Ben Brantley — Theater Critic

I am happy to say that Ms. O'Hara more than keeps the promises made by her interpretation of that first song, one of many sumptuous pieces that feel as if they had been written specifically for her by the show's composer, Jason Robert Brown. She also confirms her position as one of the most exquisitely expressive stars in musical theater. Her Francesca, a questioning farmer's wife who briefly discovers a love with all the answers, brings a rich and varied topography to what might have been strictly flat corn country. True, the rest of the show, directed by Bartlett Sher with a script by Marsha Norman, isn't nearly as multidimensional. Though Ms. O'Hara has a lust-worthy leading man in Steven Pasquale, most of what surrounds her has the depth of a shiny picture postcard, one that bears a disproportionately long and repetitive message. Still, when you have a central performance as sensitive, probing and operatically rich and lustrous as Ms. O'Hara's, you won't find me kvetching too loudly...

Yet in 'Machinal'...Ms. Hall must struggle to hold her own against an overbearing co-star. That would be Es Devlin's revolving, scene-stealing set, which portrays a juggernaut of doom -- i.e., modern urban existence -- that flattens all in its path. You might say such a battle, pitting a lone specimen of humanity against a marvel of technology and artifice, only underscores the haunting determinism of 'Machinal,' and I wouldn't argue. And even if the Young Woman is clearly headed for extinction from the first scene, Ms. Hall's emotionally transparent performance is never overwhelmed by what surrounds it.

...as designed by Derek McLane (sets), Alejo Vietti (costumes) and Peter Kaczorowski (lighting), 'Beautiful' nods so often to Michael Bennett's original production of 'Dreamgirls' that it starts to resemble a bobblehead doll. Originality is clearly not this show's strong suit. With one very important exception. That's Ms. Mueller, a Broadway star in waiting for several years, who here steps confidently into the V.I.P. room of musical headliners...Much of what makes Ms. Mueller's performance so touching is its projection of a lack of confidence. There's a humility to Ms. Mueller's Carole, part of whom wants only to be a good Jewish wife and mother, preferably in the suburbs. She plays ego-boosting, self-effacing geisha to Mr. Epstein's philandering, mentally unstable Gerry....Modesty is not the usual stuff of Broadway showstoppers. And if 'Beautiful' never acquires the flashy momentum of 'Jersey Boys,' it may come in part from the deferential gentleness of its heroine. But when Ms. Mueller sings the show's title song - sitting at a keyboard in, of course, Carnegie for the production's finale - she delivers something you don't expect from a jukebox musical. That's a complex, revitalizing portrait of how a very familiar song came into existence, and of the real, conflicted person within the reluctant star

...as designed by Derek McLane (sets), Alejo Vietti (costumes) and Peter Kaczorowski (lighting), 'Beautiful' nods so often to Michael Bennett's original production of 'Dreamgirls' that it starts to resemble a bobblehead doll. Originality is clearly not this show's strong suit. With one very important exception. That's Ms. Mueller, a Broadway star in waiting for several years, who here steps confidently into the V.I.P. room of musical headliners...Much of what makes Ms. Mueller's performance so touching is its projection of a lack of confidence. There's a humility to Ms. Mueller's Carole, part of whom wants only to be a good Jewish wife and mother, preferably in the suburbs. She plays ego-boosting, self-effacing geisha to Mr. Epstein's philandering, mentally unstable Gerry....Modesty is not the usual stuff of Broadway showstoppers. And if 'Beautiful' never acquires the flashy momentum of 'Jersey Boys,' it may come in part from the deferential gentleness of its heroine. But when Ms. Mueller sings the show's title song - sitting at a keyboard in, of course, Carnegie for the production's finale - she delivers something you don't expect from a jukebox musical. That's a complex, revitalizing portrait of how a very familiar song came into existence, and of the real, conflicted person within the reluctant star

...as designed by Derek McLane (sets), Alejo Vietti (costumes) and Peter Kaczorowski (lighting), 'Beautiful' nods so often to Michael Bennett's original production of 'Dreamgirls' that it starts to resemble a bobblehead doll. Originality is clearly not this show's strong suit. With one very important exception. That's Ms. Mueller, a Broadway star in waiting for several years, who here steps confidently into the V.I.P. room of musical headliners...Much of what makes Ms. Mueller's performance so touching is its projection of a lack of confidence. There's a humility to Ms. Mueller's Carole, part of whom wants only to be a good Jewish wife and mother, preferably in the suburbs. She plays ego-boosting, self-effacing geisha to Mr. Epstein's philandering, mentally unstable Gerry....Modesty is not the usual stuff of Broadway showstoppers. And if 'Beautiful' never acquires the flashy momentum of 'Jersey Boys,' it may come in part from the deferential gentleness of its heroine. But when Ms. Mueller sings the show's title song - sitting at a keyboard in, of course, Carnegie for the production's finale - she delivers something you don't expect from a jukebox musical. That's a complex, revitalizing portrait of how a very familiar song came into existence, and of the real, conflicted person within the reluctant star

