Alexis Soloski — Theater Critic

A splendiferous layer cake with a bittersweet core, Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady has returned to Broadway in a smashing new production from Bartlett Sher (The Sound of Music, The King and I). Expertly acted, pleasingly sung, and often visually splendid, it makes a good faith attempt to honor the show's history and intentions while also acknowledging the charged sexual politics of the moment. If its ending still doesn't satisfy, maybe that's because no My Fair Lady ending can.

Mean Girls is fine. Mean Girls is fun. The songs, by Fey's husband Jeff Richmond and lyricist Nell Benjamin, are catchy enough, the book is reasonably witty, the staging, by Casey Nicholaw, sufficiently fluid. The anti-bullying message is straightforward enough (maybe too straightforward, the show says it twice): 'Calling someone ugly doesn't make you better looking. Calling someone stupid won't make you any smarter.' But - no offense, okay? - Mean Girls is basic.

Existential dread comes very well-upholstered in the Broadway revival of Edward Albee's dismaying and luxurious Three Tall Women. This is probably Albee's most personal play, a barbed-wire wreath laid at the grave of his adoptive mother, but he has filtered his experience through an absurdist lens. The play's vision of life aligns with Beckett's: darkness on one side, darkness on the other, some pain and disappointment in the middle. 'That's it,' one character says. 'You start and then you stop. Don't be so soft.'

Under Trip Cullman's direction the acting is mostly extraordinary. Michael Cera is doing his typical high-voiced friendly slacker thing and Powley is feisty, though her role is less fully written than the others. Henry is a standout, with his sturdy physicality and his easy authority. He shows William's helpless determination to make the right call and the ways that his choices undermine his sense of self. Evans is a surprise, much more than an action hero trying to prove that he's still got it. His Bill, a fine cop and a lousy human, is a monster you can often empathize with.

Broadway's Frozen is a good show. With its music, its dance, its flurry of likable leads, and snowball after snowball of son and lumière, some of it newfangled, some of it stretching back to 19th-century melodrama, it offers most of the pleasures that we count on Broadway musicals to provide. But even with the addition of a dozen new songs by the composers Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, an enhanced book by Jennifer Lee, and the interventions of director Michael Grandage and scenic and costume designer Christopher Oram, it rarely feels like more than the movie and sometimes it feels like less.

Escape to Margaritaville, the Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical, has fallen out of its hammock and on to Broadway. As charming and lazy as a beachside siesta, it sticks 27 Buffett hits into a paint-by-numbers plot, pulls a Hawaiian shirt and a grigri necklace over the top and calls it a day.

One of the finest things about Lithgow is how unclassifiable he is, how idiosyncratic. Another pale giant with a rabbit face and a plum pudding voice might have become a niche performer, but he has always moved gracefully among classics and schlock, leads and character roles, charmers and drips and villains and extraterrestrials. So it is both a pleasure and a disappointment to find him doing something as aggressively ordinary as this one-man show, which Lithgow first developed a decade ago, alternating family reminiscences with good-natured performances of two short stories, Ring Lardner's Haircut and PG Wodehouse's Uncle Fred Flits By.

One of the finest things about Lithgow is how unclassifiable he is, how idiosyncratic. Another pale giant with a rabbit face and a plum pudding voice might have become a niche performer, but he has always moved gracefully among classics and schlock, leads and character roles, charmers and drips and villains and extraterrestrials. So it is both a pleasure and a disappointment to find him doing something as aggressively ordinary as this one-man show, which Lithgow first developed a decade ago, alternating family reminiscences with good-natured performances of two short stories, Ring Lardner's Haircut and PG Wodehouse's Uncle Fred Flits By.

That plot, which is meant to be high-stakes but comes across as bottom-feeder low, kicks off when the volcanic mount located inconveniently close to SpongeBob's hometown, Bikini Bottom, threatens to erupt. SpongeBob (a gleeful Ethan Slater), his best friend, Patrick Star (Danny Skinner), and his squirrel pal, Sandy Cheeks (Lilli Cooper, and yes, there's a squirrel under the sea), devise a scheme to keep it from erupting. But the bitsy supervillain Sheldon Plankton (Wesley Taylor) has other plans. There's also satire aimed at politics and the media; a brief subplot involving Krabby Patty profiteering; and something about a concert - all of it roundly ignorable.

Steve Martin's lump of sight gags, one-liners and situation comedy streaks toward Broadway. A couple v couple amusement first written in the 1990s, it pits a dull, normal pair (Amy Schumer and Jeremy Shamos) against a more devious duo (Keegan-Michael Key and Laura Benanti). Norm and Corky, owners of a tony pad in Ojai, have invited Gerald and Laura over for wine, crab dip and astronomy. Sparks fly. So do asteroids. So do some of the jokes.

Akhtar favors classical structures and this mention of kings prepares us for classical tragedy with a Brooks Brothers wardrobe. Here's Merkin, a mostly good 'king' who oversteps and suffers the consequences. But with its clipped scenes and brisk, brash dialogue, Junk feels poised, and not always easily, between moral tragedy and popcorn thriller. And it can't quite make up its mind about the man at its center, a stance that seems intellectually honest and dramatically wimpy.

Most theater is a seduction. Bodies and lights, words and clothes, they all tempt us to embrace what's unreal. David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, now revived on Broadway, starring Clive Owen, is a play that uses the tools of theater to both celebrate and question how we give ourselves over to fantasy. Nearly 30 years on, it's still clever, tender and formally daring. But Julie Taymor's staging and Hwang's rewrites unbalance the delicate poise between illusion and truth.

