Ben Brantley

Mr. Kaufman's staging - still designed to please the eye without overwhelming it, with 1970s shorthand sets by David Zinn, costumes to match by Clint Ramos and lighting by David Lander - now feels smoother and quicker on its feet. It also feels, well, bigger. I'm referring particularly to Mr. Urie's performance. This nimble actor has already demonstrated canny comic chops in Off Broadway plays (Jonathan Tolins's 'Buyer & Cellar,' Gogol's 'The Government Inspector.') But in filling Mr. Fierstein's dauntingly big shoes on a Broadway stage, Mr. Urie stretches to color in the outsize outlines of his part.

'The Waverly Gallery' is very much a group portrait, in which everyday life is distorted to the point of surrealism by the addled soul at its center. And Ms. Neugebauer has assembled a dream cast to embody the collective madness that seems to descend on those closest to Gladys.

The last time a new drama with this breadth of scope and ambition appeared on Broadway was seven years ago. That was Mr. Butterworth's 'Jerusalem,' in which a small-time, middle-aged country drug dealer (played by a monumental Mark Rylance) became a majestic emblem of an ancient, heroic England. With 'The Ferryman,' Mr. Butterworth is again assessing the chokehold of a nation's past on its present. But now it is Northern Ireland at the height of the politically fraught period known as the Troubles. (We hear radio reports of the of the dying Irish Republican hunger striker in the Maze prison.) And he mines the folksy clichés of Irish archetypes - as garrulous, drink-loving, pugilistic souls - to find the crueler patterns of a centuries-old cycle of violence and vengeance.

'The Nap' is less frenetically funny than 'One Man,' and more modest in scale. But it shares with its predecessor a fondness for the subterfuges and archetypes of classic farce, which Mr. Bean translates fluently into modern-day terms.

Directed and choreographed as if on automatic pilot by Jerry Mitchell, 'Pretty Woman: The Musical' has a book by the original film's director, Garry Marshall (who died in 2016), and screenwriter, J.F. Lawton, with songs by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance. Its creators have hewed suffocatingly close to the film's story, gags and dialogue.

You would think that a sexually polymorphous musical that combines a Renaissance pastoral romance with the songs of the 1980s California rock group the Go-Go's would at the very least be a hoot, a show that could get sloppy drunk on its own outrageousness. Yet 'Head Over Heels,' which opened on Thursday night at the Hudson Theater, feels as timid and awkward as the new kid on the first day of school.

I wish I could report that this charismatic and capable team, directed by the busy Joe Mantello, transported me vividly and uncompromisingly into the dark ages of homosexual life in these United States, and that I shuddered and sobbed in sympathy. But even trimmed from two acts to an intermission-free 110 minutes, the show left me largely impatient and unmoved.

If you have a good time at a production of 'The Iceman Cometh,' does that mean the show hasn't done its job? I was beaming like a tickled 2-year-old during much of George C. Wolfe's revival of Eugene O'Neill's behemoth barroom tragedy, which opened on Thursday night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, with Denzel Washington more than earning his salary as its commanding star.

Senility is a joy ride in the exultant, London-born revival of Tom Stoppard's 'Travesties,' which opened on Tuesday night at the American Airlines Theater. This account of a clash of three cultural titans - James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara - in Zurich during World War I is related decades later by an ancient witness (one Henry Carr, of the British Consulate). His recollection is, to put it kindly, capricious.

For this slyly manipulative production knows exactly how, and how hard, to push the tenderest spots of most people's emotional makeups. By that I mean the ever-fraught relationships between parents and children, connections that persist, often unresolved, beyond death. Time-bending, it turns out, has its own special tools of catharsis in this regard. In the multiple worlds summoned here, it is possible for kids to instantly become their grown-up mentors, and for a son to encounter his forbidding father when dad was still a vulnerable sapling. 'I am paint and memory,' a talking portrait of the long-dead wizard Dumbledore (Edward James Hyland) says to his former star pupil, Harry. Well, that's art, isn't it? Substitute theatrical showmanship for paint, and you have this remarkable production's elemental recipe for all-consuming enchantment.

