Caroline Cao — Theater Critic

It’s last-minute when Lichty, in stuffy Hillary Clinton-esque couture (costume consultation is by Risa Ando), confidently delivers Lyssa's final epiphany and sheds her performative headband, literal and proverbial. And yet, in An American Daughter's patience-testing 2 hours and 30 minutes, the powder keg never explodes.

Armed with a catty drawl and versatile expressions, Cohen frames her experience as if fate has thrown her material that practically writes itself — like her cardiologist literally being named Dr. Love. But make no mistake that it’s Cohen's tale of woe, canceled Eurotrips, a $45,000 bill her insurance might or might not pay, and a loss of existential control. Broad Strokes is an earnest and sometimes raunchy self-portrait of coping and her insatiable thirst to be loved, whether it’s by her boyfriend, her fans, or the unnamed gay male nurse trying to draw her blood.

And Music City has its darkness. When Act 2 takes surprising turns, don’t think about the military-industrial complex. Don’t think about a sudden unnamed war, laughably opaque as if to dodge controversy, beneath the shiny surface of the patriotism that sells much country music. But it’s harder not to think of the script glossing over the gravity of 23's mother overlooking possible sexual harassment. It’s not a fault that Music City embraces country melodrama, but it pulls its punches whenever it’s tempted to spiral into darkness. From the darling mother/daughter duet “Clean” and the ensemble barnburner of “Sober as a Drunk,” Music City tests how much you’re willing to swallow the musical tonic to drown out its more questionable plot points.

Although it takes awkward clumps of exposition to explain, the neighborly ecosystem rests on its strong ensemble performances, with costume designer Wendy Yang accentuating their personalities with distinct, artsy choices. Cleo’s backyard community consists of her platonic life partner and co-parent, Tina (Tina Chilip, capturing a free-spirited teacher); the lawyer Christine (Brittany K. Allen) and her wife, Tammy (Lucy Kaminsky); Center employee Sarah (Hannah Heller) and her musician househusband Lane (Drew Lewis); and 8-year-old rapscallion Rida (Morgan Siohban Green, who seamlessly doubles as Roy’s mother, Trisha).

The notes of coming of age are complex for four students at an all-girls summer music academy in earthquake-prone Berkeley, California. Directed with no frills by Pam MacKinnon at Vineyard Theatre, Eisa Davis’s play ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is a stark, messy portrait of teen musicians figuring out their harmonies.

The notes of coming of age are complex for four students at an all-girls summer music academy in earthquake-prone Berkeley, California. Directed with no frills by Pam MacKinnon at Vineyard Theatre, Eisa Davis’s play ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is a stark, messy portrait of teen musicians figuring out their harmonies.

The Lost Boys’s rushed final battle traces back to the source material’s spectacle-driven climax. A post-curtain call epilogue, theatrically fun but thematically sloppy, suggests vampires will always rise elsewhere beyond Hollywood endings. It’s a testament to Bourzgui’s magnetism that he still eclipses everything that came before.

Nicole starts by amusingly recounting clumps of her childhood, quickly getting the Travolta gags out of the way: her uncle’s Saturday Night Live disco dance and the memory of riding his bedroom-supplied airplane. Also, she’s not a Scientologist. But as she journeys into her parents' split (her father, Sam, being the “cheaper Travolta” compared to John) and her then-husband confronting her credit card spending, the show pivots into darker territory about the relatable humiliation of debt and the unsettling, yet darkly comedic, tribulations of doing customer service at a spray-tan salon.

My audience laughed nervously as Reynoso vowed to get Clinton elected, as if the play is ushering in a Shakespearean tragic hero. This final scene seems like the play’s cross-examination of itself, acknowledging that faith in the government might as well be taking not just a fall, but a farcical plunge. But its abruptness sidesteps a real sense of reflection.

Clarke renders Bughouse as a haunting piece about an artist’s ego and thwarted innocence, but the production’s restraint is also its weakness. Even a sturdy Kelly holds back on penetrative inquiries into Darger. The visual and animated designs drench the man’s study in his disheveled mindscape and ineffable awe of his paintings, but the production erects a steely dam behind which its watercolors long to spill out.

The townsfolk are as doltish as Elmer Fudd and rendered so cartoonishly that they announce their personalities, motives, and gullibility as blaringly as Yosemite Sam. The book contains mile-a-minute jokes mixed in with meta-gags and screeds on environmental justice and corruption. But for every clever quip, there are groaners. If it’s not the preachiness that undermines them, it’s the overstuffing of jokes with little breathing room. While Bigfoot! drops zingers and sight gags like an SNL sketch, that sketch spirit fizzles out in a musical production that needs structure to sustain itself. Overtickling the funny bone stalls the heart.