Most theater is a seduction. Bodies and lights, words and clothes, they all tempt us to embrace what's unreal. David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, now revived on Broadway, starring Clive Owen, is a play that uses the tools of theater to both celebrate and question how we give ourselves over to fantasy. Nearly 30 years on, it's still clever, tender and formally daring. But Julie Taymor's staging and Hwang's rewrites unbalance the delicate poise between illusion and truth.

Hnath's play is less a conventional sequel than a thought experiment inspired by the original. Luckily, Hnath, whose formally inventive plays include Isaac's Eye and The Christians, is no mean thinker. His scenes, typically structured as two-character conversations between Nora and Torvald (Chris Cooper), Nora and her daughter (Condola Rashad), Nora and her former nanny (Jayne Houdyshell), read as answers to an interior FAQ: what would bring Nora back? How would those she's left behind receive her? Has she achieved emancipation? At what cost?

Hnath's play is less a conventional sequel than a thought experiment inspired by the original. Luckily, Hnath, whose formally inventive plays include Isaac's Eye and The Christians, is no mean thinker. His scenes, typically structured as two-character conversations between Nora and Torvald (Chris Cooper), Nora and her daughter (Condola Rashad), Nora and her former nanny (Jayne Houdyshell), read as answers to an interior FAQ: what would bring Nora back? How would those she's left behind receive her? Has she achieved emancipation? At what cost?

'Bandstand,' an openhearted, indecisive new musical, wants you clapping your hands and clenching your fists, tapping your toes and blinking back tears. It is both a peppy celebration of can-do spirit and a more somber exploration of what American servicemen experienced when they marched home from World War II. Directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, the Tony Award-winning choreographer of 'Hamilton,' with book and lyrics by the Broadway newcomers Richard Oberacker and Rob Taylor, and a 1940s pastiche score by Mr. Oberacker, 'Bandstand' is an undercooked slice of apple pie, served with a dollop of anguish.

Does the show belong on Broadway at all? This revival never makes a case for its relevance or seeks to reassess its charms. But when the orchestra plays the sprightly music and Midler steps on in each new gown and the waiters twirl their serving trays, it's nice to have Dolly back.

Does the show belong on Broadway at all? This revival never makes a case for its relevance or seeks to reassess its charms. But when the orchestra plays the sprightly music and Midler steps on in each new gown and the waiters twirl their serving trays, it's nice to have Dolly back.

The play doesn't shift radically from one cast list to the next to the next. Mr. Sullivan's confident production doesn't deny melodrama, but it prefers psychological and social detail over Southern gothic fripperies. (Scott Pask's fraying, elegant set and Jane Greenwood's shrewd costumes, with ruffles for Birdie and a sleeker silhouette for Regina, also reflect this emphasis.) It asks both actresses to make the roles more than villain and victim, which the play allows. You might wish that Hellman had written the faithful retainer parts with greater breadth, but Charles Turner and particularly Caroline Stefanie Clay play them with nuance.

Dressing gown enthusiasts can rejoice at the return of Garry Essendine in the latest Broadway revival of Present Laughter. Not that Garry ever stays offstage very long. Noël Coward's creation, he made his debut in 1942, played by his author, and hasn't strayed far from the boards ever since. Has he aged well? Yes and no, as demonstrated by Kevin Kline's silky turn in the current production, a performance of stupefying charm that reveals some of the wrinkles and sag in the surrounding play.

There's nothing very much wrong with this musical. The book, by Craig Lucas (An American in Paris) is affectionate; the songs, with music by Daniel Messé and lyrics by Nathan Tysen, are inarguably pleasant. But it's tricky to build a show around a protagonist whose main trait is wistful passivity. In the course of the story, Amélie learns to intervene in the lives of others, but mostly sits out her own existence.

Sympathetically directed and ardently acted, there's much to enjoy in this Roundabout Theater Company revival, which opened Thursday night at the American Airlines Theater. Yet it shows 'The Price' as a smaller, more stolid work than it wants to be - still just a little out of style.

Throughout, the production swirls realistic gestures with more expressionist ones. The theatricality is self-conscious, at times self-congratulatory. It estranges spectators from the characters and the situations - in ways more and less productive - yet still allows much of the language to be heard clearly and anew. (Gold's staging is often at odds with the script, but he only rarely has his actors play against the lines themselves.) As the play continues, it marshals a stealthy emotional force, designed to make Tom's departure that much more wrenching. Field portrays Amanda with sympathy and genteel bluster. In some scenes she and Mantello's sardonic Tom have a teasing rapport. This Laura's real physical impairment deepens and complicates her relationship with Tom, although as Ferris is far younger and less practiced than her castmates, the production asks her body to do too much of the work of the role.

The Broadway debut of August Wilson's Jitney by Manhattan Theatre Club is that very rare thing - a play that ought to be longer. Ruben Santiago-Hudson's production runs two and a half hours and uses the whole of the published text. But the immersion in these characters and their world is so closely woven and complete that when the final line peals out, it's hard not to wish for another act, another scene, another ride.

The Present, like many of Chekhov's works, is ultimately a study of characters who can't align what they want with who they are, people out of step with time and fashion and themselves. But when this production works best, as in a debauched dance sequence, a sudden shock of violence, and the flammable scenes between Roxburgh and Blanchett, it feels entirely of the moment and urgently, ripely alive.