...as designed by Derek McLane (sets), Alejo Vietti (costumes) and Peter Kaczorowski (lighting), 'Beautiful' nods so often to Michael Bennett's original production of 'Dreamgirls' that it starts to resemble a bobblehead doll. Originality is clearly not this show's strong suit. With one very important exception. That's Ms. Mueller, a Broadway star in waiting for several years, who here steps confidently into the V.I.P. room of musical headliners...Much of what makes Ms. Mueller's performance so touching is its projection of a lack of confidence. There's a humility to Ms. Mueller's Carole, part of whom wants only to be a good Jewish wife and mother, preferably in the suburbs. She plays ego-boosting, self-effacing geisha to Mr. Epstein's philandering, mentally unstable Gerry....Modesty is not the usual stuff of Broadway showstoppers. And if 'Beautiful' never acquires the flashy momentum of 'Jersey Boys,' it may come in part from the deferential gentleness of its heroine. But when Ms. Mueller sings the show's title song - sitting at a keyboard in, of course, Carnegie for the production's finale - she delivers something you don't expect from a jukebox musical. That's a complex, revitalizing portrait of how a very familiar song came into existence, and of the real, conflicted person within the reluctant star

These productions mostly stay, comfortably and tantalizingly, on the surface. But in doing so, they also bring out the beguiling polish and shimmer in Pinter and Beckett’s language. These shows allow us to appreciate the great paradox in some of the best dialogue ever written, which uses eloquence to plumb the futility of speech.

These productions mostly stay, comfortably and tantalizingly, on the surface. But in doing so, they also bring out the beguiling polish and shimmer in Pinter and Beckett’s language. These shows allow us to appreciate the great paradox in some of the best dialogue ever written, which uses eloquence to plumb the futility of speech.

Mr. Rylance’s Olivia, the best I’ve ever seen, is a vulnerable woman newly come into power after the deaths of the men in her family. (You may find yourself thinking of the young Elizabeth I.) Of course she’s loftier than thou; she’s hiding her uncertainty behind protocol, and an occasional stammer gives her away.

Only in the second half, do we fully realize we’re in the ice-cold company of a madman. I won’t tell you how Mr. Rylance achieves this, except to say that in switching between what he seems to be and what he is, this Richard has stripped his own gears. He ends up in limbo, without a part to play.

A respectable stage actor before he became 007, [Craig] brings the same fierce intensity to talking that he does to zipping across moving trains and zapping supervillains. Not that such overt intensity is exactly what 'Betrayal' asks for, but never mind. As for Ms. Weisz, she looks smashing. And let me add that she, Mr. Craig and Mr. Spall seem to be having the kind of rowdy old time you associate with moldy British sex farces, though that's a genre in which I would never before have thought to include 'Betrayal...this is not a 'Betrayal' to leave you brooding and melancholy about our capacity to wound one another and to reach out, hopelessly and heroically, for a sustenance in others that they can never provide...this is a sexed-up 'Betrayal,' which is not the same as a sexy 'Betrayal.' All those contradictory, fleeting, haunting shades of thought that you expect to see playing on the features of Pinter's characters are nowhere in evidence. Instead, Robert, Emma and Jerry make up the rowdiest, most extroverted sexual triangle since Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds and Gene Hackman caterwauled their way through the ill-fated film 'Lucky Lady' in 1975.

A respectable stage actor before he became 007, [Craig] brings the same fierce intensity to talking that he does to zipping across moving trains and zapping supervillains. Not that such overt intensity is exactly what 'Betrayal' asks for, but never mind. As for Ms. Weisz, she looks smashing. And let me add that she, Mr. Craig and Mr. Spall seem to be having the kind of rowdy old time you associate with moldy British sex farces, though that's a genre in which I would never before have thought to include 'Betrayal...this is not a 'Betrayal' to leave you brooding and melancholy about our capacity to wound one another and to reach out, hopelessly and heroically, for a sustenance in others that they can never provide...this is a sexed-up 'Betrayal,' which is not the same as a sexy 'Betrayal.' All those contradictory, fleeting, haunting shades of thought that you expect to see playing on the features of Pinter's characters are nowhere in evidence. Instead, Robert, Emma and Jerry make up the rowdiest, most extroverted sexual triangle since Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds and Gene Hackman caterwauled their way through the ill-fated film 'Lucky Lady' in 1975.

