Charles Isherwood — Theater Critic

“McNeal,” directed by Lincoln Center Theater’s newly named executive producer Bartlett Sher, is itself a confused and discursive if thought-provoking drama that often seems a grab bag of ideas Mr. Akhtar delves into without finding much depth.

Naturally, in a production that sprints through so many songs and shows in a mere 90 minutes, some numbers provide fewer laughs per bar of music. A finale spoofing “Suffs” doesn’t quite stick the show’s landing. A framing device using “Back to the Future” is a bit of a nice try. Mr. Alessandrini has to work with the material he is given. It’s not a coincidence that among the few weak spots are sendups of some flimsy or forgettable shows of recent seasons, like “Six” or “Water for Elephants.” The paradox of the “Forbidden Broadway” franchise is that the bigger and better shows make for bigger and better targets. In any case, it is an unalloyed pleasure to have Mr. Alessandrini back in form, committing merry musical larceny with flagrant and funny abandon.

The estimable Mr. O’Brien, who won a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Tony Award just this year, calibrates the fluctuations in the women’s relationship with subtlety and grace, allowing these two superb actors to navigate the changes in the play’s tone and rhythm at their own pace, on a handsome set by Bob Crowley that hints at both possibility—those rich blue skies—and perhaps vulnerability.

“Oh, Mary!” is directed by Sam Pinkleton at a breakneck speed that both allows room for the best jokes to harvest their share of laughter while never letting even the lesser gags land with a thud. The entire cast excels at physical comedy, particularly Escola, whose Mary, after seducing her acting teacher on top of Abraham’s desk, must find a dignified way to descend from it, with ingeniously amusing results. I have a pretty low threshold for the coarseness of much low comedy, and plenty of the humor in “Oh, Mary!” is so low it qualifies as subterranean. But Escola’s brilliantly loopy writing and knockabout performance—which also recalls the great gifts of Carol Burnett—won me over.

It may take a while for audiences to tune in to the play’s rollicking rhythms. Mr. Williams’s language is a dense, clipped, sometimes incantatory vernacular that can be hard to parse, particularly when flung at dizzying velocity in the early going. Trying to appreciate the language’s richness and lyricism is challenging enough; teasing out the thread of the narrative from the onrushing tides of words seems at times nearly impossible, especially as the chronology jumps back and forth. While one can appreciate the desire to bring heated life to Mr. Williams’s vigorous language, which almost seems to prefigure rap, Mr. Leon would have been wise to allow a few pauses for everyone to breathe.

Among Ms. Frecknall’s innovations is an emphasis on dance, with Julia Cheng’s choreography making inventive use of the stage space as the club performers romp, stomp and shimmy around Mr. Redmayne, engaging in ribald movement that at one point includes such unlikely sexually tinged props as a whisk and a toilet plunger. Their thickly applied makeup, skimpy costumes—a green macramé bikini?—and multicolored hair are suggestive more of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” than a seedy European club of the period, but they undoubtedly add to the show’s arresting visual allure.

“Suffs” largely succeeds in showcasing the accomplishments of its creators and performers, particularly with regard to Ms. Taub’s rich and often rousing score and the terrific cast, all radiating vivid engagement in the history unfolding before us. Nevertheless, at times the musical comes across as a bright but exhaustingly busy historical pageant, with a dizzyingly broad cast of characters and manifold triumphs and setbacks—mostly the latter, in truth—to unfold.

The musical’s cast shouldn’t leave anyone pining for starshine, so assured are its members in embodying the characters not as familiar pop-culture figures but as the raw, wounded, volatile and sensitive people they are. Teller of the tale, if not leader of the pack, is Brody Grant’s Ponyboy, the youngest of three brothers whose parents died in a car accident, with the oldest, Darrel, played by a touchingly conflicted Brent Comer, unhappily taking charge, while the middle boy, Sodapop (a buoyant, sometimes shirtless Jason Schmidt, winning the beefcake prize), tries to soothe the tension between his siblings.

Written by the performers with Edward af Sillén, who also directs, “Stalker” returns to that fellow in the audience with a copy of his chosen image inside a sealed envelope for its finale. And, remarkably, after the big reveal, the pair proceed—as Penn & Teller have sometimes done—to demonstrate precisely how they had (mentally) coerced their subject into choosing the image he did, pulling back the proverbial curtain in a manner that all but breaks the unofficial Code of the Magicians, I would assume. But given the many wonder-inducing moments that have come before, I doubt they need worry about having their union cards confiscated.

