Charles Isherwood — Theater Critic

With his blooming warmth and engaging rapport with the audience, Mr. Jackman is a perfect interpreter of his character. The anguish he feels, his powerlessness to control his responses, his shame and frustration—at Katie and himself—are expressed with such raw feeling that the performance can be hard to watch. These secret sorrows bring us into an uncomfortable intimacy with the narrator. Eventually the story takes a dark turn that pushes a little hard into irony—or unfortunate coincidence—but Mr. Jackman’s boundlessly truthful portrayal never falters in its quiet intensity.

Staging a Shakespeare tragedy with just four actors sounds like a potentially comic stunt or an unfortunate advertisement of dire economic straits, in either case a radical diminishment of the play. But the Bedlam theater company’s choice to mount a production of “Othello” using just a quartet of performers has a certain literary justification.

While it cannot field the starry cast of the series, which featured Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming and Ariana DeBose among others, the ensemble taking their roles to the stage is impeccable, as is Mr. Gattelli’s nimbly paced direction and splashy, old-school choreography. Although it essentially recycles its central joke repeatedly (in half-hour doses, this was less noticeable), “Schmigadoon!” celebrates the musicals it evokes with as much spirited conviction as it lampoons them. Parody, in this case, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Broadway has not seen a more delectable diversion this season than the bubbly revival of Noël Coward’s early comedy “Fallen Angels,” starring the glittering duo of Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara. They portray a pair of well-heeled, smashingly well-dressed and vaguely dissatisfied wives hoping (or fearing?) to rekindle the romantic excitements of their youth when a man from their past—a French lothario with whom they both had brief affairs before their marriages—gets in touch many years after their liaisons ended.

A quietly transfixing performance from Ayo Edebiri provides reason enough to see the Broadway revival of “Proof,” David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning drama, first staged in 2000. Ms. Edebiri won an Emmy for the TV series “The Bear,” which seems to be the new go-to source for Broadway marquees this season. (Both stars of “Dog Day Afternoon,” Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, also collected Emmys for the show.) Here she undertakes a role that won a Tony for Mary-Louise Parker, and gives a performance that equals hers and yet feels entirely fresh and fully reimagined.

Even with the wider lens, Mr. Brody’s performance remains the focus of the play. He’s onstage for virtually the entire two-hour, intermission-less running time, often directly addressing the audience as—with a thick Philadelphia accent and arms slicing the air, rapper style—Nick relates the series of events that ended in his long incarceration and ultimate redemption. While Mr. Brody has a lithe, lanky and compelling presence, he can bring only limited bursts of animation to a play that never gains much dramatic propulsion, a liability of its oppressive setting and the slow trudge of the narrative. The proverbial wheels of justice grind at an almost unbelievably rusty pace, leaving Nick facing the prospect of imminent death for 22 years.

It’s an arresting image that signals the production’s bold, stylized approach to this canonical text, often treated as an antique that requires only a feather duster to be brought back to life. More than any staging I’ve seen, this version, directed by Joe Mantello and starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf as Willy and Linda Loman, casts the play in an existential light. We witness not just a critique of the fallacies inherent in the so-called American Dream (or Willy’s meretricious understanding of it), but also a more resonant examination of the isolation and loneliness of life, the fear that comes with the waning of hope, the tenuousness of human connection, and the desperation that follows.

First produced in New York by Second Stage off-Broadway, the play was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2009. The same company has revived it at its Broadway house, the Hayes Theater, in a crisply staged and terrifically acted production directed by Trip Cullman that keeps the play’s serrated edges as cutting as ever.

At times the strain of keeping up the brisk timing of the movie to fill two hours of stage time on essentially a single set results in comic vamping. A passage in which an argument erupts over which nearby shop sells the best donuts, for instance, descends into absurdity when Mr. Eddy suddenly rises from his state of near-unconsciousness to offer his opinion. (Again with the shtick!) “Dog Day Afternoon” makes for a largely diverting evening, but like many if not most stage versions of beloved films it never entirely succeeds at laying to rest the ghosts of its cinematic past.

Thanks in no small part to the radiant emotional authenticity Mr. Radcliffe brings to the role, the narrative of the protagonist’s life maintains our interest as he matures and himself begins to suffer from a persistent melancholy. As the list of matters that make the slings and arrows of life worth enduring grows into the hundreds of thousands—closing in on a million—I found it harder to give credence to this element of the story. But ultimately the inventive staging, which also includes invigorating bursts of recorded music, from Nina Simone, Ray Charles and Curtis Mayfield (the glorious “Move On Up”), succeeds at the high-wire challenge of blending sincerity and levity in disarming but effective, and affecting, proportions.

Ms. Ziegler structures her play as a blend of the contemporary and the classical, with longer monologues alternating with dialogue. The director, Tyne Rafaeli, smoothly integrates the two styles, and the wonderful Ms. Keenan-Bolger, who has most of the choral duties, is excellent at finessing the longer passages (some of Dicey’s personal history could benefit from telescoping) so that they do not devolve into hollow speeches. That said, the central theme—of women’s powerlessness through the ages, even over their own bodies—gets a perhaps over-thorough workout.