'The Snow Geese,' a fable of a family that isn't as rich as it thinks it is, is unlikely to stir any emotion other than bewilderment as to how this lifeless play wound up on Broadway. I can answer that question in two words (or three, if you don't count hyphens): Mary-Louise Parker...On its own, though, Mr. White's play remains a muddle of pastiche parts that never cohere into an original and organic whole. And the cast members - who include the excellent Broadway veterans Victoria Clark and Danny Burstein and several attractive young newcomers - fail to convince us, and perhaps even themselves, otherwise. The same might be said of Ms. Parker, whose preternaturally youthful face seems frozen in mild astonishment, as if she were surprised to find herself here.

This is a 'Pippin' for the 21st century, when it takes more than style to hold the attention of a restless, sensation-hungry audience...Fosse's original dancing is evoked, largely stripped of its sensuality, by the choreographer Chet Walker...And the connection between storytelling and style, between performer and self-expression, is only occasionally in evidence...Ms. Paulus's 'Pippin' is often fun (with an exclamation point), but it's almost never stirring in the way her Tony-winning revival of 'Hair' was. Only one moment, centered on Andrea Martin as the title character's grandmother, achieves that kind of transcendence. And I would argue that in courting its audience, this 'Pippin' is ultimately more cynical than Fosse's.

The title destination in Horton Foote's 'Trip to Bountiful'...is said to be a small, obscure town in Texas. But on the evidence of the performance of Cicely Tyson, who stars in the production that opened on Tuesday night under Michael Wilson's slow-handed direction, Bountiful is a code name for the Fountain of Youth...'Bountiful' often undercuts itself by broadening comic moments, especially in the early family-friction scenes in the Houston apartment...By the production's end...Ms. Tyson's Carrie has blossomed into genuine beauty during her nostalgic road trip, which makes the play's final moments considerably less sorrowful than they usually are. The 2005 Signature Theater revival of 'Bountiful,' starring Lois Smith, left me drenched in tears. But at the end of this one, I felt kind of optimistic.

Long before that moment of confrontational nudity, you will have probably surmised that Ms. Warner is going to err on the side of literal-mindedness...There are moments in 'Testament' that demonstrate that Ms. Shaw's abilities to command as an actress have only grown...This Mary is an ordinary woman of her day, forced against her will into a role in history she never sought or wanted. Ms. Shaw gives us that woman, for sure... But if you're going to give us a vision of Mary as we've never seen her, why would you block the view?...I was never happier - or more harrowed - than in those rare quiet, contained moments when this Mary made us feel that we were in a private tête-à-tête with a woman who had an extraordinary story to tell, and needed to keep telling it, forever and ever.

Perhaps the participants in this revival felt that they had had enough of fireworks for a while, so they decided to make nice, tread gently and, in the case of Mr. Baldwin, keep a respectful distance from the proceedings. In 'Orphans,' knives, guns, fists, rope and duct tape are all deployed to violent ends. Yet this version somehow plays like a sentimental sitcom, perhaps a low-rent 'Modern Family.'...The first problem with Mr. Sullivan's production is that nobody exudes a sense of, or even a sense of hunger for, power. The arguable exception is Mr. Sturridge...Mr. Foster doesn't do intimidating rage so well. His performance feels so inwardly concentrated that Treat seems like a danger only to himself...I assume that Harold was written as a slippery character, but Mr. Baldwin's performance eludes the possibility of our getting any kind of grip on it at all...It's a mutating cartoon of a performance, with only hints of the requisite menace.

There are tales, still told by the old ones of Broadway, of a time when Charm - with a capital C - was a cardinal virtue in the theater...To my great surprise, a brand-new version of such a play has materialized at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, and it is, in a word, charming. It is also smart, sad and so impossibly well-spoken you may feel like giving up on conversation. It is called 'The Assembled Parties,' written by Richard Greenberg and featuring a leading lady, Jessica Hecht, who is charm - I mean, Charm - incarnate...'The Assembled Parties'...is an elegy to a breed of woman, a style of living and a genre of theater of which only vestiges remain in frantic, self-promoting New York. Directed with loving care by Lynne Meadow, this is an old-fashioned play that ruefully knows that its time has passed and, moreover, why it's passed.