The tragic inevitability of 'Carousel' has seldom come across as warmly or as chillingly as it does in this vividly reimagined revival. As directed by Jack O'Brien and choreographed by Justin Peck, with thoughtful and powerful performances by Mr. Henry and Ms. Mueller, the love story at the show's center has never seemed quite as ill-starred or, at the same time, as sexy.

That this 'Mean Girls' takes place (still at an Illinois high school) 14 years later than the film has proved no obstacle to Ms. Fey. After all, social media only increases opportunities for social climbing and subversion. The disconnect that troubles this musical isn't a matter of adapting to changing times. Scott Pask's set, Gregg Barnes's costumes and Finn Ross and Adam Young's video designs render sociological exactitude with flat comic-strip brightness. No, the trouble lies in the less assured translation of Ms. Fey's sly take on adolescent social angst into crowd-pleasing song and dance. Mr. Richmond and Ms. Benjamin's many (many) musical numbers are passable by middle-of-the-road Broadway standards (though Ms. Benjamin's shoehorned rhymes do not bear close examination).

There's a reason that Mr. Rockwell's set revolves between scenes, forcing us to adjust our angles of observation. Like morality, identity is relative in 'Lobby Hero.' Few playwrights match Mr. Lonergan in making confident art out of such constantly shifting uncertainty.

Sometimes, just when you need it most, a play courses into your system like a transfusion of new blood. You feel freshly awakened to the infinite possibilities not only of theater but also of the teeming world beyond. And when you hit the streets afterward, every one of your senses is singing. Such is the effect of seeing the flat-out fabulous revival of Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America,' which opened on Sunday night at the Neil Simon Theater, with a top-flight cast led by Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane in career-high performances.

In the paradoxically plaintive and joyous sound of a castrato's voice channeling Handel's music, the King has glimpsed a paradise beyond his fractious court and his burdened royal self. Trying to create that idyllic vision in the real world, in a rustic outpost in the forest in the second act, is an experiment doomed to failure. But watching Mr. Rylance's Philippe experience Farinelli's voice, we hear what we hears. And an actor and a singer temporarily turn a night at the theater in an anxious city into an Eden beyond worldly care, all the more precious for its evanescence.

For what it's worth - and we're talking millions of dollars here - you are never going to see as convincing an impersonation of a two-dimensional cartoon by a three-dimensional human as that provided by Ethan Slater at the Palace Theater. Mr. Slater plays the title role in 'SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,' the ginormous giggle of a show that opened on Monday night.

Breaking news for Broadway theatergoers, even - or perhaps especially - those who thought they were past the age of infatuation: It is time to fall in love again. One of the most ravishing musicals you will ever be seduced by opened on Thursday night at the Barrymore Theater. It is called 'The Band's Visit,' and its undeniable allure is not of the hard-charging, brightly blaring sort common to box-office extravaganzas.

And while Mr. Akhtar may have rejected many of the outer trappings of the Wall Street potboiler, he still hews to many of its clichés. That includes a woman being brought to orgasm by the idea of her decrepit lover's financial power, and the antihero Merkin solemnly lying to his wife (Miriam Silverman) in the manner of Michael Corleone. And while the script offers some amusing lessons in shading language with hopeful sounding words to pitch a deal, Mr. Akhtar's dialogue lacks its usual original snap. 'When did money become the thing - the only thing?' Ms. Lim's character asks in the opening monologue. It's an ever-intriguing question, but you've heard it before. And for all his intelligence and focus, Mr. Akhtar seldom bucks the formula to provide answers.

Though it bent (and blew) the minds of rapt audiences with its elusive opalescence nearly three decades ago, David Henry Hwang's 'M. Butterfly' returns to Broadway on heavier, drabber wings. True, the revival that opened on Thursday night at the Cort Theater, directed by Julie Taymor, has basically the same anatomy as its predecessor. But it has undeniably morphed into a more prosaic creature, and the tantalizing mists that surrounded its initial run have dissolved as if under a harsh morning sun. When the enigmatic title character in this breakthrough drama about the illusions of sexual and cultural identity is brusquely commanded to 'Strip!' by a stricken suitor, you're apt to think, 'No need guys. That's already been taken care of.'

