Allison Considine

Key to the play’s balancing act is Strong’s performance. Stockmann’s transition from being a servant of the people to their titular enemy is swift, and Strong expertly portrays the demise. The local newspaper staff ensure their support for Stockmann, declaring, “We are behind you like a wall.” But their backing flickers out as quickly as the extinguished candles between scenes.

You don’t have to be a Shakespeare scholar to appreciate Page’s crash course on the history of the villain. He sets the scenes up perfectly and even shares how contemporary TV shows, like Succession and The Simpsons, draw from Shakespeare’s body of work. After the show, I overheard a fellow audience member say she couldn’t wait to bring her class. It’s required watching for anyone interested in Shakespeare, psychology, worldbuilding, and performance. Shakespeare may have invented the villain, but Page sure has perfected it.

In addition to a winning cast, The Hunt has a best-in-class production design. Es Devlin's set showcases a structure made of smart glass, which frosts instantaneously to allow actors to magically appear and disappear from scenes. (It’s made all the more incredible with a trapdoor beneath the stage.) The glass transforms into the classroom, the hunting lodge, and even the town’s church. As the play moves forward, it fills with more and more townspeople, with Lucas circling the outside on a spinning stage.

The 75-minute play is quirky and dark and will leave you feeling appreciative for life and honey. Go tell it to the bees.

Director Lila Neugebauer carefully threads the complexities of grief and racism with humor and lightness. The characters lob sharp-tongued dialogue (and a few punches) at one another. It’s a thrilling match.

Director Lila Neugebauer carefully threads the complexities of grief and racism with humor and lightness. The characters lob sharp-tongued dialogue (and a few punches) at one another. It’s a thrilling match.

Some of the best parts of Mind Mangler involve breaking set pieces. When trying to bend a spoon, the mentalist’s efforts instead cause a microphone stand to curve, and a lighting rig to descend. (The spoon, however, remains intact). Another standout moment is when he tries — and fails — an escapology trick, leading to his decapitation not once, but twice. The two-hour show, directed by Hannah Sharkey, is too long for its good. (At the start of Act 2, the Mind Mangler says he’s been told intermission is a highlight of the show.) The eventual payoff of the mentalist’s tricks takes too long to be satisfying. And where other Mischief shows are family-friendly, this one features too many off-the-cuff curse words for kids. It might be best enjoyed by a stag party or friend group after a round or two of drinks

Nathan Alan Davis’s The Refuge Plays turns the American family play on its head. The three-part epic has familiar markers of the category, like parent-child sparring matches and dredged-up family secrets, but there are also mystical elements on stage. The Roundabout Theatre Company world premiere, produced in association with the New York Theatre Workshop, features ancestral spirits and sublime performances.

Gilman’s drama takes audiences on a wayward chase through the pits and peaks of humanity to find the culprit. Like the dwindling prairie land, of which there is only four percent remaining in the U.S., the characters in the play must learn to fight the droughts and fires of life in order to regrow and survive.

The show's real star is the glitzy, all-encompassing set by David Korins. As the action unfolds, stage platforms shift, audience members shuffle, and video projections display live-action crowd shots and historical documents on large screens throughout the auditorium. A giant disco ball spins, reflecting light across the space. Annie-B Parson’s electrifying choreography, which includes a Filipino line dance with the audience, furthers the nightclub scene. Audience members whose knowledge of Imelda Marcos is limited to the fact that she owned 3,000 pairs of shoes will only leave with a partial understanding of this violent period. The musical has no book, and the punchy songs paint broad strokes of the 60-year history. (The program, given to the stage floor patrons upon exiting the theatre, includes an insert with a more detailed historical timeline that fills in the show’s gaps.) Still, this rollicking, form-breaking musical party is well worth an RSVP.

Under the swift direction of Adam Meggido, the rollicking cast members deliver lines perfectly out of order and miss stage blocking to comic effect. In many ways, it is more challenging to waywardly fly on a harness and haphazardly roller skate upstage than to do it correctly and safely. Perhaps the show's biggest stars, though, are the actual stage managers (led by production stage manager Adam John Hunter) who employ hundreds of ill-timed sound cues (sound design by Ella Wahlström) and operate a decentered spotlight (lighting design by Matthew Haskins). This critic gives it four stars and advises you to go straight on to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

The play is open to interpretation, and there are some unanswered questions. The term 'misty' might refer to the slang word for crack cocaine, or maybe it describes the nebulous, genre-bending plot or the smoggy smoke effects. Perhaps it refers to the misty-eyed Kene, taking a bow to conclude his tour de force performance. There are many ways to describe the show, and it reaches Kene’s objective: It doesn’t tick boxes of what a play about a Black man should look like, or what any play should look like, for that matter. Misty creates a new rubric.