabby.

Without such changes, however, Kiss Me, Kate might not be revivable at all-and that would be a shame, since the Roundabout's production is often a delight. For one thing, it affords an opportunity to rehear Porter's score, which lists heavily toward witty-silly list songs but also includes the beautifully pining 'So in Love' and the acidic 'I Hate Men.' And whatever heat has been tamped down in the central couple flares up elsewhere-most exuberantly, and appropriately, in the second-act opener, 'Too Darn Hot,' a pull-out-the-stops ensemble dance number that all but burns down the house.

But however much you root for it, Be More Chill ultimately seems like a talented, likable team that is playing in the wrong league, and the Lyceum looms around it like a judgment. Directed in broad strokes by Stephen Brackett, the show doesn't take itself seriously enough; many of the jokes are underbaked, and by the time it reaches its wacky, hectic finale, it has thrown internal logic out the window. And the production's embrace of cartoonishness works against the sentimental effects it sometimes reaches for, especially since we have little reason to care about Jeremy one way or the other; Roland, who was terrific as the needling sidekick in Dear Evan Hansen, sings well but doesn't project the sensitivity that might help fill out his role. Be More Chill takes it for granted that we'll like Jeremy just because most of the kids at his school do not. But unpopularity, like popularity, only goes so far.

If the charismatic Hawke all but wipes the floor with Dano in the play's first half, Dano gets his turn to act out in Act Two. These are showcase roles, and the actors play them with gusto. James Macdonald's Roundabout Theatre Company production occasionally errs on the side of the obvious: Marylouise Burke brings her customary off-kilter comic panache to her cameo as the brothers' late-returning mom, but Gary Wilmes smears an extra layer of grease on the already oleaginous role of a Hollywood producer, and a showy change of lighting undermines Austin's big story about how his dissolute father lost two pairs of teeth.

The ending has been revised since Manhattan Theatre Club first presented it Off Broadway in 2013 with much of the same cast-Pope, Ashe, and the excellent Chuck Cooper and Austin Pendleton as adults at the school-but many of the changes are not improvements; the denouement is somehow more explanatory yet less clear. (A pivotal scene of violence is a misstep in Trip Cullman's mostly sure-footed staging.) At its best, though, the play is specific, lyrical and touching: McCraney brings a ringing, unapologetic queer black voice to Broadway, and offers valuable perspective on struggles that have too long been unsung.

If Sorkin's adaptation lacks the subtlety and plain-spokenness of Lee's novel, it has moments of old-fashioned power-the playwright knows how to set up a court scene-and others of surprising tenderness, as when he briefly takes the fatherless Dill under his wing. ('You have no business being kind, but there you are,' he tells the boy.) As perhaps befits material that has been a high-school mainstay for decades, this To Kill a Mockingbird has many teachable moments, perhaps a few too many. But it does-and I mean this as a compliment-a very decent job.

With its continual sensory overload and its darkly vague intimations about populism and corporate power, this Network certainly looks cool. But it’s beyond cool: It’s icy. We seem intended to nod our heads and think about how prescient it all was—the mob appeal of anger, a mention of Saudi Arabia—but then to think no more. Network isn’t galvanizing, it’s numbing: emptily flashy in its condemnation of empty flash, inhuman in its wan defense of humanity. It has a superb TV star and a killer catch phrase, but behind the sound and fury is only a shadow of significance.

Directed by Jason Moore, the show whirls through six decades at a dizzying pace that disguises, up to a point, that it doesn't have much to stand on. We are told a dozen times that Cher is 'shy,' and her mother's advice-'The song makes you strong'-is repeated more than once. But unlike the songs in, say, Beautiful, Cher's actual hits can't support that task: They are likeable but skimpy pop ditties. Rick Elice's script responds to this challenge by skipping past most of them quickly: We hear only snippets before the musical hurries on to some new montage, narration or set change. The show covers so much ground that it can't dig into any one narrative, and although Cher is known for self-exposure, the storytelling is guarded.

Though it teases Broadway, The Prom has the appealing scrappiness of a party thrown by the theater community for itself, and nowhere is this celebration more joyous than in the deliciously hammy performances of its two seasoned stars, who take over-the-top to dizzying heights. The hilarious Ashmanskas never seems more than a hop, skip and jump away from actually hopping, skipping and jumping, and Leavel churns her big number, a pastiche called 'The Lady's Improving,' into pure showtune butter. It's not the show: It's them. They're lovable.

The truly frustrating thing about King Kong is the waste of it all. Why did it this story, whose central figure necessarily cannot sing, need to be a musical at all, much less one that suggests a late-run Simpsons parody? Have the success of War Horse and Thorne's own Harry Potter and the Cursed Child-and the bellyflops of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and Cirque du Soleil's Paramour-taught us nothing? King Kong looks down on its huckster villain, film director Carl (Eric William Morris, overplaying an unplayable role), for taking an awesome creature and surrounding it with mediocrity for a gawking New York audience-but that's exactly what this production does itself. In the sad eyes of the second act's chained and stooped Kong, you see flickers of a show that might have been.