A quality of randomness is perhaps appropriate to a show that begins with the observation, 'Never underestimate luck.' That's Mr. Uranowitz speaking, pretending to be Mr. Prince. (All the cast members take turns pretending to be Mr. Prince, wearing black and white, oddly mod outfits, with glasses perched on their heads, a signature of their director; David Thompson's script also has them deliver unilluminating maxims on success and failure and the importance of hard work.) What follows has the feeling of a work assembled by dice roll, and I don't think Dadaism was anybody's intention. The individual numbers nearly all feature literal-minded scenery, such as a bank of candles and a wrought-iron gate for the 'Phantom' sequence, and they are performed with the high earnestness of audition pieces.

In periods when the world and its inhabitants seem too vicious to bear, some people find themselves drawn magnetically to what might be called feel-bad entertainment. I mean the sort of book, song or show that massages your anxiety the way your tongue might insistently probe an abscessed tooth. If that's the way you're feeling at the moment - and why do I suspect that's the case? - you may well find pleasurable pain in Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan's discombobulating stage adaptation of George Orwell's '1984,' which opened on Thursday night at the Hudson Theater. But it will be pain of a different order (possibly involving nausea) from the empathetic kind you experience reading Orwell's ever-engrossing book.

Welcome back, Mrs. Helmer, if that's the name you still go by. And just what do you have to say for yourself after all these years? Quite a lot, it turns out, and they are words to hang on. Mr. Hnath's Broadway debut, which is directed by Sam Gold and features a magnificent Laurie Metcalf leading one of the best casts in town, is audaciously titled 'A Doll's House, Part 2.' Yes, it dares to be a sequel to Henrik Ibsen's revolutionary 1879 portrait of marriage as a women's prison.

That dangerous young man who calls himself Paul Poitier has grown up in the 27 years since he first set foot on a New York stage. All right, perhaps not 'grown up,' since we're still talking about a narcissistic con artist of adolescent fecklessness and zero self-knowledge. But there's no doubt that he has grown in stature and, in a paradoxical way, truthfulness. This is because Paul Poitier (not his real name) has been embodied with tremulous, searching sensitivity by the screen actor Corey Hawkins in the earthbound revival of John Guare's marvelous 'Six Degrees of Separation,' which opened on Tuesday night at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, with the estimable Allison Janney and John Benjamin Hickey as Paul's plump society pigeons.

Those mid-20th-century musicals that must've sounded like a good idea at the time, but tend to be remembered today only by hard-core aficionados of the genre. They were frothy but earnest shows, set in distant times and foreign lands, with titles like 'Mata Hari' and 'Pleasures and Palaces.' Such shows had a hard time squeezing their epic-size selves into the corsets of book-musical conventions, and they usually died young. I don't foresee a similar fate for 'Anastasia,' which originated at Hartford Stage in Connecticut and is directed by Darko Tresnjak (a Tony winner for his ingenious staging of 'A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder'), with choreography both stately and antic by Peggy Hickey. The cartoon version from 1997 is very fondly remembered by people who saw it as tweens, especially girls. Its Ahrens-Flaherty score included the breakout hit 'Journey to the Past,' which is repurposed here and sung ardently by Ms. Altomare. So 'Anastasia' may well tap into the dewy-eyed demographic that made 'Wicked' such an indestructible favorite of female adolescents. Those without such nostalgic insulation are likely to find this 'Anastasia' a chore.

Don't expect a sugar rush from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' the new musical that opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Sunday...This big but tentative show - which features a book by David Greig and songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman - doesn't burst with flavor of any kind, at least not during its exposition-crammed first act. Only in its second half does the show acquire a distinct taste, and it definitely isn't confectionary.