The townsfolk are as doltish as Elmer Fudd and rendered so cartoonishly that they announce their personalities, motives, and gullibility as blaringly as Yosemite Sam. The book contains mile-a-minute jokes mixed in with meta-gags and screeds on environmental justice and corruption. But for every clever quip, there are groaners. If it’s not the preachiness that undermines them, it’s the overstuffing of jokes with little breathing room. While Bigfoot! drops zingers and sight gags like an SNL sketch, that sketch spirit fizzles out in a musical production that needs structure to sustain itself. Overtickling the funny bone stalls the heart.

If the AA storytellers actively engage, The Dinosaurs also illustrates those who exist to listen. The audience doesn't witness everyone sharing a story. Some characters offer only fragments about themselves, whether through their behavior or whispers. A novice playwright or director would act on the impulse to expand or resolve, but The Dinosaurs commits to the feeling of leaving a room with an unspoken story suspended in the air.

The Disappear bites off more it can chew, attempting to ruminate on intergenerational tensions in the film industry, the scars left by art, composing art amid climate disaster (the Los Angeles fires seem to get a nod), and more all at once, leaving me pining for a cohesive version of this play.

This Picnic At Hanging Rock staging yearns to scale a further mile, like the girls who pine from an escape from time and the inevitable doom of growing up. Though the show is imperfect, the finale “Time and Place” peaks among the many harmonies, with an entire ensemble ensnared and enchanted by the Rock.

Tutty (who wears his role like muscle memory, having originated it in London) and Pitts flex their chemistry as scene partners: Dougal is an animated, British chatterbox who views the Big Apple through a lens of pop culture, while she’s the exhausted New York native who rolls her eyes at his touristy prattling. Their adventure involves Tinder matchmaking, nods to rom-com tropes, some verbal and physical stumbles, and a spending spree with a borrowed American Express. The writers get plenty of mileage from quips about the taboo that the pair are soon to be in-laws.

Tutty (who wears his role like muscle memory, having originated it in London) and Pitts flex their chemistry as scene partners: Dougal is an animated, British chatterbox who views the Big Apple through a lens of pop culture, while she’s the exhausted New York native who rolls her eyes at his touristy prattling. Their adventure involves Tinder matchmaking, nods to rom-com tropes, some verbal and physical stumbles, and a spending spree with a borrowed American Express. The writers get plenty of mileage from quips about the taboo that the pair are soon to be in-laws.

Let’s Love! is a comic, microscopic introspection on sex, relationships, and love across three disparate stories — nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps the show arrives with expectations of ambition due to its playwright: Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers, who previously penned the existential play trio Almost an Evening. If that show aimed to be the apple in Eden, the more modest Let’s Love! wants to be a box of bittersweet chocolate.

Let’s Love! is a comic, microscopic introspection on sex, relationships, and love across three disparate stories — nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps the show arrives with expectations of ambition due to its playwright: Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers, who previously penned the existential play trio Almost an Evening. If that show aimed to be the apple in Eden, the more modest Let’s Love! wants to be a box of bittersweet chocolate.

After the blistering meeting, the epilogue threatens to package the tale as an inspirational story. It doesn’t stick the landing, but it leaves one last thought: Forgiveness isn’t a clear-cut route for everyone.

But, boy, when Heathers takes flight, it punches a hole through the roof. ‘Candy Store’ still grooves as a catchy paean to cruelty, and ‘The Me Inside of Me’ is ingeniously ironic... These two ballads herald a final 30 minutes ratcheting to a nail-biting climax.

But, boy, when Heathers takes flight, it punches a hole through the roof. ‘Candy Store’ still grooves as a catchy paean to cruelty, and ‘The Me Inside of Me’ is ingeniously ironic... These two ballads herald a final 30 minutes ratcheting to a nail-biting climax.

These slow-boiling dynamics build up to a raw sexual act staged, by intimacy coordinator Ann James, as coldly mechanical yet achingly balletic.

Although Birney and Emery plant the heart and humor of Lunar Eclipse, Margulies struggles to craft a momentum of highs and lows as the couple unravel their regrets. In particular, dour introspections, such as George admitting he cares for his dogs more than his late adopted son or Emery sacrificing her city upbringing for married life on the farm, feel smoothed over.

With an exuberant band, Just in Time rides easy on Groff’s waves of showman charisma while paying tribute to the era-specific music and other singers, especially the women in Darin’s life who inspired his performance, starting with Michele Pawk as a parental figure with a vaudevillian past. The book seamlessly weaves in how other stars like Connie Francis (a blazing, must-see Gracie Lawrence) and Sandra Dee (a commanding Erika Henningsen), the latter of whom witnessed his fallible humanity, were integral to his life.