A spotlight works like a face-lift on Chauncey Miles, the title character of 'The Nance,' the strained if heartfelt new play by Douglas Carter Beane, set in the twilight of burlesque. As portrayed with shiny expertise and dark conviction by Nathan Lane in a production that opened on Monday night at the Lyceum Theater, Chauncey looks every year of whatever age he may admit to, and then some, whenever he's not onstage...This Janus-faced persona makes Mr. Lane a natural for the divided soul that is Chauncey, and he doesn't disappoint. Moving between his natural and artificial selves in increasingly adverse circumstances, his Chauncey flips the on and off switch so often that it finally short circuits, to devastating effect...But even Mr. Lane can't reconcile all the disparities Mr. Beane's script asks him to weave together.

'Matilda the Musical,' the London import that opened on Thursday night, is the most satisfying and subversive musical ever to come out of Britain...As directed by Matthew Warchus, with a bright, efficient book by Dennis Kelly and addictive songs by Tim Minchin, 'Matilda' is as much an edge-of-the-seats nail biter as a season-finale episode of 'Homeland.'...Above all it's an exhilarating tale of empowerment, as told from the perspective of the most powerless group of all. I mean little children...'Matilda' captures the particular dread that runs like an icy rivulet through even the happiest childhoods...You just have to use your imagination and think everything through carefully, so it's all of a piece. That's what the creators of 'Matilda' have done. Such strategy should be obvious. But in the current landscape of Broadway it's applied rarely enough to make this show feel truly revolutionary.

'Kinky Boots,' with a book by Harvey Fierstein and directed by Jerry Mitchell, is a reminder that you don't always have to be a masochist to enjoy being smashed by a steamroller...Unlike her more commercially savvy coeval Madonna, Ms. Lauper has held on to the same goofy image throughout her career, and, equally unlike Madonna, she has always seemed to sing from the heart. That sincerity comes through in 'Kinky Boots'...The leading players here - notably Stark Sands, Billy Porter and Annaleigh Ashford - pick up on the trademark Lauper mix of sentimentality and eccentricity, but each makes it his or her own. Under Mr. Mitchell's precise and affectionate direction, they do what you want performers in musicals to do: they define specific characters by the way they sing and move.

'Lucky Guy' is not so much a fully developed play or even a persuasive character study as a boisterous swapping of fond anecdotes about the end of a life and the end of an era...Not that 'Lucky Guy' is a crepe hanger. On the contrary, staged with the full bells-and-whistles treatment for which Mr. Wolfe is celebrated...Unlike some of the movies Ephron wrote and directed, and many of her peerlessly sharp essays, 'Lucky Guy' often feels only newsprint deep. But as a love song to a fast-disappearing, two-fisted brand of journalism - a field in which she began her long and varied career - it has the heart and energy of the perpetually engaged, insatiably curious observer that Ephron never ceased to be.

Holly Golightly does not. Go lightly, that is. The new stage adaptation of 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' Truman Capote's beloved portrait of a glamorous waif in 1940s New York, moves with a distinctly leaden step, as if it dreaded what might be waiting around every dark corner of the sinister city it portrays....Mr. Greenberg's adaptation incorporates far more of Capote's words than the Edwards film did, with shimmering passages of reminiscence that come directly from the book. Yet no matter how finespun the original ingredients, this particular soufflé seems doomed never to rise.

To my surprise the Academy Awards came to mind quite often as I watched this glittery patchwork of a show...It wasn't just the parade of big-skirted, Technicolor dresses in the ball sequence that inspired such reflections, or the presence of a fairy godmother (poor Victoria Clark) in a humped, sparkly number that would have sent Joan Rivers into overdrive. No, the main and most affecting parallel is how these two productions were confronting the knotty problem of being both traditional and up to date in a culture that has no tone to call its own.

To my surprise the Academy Awards came to mind quite often as I watched this glittery patchwork of a show...It wasn't just the parade of big-skirted, Technicolor dresses in the ball sequence that inspired such reflections, or the presence of a fairy godmother (poor Victoria Clark) in a humped, sparkly number that would have sent Joan Rivers into overdrive. No, the main and most affecting parallel is how these two productions were confronting the knotty problem of being both traditional and up to date in a culture that has no tone to call its own.