The Waverly Gallery forces us to deal with the walking memento mori that Gladys has become, but in a way that never seems cruel. Infuriating though she often is, it's impossible to hate her, and the casting of May, in her return to the Broadway stage after more than half a century, works brilliantly. She is funny and warm and she's familiar, which helps fill in some of the play's emotional blanks: Our affection and respect for this titan of American comedy spills over into how we respond to her character.

If Fingal gets the upper hand in The Lifespan of a Fact, it's partly thanks to Radcliffe's appeal as an actor. His Fingal may be a persnickity fussbudget with a dubious sense of which battles to pick, but his bite is the bite of an underdog; he's scruffy and small, and his hyperintensity reads as passionate integrity that doesn't know how to contain itself. Cannavale's D'Agata, by contrast, is arrogant and dismissive, and his resistance to Fingal's critiques has an undercurrent of vanity and pique. (Whereas Fingal presents reams of hard evidence, in sometimes comical excess, the playwrights give D'Agata only a few philosophical arguments.)

A sprinkling of cute one-liners and two live snooker sequences in the second act-with improvised commentary-provide moments of relief from the forced plotting and even more forced romance, which converge in an inane finale. Can the current mania for British imports please take a pause? Not every play is meant to travel.

But for all of Bernhardt/Hamlet's limitations, it reminded me of Bernhardt's own motto: quand même, which translates roughly to 'even so' or 'at the same time.' While it is sometimes ungainly, the play is amusing on its own inside-theater terms. Moritz von Stuelpnagel's staging for the Roundabout has a handsome rotating set by Beowulf Boritt and capable performances not only by McTeer, who is incapable of being dull, but a strong supporting cast that includes Matthew Saldovar as an Art Nouveau poster artist, Nick Westrate as Bernhardt's son and Ito Aghayere as Rostand's plaintive wife. It also includes a few well-timed feminist zingers.

The cast makes the most of what Pretty Woman allows them. The winsome Barks, who played Éponine in the movie Les Misérables, sings very well and has a believable connection with Karl, who undersells his sexiness wisely. Orfeh provides sass and power vocals as Vivian's best friend, and Jason Danieley is a solidly smarmy villain; Eric Anderson injects humor and showmanship into his dual roles as a street-singing narrator and a benevolent hotel manager. But although it is capably staged, the show has no reason to exist beyond, one assumes, a desire to make money by pimping out a familiar property. Broadway can do better than the same old tricks.

You can smell the flop sweat before Gettin' the Band Back Together even begins, as Ken Davenport-the show's lead producer and also, not coincidentally, its principal author-takes the stage with a handheld mic to deliver a curtain speech. 'What you're about to see is one of those rare things on Broadway these days: a totally original musical,' he claims. But although the show is not based on any single preexisting souce, it is, in fact, supremely unoriginal, from its formulaic '90s-movie plot to its instantly forgettable '80s-rock score. A community-theater vanity production that has somehow surfaced at a Broadway house, it is schlocky at every turn.

To enjoy Head Over Heels, which offers quite a lot to enjoy, it is probably best to kick up your heels and put your head on hold. That's not to say that this saucy, boisterous musical doesn't have a brainy side, starting with its ambitious crossbreeding of four time periods: It grafts a 2010s queer sensibility onto songs from the 1980s-by the all-girl pop-punk quintet the Go-Go's (plus two hits from lead singer Belinda Carlisle's solo career)-and fits them into a 16th-century story that is set in ancient Greece. The dialogue, in iambic pentameter liberally sprinkled with thou and thee, contrasts amusingly with the unornamented lyrics of such go-to Go-Go's bops as 'Vacation,' 'Our Lips Are Sealed' and 'We Got the Beat.'

Hammer, in his stage debut, leans on sincerity a bit heavily but radiates charm, which goes a long way. Likability matters here; it helps keep the play's potential didacticism in check. She may poke fun at these guys as they poke at each other, but Lee is not dismissive as she gently squeezes their universe into a foosball and rolls it toward an overwhelming question.

To some degree, at least, we seem to have learned. The keen-edged and engrossing 50th-anniversary revival of The Boys in the Band-which is also the play's Broadway debut-is the creation of five openly gay producers, an openly gay director (the redoubtable Joe Mantello) and nine openly gay actors. No one seems worried about being role models; they focus on their roles, and on Crowley's favorful dialogue, whose basic bitterness is frequently cut with acid.

Yet the cumulative effect of this handsomely decrepit production is bracing. Director George C. Wolfe keeps things moving at a quick clip; not all of the bigger character choices pay off-and some of the actors are hard to hear or understand-but there are performances to savor. (I especially admired Michael Potts as a crapped-out gambler, Bill Irwin as a slick-handed ex-carny and Tammy Blanchard as a hard-nosed streetwalker.) In the end, however, it is Washington's show, and he seizes it with both hands in Hickey's climactic monologue, an aria of eroding self-deception boldly delivered straight to the audience. He takes us into his confidence, even as it crumbles.

Despite a capable cast, led by a composed and steely-eyed Rashad (and including the excellent Robert Stanton in a trio of small roles), Saint Joan doesn't rise to meet the contemporary energy of youthful protest with which it coincides. It flickers with intelligence but doesn't burn.