Alexis Soloski

The close of the play has always belonged to Mary, but Lange gets hold of much of the rest of it, too. Her Mary, a part she first played in the West End in 2000, can seem sweet, flighty, frail, but there's an adamantine spine beneath that softness, one that's been built on need and hurt. When provoked, she can turn as vicious as any of the men and she knows how to make her words cut more cruelly and deeply.

But the musical's signal misstep and ultimate salvation is its sentimentality. One of the finer qualities of Babbitt's book is how free it is of the slushy or mawkish. Not so here. Winnie is given a dead father, ostensibly to deepen her emotional predicament and there's a sappy quality in how her pert presence revivifies each of the tired Tucks.

Digs once targeted at Naomi Campbell are now meant for Gwyneth Paltrow and the current menu parodies the trend toward high-end foraging favorites...Some of the jokes could be sharper and even as the script skewers the horrifying patrons, it is often strangely polite...Ferguson is an actor of such irrepressible amiability...Under Jason Moore's direction, a few of the actorly shifts could occur more quickly and not all the personae have a gestural specificity to match the vocal one. But moving back and forth among 40 distinct characters still represents a tour de force, which Ferguson wears lightly, even humbly, though with obvious enjoyment.

Under Diane Paulus' direction, the show at times seems to struggle to fill the stage. The book, written by Jessie Nelson and based on the film script, is nicely witty. But the choreography, by Lorin Latarro, seems an afterthought, and the songs, by the Grammy-winning artist Sara Bareilles, are tuneful, yet often strangely reticent, as though meant to be sung quietly to oneself rather than loudly before a crowd. Bad Idea, a duet between Jenna and Dr Pomatter, is a nicely rowdy exception, as is Jenna's heartfelt She Used to Be Mine. (One song for Ogie, Never Getting Rid of Me, is a showstopper; the other, I Love You Like a Table, a cheerful muddle.)

A bold and perilous artistic endeavor, this musical is also something of a tonal muddle, approaching the material from myriad angles - some serious, some sleazy, some nice, some nasty - which don't ultimately form a persuasive whole...As adapted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, scored by Duncan Sheik, and directed by Rupert Goold, this is an inarguably stylish undertaking and sometimes an exciting one...Often the production delights, in ways camp and comedic, in the ugly extravagance of the period...Walker, looking like a brilliantined Ken Doll, gives another galvanic turn, communicating the seductiveness, playfulness, and terrible vacancy that define Bateman...So is this satire or psychodrama, monstrous comedy or moral horror? It's all and it's nothing, too.

Parts of the play can feel somewhat too pat, as though Zeller is amusing himself in finding out how many ways he can alter reality using the familiar mechanisms of the stage - an audience's trust of exposition, the faith in representational setting, the tendency to identify a particular character with a single actor. But he dismisses most of this cleverness in an ending that is both sentimental and searing and will probably devastate anyone who has seen a close friend or relative suffer from dementia. The final scene is a terrible and tragic reversion, in which a man of articulacy and power is reduced to a kind of infantilism, left with with no language but a cry.

Van Hove's production takes place neither in the colonial era, nor in the mid-century one, but in some sort of timeless present where teenage girls wear pleated uniforms and most of the men sport beards. All of the action, public and private, judicial and domestic, plays out in the same space, a somewhat gloomy schoolroom whose chalkboard occasionally bursts into animated life.

Arriving on Broadway after several out-of-town tryouts, Bright Star is still suffering some issues of scale. The story it tells is a small and tender one and the staging and the music, playful and lovely, sometimes struggle to fill the house. The most emblematic aspect: a toy train that trundles on a trestle above the stage to suggest the journeys that characters take, an effect both charming and chintzy.

Blackbird...is a distressing two-hander about the dangerous influence and magnetism of traumatic events. It courts ethical dangers, in daring to characterize the bond between abuser and abused as a kind of perverse love story...Under Joe Mantello's direction, there is considerable tension in the opening moments, not all of it calculated or purposeful. Daniels begins the play in such a paroxysm of fear and anger that one worries he will quickly exhaust himself...In Una's self-conscious performativity, Williams indicates an emotionally stunted young woman whose earlier ordeal has prevented her from ever establishing a coherent adult identity. As the play continues, she begins to exhibit a strong dissociative quality, showing the confusion she still experiences, the crossed wires of pain and desire...There are no weapons on display here...but this is the most lacerating play on Broadway this season.

