Alexis Soloski

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.

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.

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.

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.

When the dancers are leaping, the accordions wheezing, the lights flashing, the skirts swirling, and the vodka flowing, then Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 feels thrillingly unlike anything else on Broadway. A chunk of War and Peace, adapted to a sung-through indie-folk-electro score by composer Dave Malloy and directed with breathless, breathtaking verve by Rachel Chavkin, this musical is a cannonball aimed at any show that has accepted proscenium staging as an unyielding norm rather than a conscious choice.

This production has no doubt that Merteuil will win, though at some cost to herself, and Schreiber seems to sense this. There's a saturnine, slightly defeated air to his alcoholic Valmont. Despite Schreiber's height, swagger and masculine force, his Valmont is no match for Merteuil. He layers some of his eventual rout into the earlier scenes, all but ceding the stage to McTeer. McTeer knows what to do with it. She has set her voice somewhere between purr and growl and arranged her hands and arms into movements that are both perfect expressions of court gestures and precise parodies of them. Her Merteuil is both elegant and vicious, with an air of surface refinement barely concealing the ferocity below. There are claws beneath her manicure, fangs behind her smile. Her extraordinary performance is scorching and chilling. Ice and fire at once.

The Broadway revival is not a copy of the original - some lyrics have changed, some emphases. Neither is it a faultless work. The set, by David Rockwell, with its chintzy cutouts of the Manhattan skyline and peculiar cube of furniture, is one of the ugliest to galumph onto the stage in recent years. Spencer Liff's choreography has some spry moments, like a dance that draws on bullfighting and Greco-Roman wrestling, but at other times seems oddly reticent. And while Borle is not precisely miscast, the role only rarely allows him to display his great strengths - his madcap comic verve, his brassy tenor. Other actors are better suited, particularly Uranowitz, who delivers a superb Mendel.

There are ideological principles in play here and a couple of provocations, as when Lopakhin's triumphal jig takes on the rhythms of a tribal dance (the original music is by Nico Muhly). But the heart and that particular laughter-through-tears tone seem to have deserted the piece. You can't see the Chekhovian forest for all the miscellaneous trees.

These septuagenarian grotesques are the alter egos of the comics Nick Kroll (Gil) and John Mulaney (George), first developed on alternative comedy stages and more recently seen on The Kroll Show in the segment Too Much Tuna. (Yes, enough tuna is used in this show to raise the mercury levels of everyone attending to dangerous heights. And this is even before the addition of a giant puppet depicting a tuna sandwich as incubus, which is practically guaranteed to give audience members nightmares. Also indigestion.)

The book, by Gordon Greenberg and Chad Hodge, has modernized the tale somewhat (the blackface routine is no more), but not too much. (Surely in this day and age it would be Jim and Ted who band together to open that B&B. And they might have decorated it more handsomely.) The story has an old-timey predictability that may delight those with more conservative tastes, but no real effort has been made to differentiate this show from the other recent Berlin offering, White Christmas, or to integrate the songs into the show. 'What could be better than Broadway?' a hoofer asks. Then Jim launches into Blue Skies. You can check out anytime you like, and chances are that one will - and quite often - as the leaden dialogue trudges to its close.

McIntyre's story is fascinating, but it serves here a placeholder, an opportunity for McBurney to explore his deeper thematic concerns: why do we surrender ourselves to narrative? How do we distinguish between reality and fiction? When should we trust the evidence of our senses and when should we allow for the extrasensory? (There's also lots of less helpful material about being and time.) McBurney intercuts the narrative with recordings of his sleepless daughter's desire to be told just one more story. The binaural audio, he says, is his way of reading a bedtime story to each of us, using proximity to encourage mimesis and summon our empathy.

Fitfully thrilling and consistently baffling, Paramour - Cirque du Soleil's first attempt at a Broadway book musical - is the story of a young singer torn between the megalomaniacal director, who wants to make her his star, and the tender songwriter, who wants to make her his muse. Or perhaps it's a parable of forbidden love as enacted by shirtless twins in an erotic aerial pas de deux. Or maybe it's a wacky caper comedy with a culminating chase scene performed atop a giant trampoline. Honestly, it's hard to tell.

...Shuffle Along...a sometimes inspired and sometimes listless exploration of a path-breaking theatrical work...George C Wolfe has written a script detailing the struggle to bring the show to the stage. Amid these scenes -- some dramatic, some didactic -- are the original songs of Noble Sissle (Henry) and Eubie Blank (Dixon), choreographed in kinetic, hard-striking fashion by the tap mastermind Savion Glover...This Shuffle Along is sometimes edifying and sometimes entertaining, but rarely do these twin aims coincide...it's only when the feet are tapping, the fringe is swaying and the voices of the leads and chorus are celebrating the thrill of syncopation that the musical lives again.