Unlike Mr. Shawn’s previous plays such as “Aunt Dan and Lemon,” “The Designated Mourner” or “The Fever” (which Mr. Shawn is performing on Sunday and Monday nights when “Moth Days” is not staged), “Moth Days” has scant sociological, political or philosophical dimensions. The closest approach it makes to evoking more universal truths probably comes in a grim monologue from Tim reflecting on fate, and humanity’s evolution: “The creature that we are wasn’t made by anyone, and if you were to look at it closely as if it were something designed . . . you’d have to say, ‘Oh no, this is terrible, this is an appalling, dreadful design,’ because the creature that we are is so full of characteristics that only a totally demented designer, or a demonically evil designer, would have dreamed of including in it.”

“The Unknown” is primarily a potent entertainment, but Mr. Cale also slyly raises intriguing questions about the relationship between a writer’s life and his work—familiar territory, true, and fodder for innumerable discussions of literary biographies, but depicted here in a fresh dramatic guise. As Larry says to Elliott at one point: “So let me get this straight, you’re living your life and you’re also spying on it at the same time. Is that what all writers do?” Elliott brushes off the question, but I would guess that many fiction writers would find it just as uncomfortable to answer.

And when these apparitions vanish, the text’s overriding theme—of life’s evanescence but also its beauty—does finally dovetail with the ghostly images created by the technology. If “An Ark” were presented as a traditional play, it would be gossamer-thin. Dressed up in the latest digital wizardry, it becomes a memorable, even unforgettable experience.

While one of the hallmarks of Chekhov’s work is its emotional authenticity, “The Disappear” never quite dispels a feeling of artificiality. Ms. Schmidt’s dialogue has a sheen of sophistication (Ben describes the tenor of his movie as “Artaud meets Poe”) and can be archly funny, but it’s also wearyingly talky, and Ben’s egoism and pretentiousness are more tiresome than amusing.

While one of the hallmarks of Chekhov’s work is its emotional authenticity, “The Disappear” never quite dispels a feeling of artificiality. Ms. Schmidt’s dialogue has a sheen of sophistication (Ben describes the tenor of his movie as “Artaud meets Poe”) and can be archly funny, but it’s also wearyingly talky, and Ben’s egoism and pretentiousness are more tiresome than amusing.

Carrie Coon is unleashed from her corsets—and every other stitch of clothing—in the blistering Broadway revival of her husband Tracy Letts’s macabre thriller “Bug,” being presented by Manhattan Theatre Club roughly 20 years after it was first seen in New York off-Broadway. (Due to the prevalence of nudity, audiences must turn off their phones and have them put in secure pouches for the show’s duration.)

Chess matches can be agonizingly long, lasting for numerous hours at the professional level. So maybe it’s perversely apt that the Broadway revival of the musical “Chess” should feel eye-glazingly interminable, despite a cast of thrillingly good singers in top form.

I thought what might follow would be Mr. Icke’s most provocative—and logical and interesting—departure from Sophocles, an ending of a more ambiguous and less gruesome kind. Instead he reverts to tradition. It’s an understandable move: Many might feel shortchanged if Mr. Icke had chosen otherwise. Nevertheless, it’s a Grand Guignol finish to what has previously been an effective, affecting and strictly naturalistic new interpretation of this canonical drama.

While “Queens” casts unsparing light on the experience of the women in America, Ms. Majok is hardly sentimental about what they left behind. Emblematic are scenes set in Ukraine in 2016, with Inna and her American-husband-hunting friend Lera (Andrea Syglowski) discussing the unpromising futures in their country.

Mr. Hunter’s writing has a clarity, delicacy and crisp simplicity that allows us to watch as Sarah and Ethan negotiate the minefields of their relationship, drawing comfort from one another’s company even though both would be loath to admit it. Under the astutely unfussy direction of Joe Mantello, Ms. Metcalf’s remarkably fine performance is flinty, funny and savagely unsentimental. And Mr. Stock’s Micah is sensitive to the point of seeming to squirm inside a constricted, wounded soul.

Standing ovations on Broadway are so common you might imagine the seats have been booby-trapped to eject patrons as the curtain calls begin. But at a recent performance of the brightly shining revival of “Ragtime,” the ovation came early—actually two came early—so transported was the audience by the emotional and musical potency of this panorama of America at the turn of the 20th century.

Impeccable though both performances are, these fine actors almost seem to fade into, um, blank white canvases with a few gray streaks when Mr. Corden bounds or blusters onstage, and sends the comic temperature soaring. This isn’t entirely surprising. The British actor and comic shot to fame (at least in the U.S.) on the strength of a single, dazzling performance in the commedia dell’arte update “One Man, Two Guvnors,” a sensation in London and later on Broadway.

Her performance captures with precision the voice that emerges in the book: mercurial; still vain but gloomy about her diminished looks; instinctively or merely reflexively seductive and flirtatious. But, more enjoyably, also self-deprecating, realistic about her wayward path through life, and, as noted, flaunting a vocabulary heavily larded with salty humor. It’s an accomplished performance that captures the woman in all her complexities and contradictions.

Although ‘The Weir’ is nominally a play focused on tales from the crypt, it’s more broadly and movingly a study in loneliness: how it grows upon you, how it can be soothed by the company of even casual friends and acquaintances met by chance, and how it can and probably will sidle into the lives of just about everyone at some point.