Even appreciating the gratification of nostalgia and camp, Disaster! is an odd property to find on Broadway and doesn't seem particularly at home here, with its cheap sets, shabby projections and understaffed chorus. But with its winking awareness of its own deficiencies, it invites everyone to get hooked on a feeling. Assuming falling rubble or man-eating fish don't get them first.

The Humans...is a funny, mournful, richly detailed and deeply humane study of a beleaguered family celebrating Thanksgiving dinner in a tumbledown Chinatown apartment...Karam is a writer in the Chekhovian mode and watching The Humans may put one in mind of Chekhov's observation that while people's happiness is being created and destroyed, all they can really do is to go on eating their dinners...Karam's particular genius...is that he is less interested in the catastrophes that afflict us than in how we cope with them, gracefully and awkwardly. To pile on so much suffering would seem cruel in another playwright, but Karam is a profoundly compassionate writer. He shows us the bravery and tenderness of people trying -- and sometimes failing -- to get on with their lives.

Unfocused, anemic and astonishingly trivial, this drama of family and memory has somehow found its way to Manhattan Theatre Club's Broadway berth...Some of this is Greenberg's way. He doesn't really do melodrama and many of his better plays -- like The American Plan -- avoid direct conflict and sidestep escalation...But here he seems to skirt any drama at all, even as he and the director Lynne Meadow try to elevate anticlimaxes into crescendos. The acting is patently pleasant and sometimes a little better than that. Lavin is playful as ever, always testing and teasing her children, essentially a defanged version of the role she played in The Lyons.

Is it funny? Of course it's funny. It's very funny. It can't help but be very funny. Even the terrible movie version is funny. But could it be funnier? Well, yes.

You won't find much actual purple in The Color Purple, John Doyle's simplified restaging of the formerly florid Broadway musical. At one point the nightclub singer Shug (Jennifer Hudson, making her Broadway debut) steps onstage in a periwinkle suit, but that's the closest the production comes to flamboyance. A restrained expansion of the production Doyle debuted at theMenier Chocolate Factory in London in 2013; this version is streamlined and stripped down. Doyle's strategy allows the fine performances, particularlyCynthia Erivo as the downtrodden Celie, to brighten it up.

Pay no attention to the title. School of Rock, the perfectly pleasant, perfectly innocuous new musical from Andrew Lloyd Webber, Glenn Slater, and Julian Fellowes, is strictly adult contemporary. An adaptation of the 2003 Jack Black flick, it centres on a schlubby manchild who transforms a gaggle of overprivileged preteens into a wickedly awesome ensemble.

It's unclear how much Pacino is enjoying the exercise. Certainly he gravitates toward roles like this and in his prowling posture, bent at the knees, but slightly stooped at the waist, you can read the depredations of old age or the crouch of a fighter, just waiting for his chance to spring. But he often seems distracted, stuttering over his sentences. And when he works himself into high dudgeon, many of the lines feel as though they have quotation marks around them -- that he is Al Pacino playing Al Pacino playing Mickey Ross, because that is what the crowd, who applaud loudly at his arrival, ostensibly want.

When Misery cooks, it is in the Grand Guignol moments, particularly the scene of hobbling, so why not go ahead and make that Guignol so much grander, sillier, more deliciously absurd? Had the violence been increased, as well as the comedy and the sense of sexual sublimation, Misery might have been a real scream.

George Takei, the original Sulu on Star Trek, was one of those interned. The experiences of his family have now inspired Allegiance, an unexceptional though often affecting new Broadway musical. Allegiance should be better served by its book, score and lyrics, most of which tend toward the generic. Stafford Arima's direction does too. Composer and lyricist Jay Kuo and book writers Marc Acito and Lorenzo Thione are striving so hard for stirring nobility that individuality or particular characterization falls by the wayside. The ballads are all sufficiently ballad-y, but none of the melodies linger once the curtain has fallen and the lyrics pile on platitude and cliché.

