Adrian Horton — Theater Critic

If you grew up with it, there’s something inherently nostalgic about the sound of cicadas. The incessant chorus, once every 17 years, conjures something primordial, unsettling, country, past. Appropriate, the excellent production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play at the Helen Hayes Theater, plunges its audience into that portal at the show’s onset – all darkness and trilling racket. The sound design, lush and unnerving, is controlled by Bray Poor and Will Pickens.

Tough, when so much trauma and anger and insults are said, and so loudly. By show’s end, the play felt as lost as its flailing characters, despite the bright lights within it. Danny and the Deep Blue Sea is, as promised, challenging theater, just not in the good way.

But Shucked’s power, should it work on you, is in its impressively consistent stream of puns, slow-burn wordplays and PG-13 jokes. The cast’s comedic timing is near universally excellent, though I detected a shadow of a shrug, a hope that you’ll laugh and not groan at the base-aiming humor. Which is not my style, though I seemed to be in the minority. The audience at the matinee I attended laughed throughout, sometimes uproariously and with surprise. I’m not the buyer of this particular variety, but corn sells – which, in the name of an original musical, is something to root for.

With the fates established from the jump, it’s remarkable that Parade feels as dynamic and moving as it does. That’s in large part thanks to Brown’s Tony-winning score and orchestrations – music director and conductor Tom Murray’s version is lush and chill-inducing from the jump – and a top-to-bottom slate of excellent vocal performances, particularly from leads Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond.

an Hove's West Side Story, produced by Scott Rudin, makes a lot of gambles in moving the show from mid-century Upper West Side to somewhere in 2020 New York (still the same area, according to the program, though its minimalist style and backdrop of empty, graffitied streets suggest elsewhere). The characters have Soundcloud rapper-esque face tattoos and iPhones; mini-dresses and body-con streetwear replace full skirts, while fluid Latinx-influenced dances sub for the original's ballet-based choreography. The production keeps the original book by Arthur Laurents with music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, though cuts I Feel Pretty and the intermission, thus running a brisk, bracing hour and 45 minutes straight.

The Great Society is a man's show; the focus on Johnson and King and Kennedy, with small parts for Lady Bird Johnson and Coretta Scott King as concerned and embittered wives, ones who feel underutilized. That being said, it's difficult to justify any less stage or speaking time for Cox, whose sublime swings from bullishness and crippling guilt capture the real Johnson's notoriously volatile moods, even if the Texas drawl is more evocative than spot-on. What he lacks in Johnson's physical stature - the real president was 6ft 4in - Cox recoups in palpable energy; as he strides about the room, literally strong-arming lobbyists and senators into public promises, shading his vowels brassier or less so depending on the audience, it's a brilliant portrait of intimidation and presence.