Is the rhythm going to get you? Very likely. But there are few other enticements in On Your Feet!...There's some dramatic conflict here -- a sick father, an ostensibly disapproving mother, a terrible accident and an arduous recovery -- though perhaps not quite enough to justify a conventional book musical...The opening, with its forceful sound and crisscrossing beams of laser lights, promises something a little different. The live band is front and center here. Then it is quickly secreted behind some scenery. Why? The music (even with some of the awful 80s guitars and keyboards intact) is easily the most compelling element...Ana Villafañe, making her Broadway debut as Gloria, is a terrific singer and perfectly adequate actress. Josh Segarra, undistinguished in a couple of earlier roles, is quite charismatic as Emilio...Andréa Burns, as Gloria's queenly mother, deserves better material.

That said, the play, under Rupert Goold's typically clever direction, feels like more than a reasonable pastiche. It is a tragic work in its own right, about a man who has too long been denied power ('My life has been a ling'ring for the throne,' Charles says, in one of Bartlett's better lines) and finds that once he gets it, he wants even more. If some of the middle feels workmanlike, the ending has poignancy and heft. There is a moment in the final scene that invites and earns audience gasps.

Emile Zola's novel Thérèse Raquin, published in 1867, portrays an adulterous couple driven to murder the woman's husband. It was, depending on your preferred critic, a success, a scandal, a triumph of scientific realism, a shambles of cheap pornography. It was not a bore. It was not a comedy. So something has gone wrong with the Roundabout's lugubrious and giggly adaptation...The actual sex shown -- no foreplay, five thrusts, breathless collapse -- is not precisely beguiling...Edmundson's adaptation is often cinematic and Cabnet seems like he would rather be directing a film. Scenes fade in and out; far too many moments show Thérèse looking on languishingly...Perhaps a camera would lend emotional variety and substance to Knightley's performance...[she] seems oddly flat here, though predictably shapely in the period costuming and somehow charismatic for all her lack of affect.

Ashford plays the title character in AR Gurney's Sylvia, a comedy as predictable as it is indestructible...But if you have ever loved a pet, it is almost impossible not to feel moved by the interspecies romance of Greg and Sylvia...The schtick of the play is that Greg and Kate, like all pet owners, anthropomorphise their animal...And [Ashford's] acting isn't particularly doggy either, although there's a way she tosses her head that does suggest the canine. But there's something sunshiny and genuinely irrepressible about her that transcends any species categories...The director Daniel Sullivan can't teach it many new tricks, but he can give it a typically adroit and able production. Broderick, who sometimes underplays his roles, is a glove-like fit for the moony, diffident Greg...But make no mistake, it's Ashford's play. There is no curbing this dog.

Jones and Tyson are actors of expertise, originality and allure, and it is pleasant to watch them disport themselves on Riccardo Hernandez's shabby set. Under Leonard Foglia's indulgent direction, Jones cavorts through Weller's frailties and rages, using his walking stick as crutch and club. Weller counts out loud when he deals the cards and you can hear the amusement Jones finds in each pedantic number. Tyson, clutching her purse like body armor, alternates primness with fervor. She can bring dignity to a terrycloth bathrobe and that is saying something. Her voice is much thinner and shriller than Jones's (everyone's is), but it carries.

The two leads have sex appeal to spare - but this Sam Shepard play only really sets sparks flying in its final 15 minutes.

In a 1971 interview, Harold Pinter spoke about his recently completed Old Times, a love triangle that is less a problem of geometry than metaphysics. 'I'll tell you one thing,' he said. 'It happens. It all happens.' It is now happening on Broadway, in a faintly compelling revival, directed by Douglas Hodge and starring Clive Owen, Eve Best and Kelly Reilly. It is happening on an extravagant set, perhaps somewhat far from Pinter's call for 'a converted farmhouse.' (His request for two sofas and an armchair have been honoured more literally.)