The term “rock opera” is amorphous, but perhaps no other show comes as near to defining it precisely as this one. Mr. Townshend’s songs are authentic rock dating from the heyday of one of the genre’s revered bands, not the watery pap that often passes for rock in contemporary musicals. And even the most outlandish plots of Verdi are no more sensationally dramatic than the story of “Tommy,” with its beleaguered but triumphant hero, its rogue’s gallery of foes and its frankly bizarre story.

Still, the largely pasteurized manner in which the musical depicts the often-sordid lives of circus folk of the period lends “Water for Elephants” an anodyne weightlessness, at least until the denouement. I’m not sure if a more faithful adaptation of the book would make for a better musical—although John Kander and Fred Ebb, in their heyday, might have taken a good crack at it—but it certainly would have made for a more provocative and adventurous one.

Purists may question Ms. Herzog’s fresh interpretation of Thomas, who in this version is less ornery and scorching in his denunciation of those who oppose him; even in his celebrated speech excoriating the disapproving townsfolk (audience members are recruited to represent them), Mr. Strong, taking his cue from Ms. Herzog, seems befuddled by his rejection, and afterward his designation as an “enemy of the people.” Thomas is notably less contemptuous, and less an advocate for a rigid meritocracy, than Ibsen’s original.

Nevertheless, the comparative simplicity of the teary tale at its center—love at first sight strikes boy and girl like lightning, they are separated for a decade, and then the couple reunites for a striding-into-the-sunset happy ending (before age and illness impinge)—left me dry-eyed and occasionally tempted to check my watch. This may put me in the minority, given the story’s proven success in other mediums, but for all its sweetness and polish “The Notebook” never rises to truly transporting heights—except when Ms. Plunkett, as the heroine, Allie, in her later years, and Dorian Harewood, as her husband, Noah, are the focus.

Admirers of the movie and of Ms. Dion are obviously the target audience; to get the most out of the show it’s best to be a fanatical double-partisan. I admired the plush cinematic richness of the movie, while deploring its length (the Titanic sank more quickly), and as someone unfamiliar with much of Ms. Dion’s extensive songbook, I was more taken with the sheer loopiness of the show than the blandly “adult contemporary” music. But whether blasting out pop balladry or silly shtick, the engaging cast beams joy at the audience, and receives it in turn, throughout.

Mr. Page is a consummately skilled classical actor—one of the country’s finest, although much of his Shakespearean work has been seen outside New York—and the show, which whips by at 80 minutes, is virtually all highlights. And the speeches and dialogues, chosen with care, never blur together into a generalized portrait of malignity at work in the human heart and mind. Each character, from the quasi-comic Malvolio in “Twelfth Night” to the nihilistic Iago of “Othello,” whom Mr. Page analyzes, convincingly, as a by-the-book psychopath, comes alive before us with different shades of menace, mendacity, vengefulness or spite.

In the two decades since John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” premiered—winning a best play Tony and a Pulitzer Prize—the mystery at its core, whether a priest has molested a child, has hardly grown less grave. But cultural changes now cast their own shadows over Mr. Shanley’s taut, gripping drama. The excellent Broadway revival, directed by Scott Ellis for the Roundabout Theatre Company, starring Amy Ryan and Liev Schreiber, presents the play without any intentional new slant on its ideas, but it gives audiences a chance to consider them in an altered context.

While on the level of character depiction “Jonah” holds our attention, its episodic nature, stretches of mundane dialogue and the disjointed narrative lead to a certain frustration: Where we are in Ana’s life is impossible to pin down, and the jumpy story is more confusing than illuminating.

Always a composer of intricacy, Mr. Guettel mostly eschews traditional musical-theater forms and simplified melodies; his lyrics here are sometimes conversational, sometimes fragmentary, reflecting the characters’ muddled psyches and their conflicting desires: for the high and the happy blur of booze, but also stable ground upon which their marriage can right itself. Music and lyrics reflect both aspects in the duet “Evanesce,” as Kirsten sings, “I’m leaning out the window, I’m running with a knife,” to which Joe ripostes, “I’m riding on an arrow, I’m running for my life.” Then, together, “I have you now, you are all I need.” In a single song, we see the dynamic that runs throughout the show: abiding love at war with destructive impulses.

“Prayer for the French Republic” addresses, with nuance, detail and understated passion, the tensions and the connections between history and current events. While it tells of a particular family, it illuminates the troubles of all people caught up in the turbulent tides of history—as everyone in a sense is—even if some face graver danger than others.

The thought caromed around my mind in between heady bouts of pure glee as I watched the new Broadway revival of the musical, directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, a rising star now fully risen. In prospect the notion of a revival struck me as premature. “Spamalot” again, already? The show closed on Broadway in 2009 after a run of almost four years. But within just a few blissful minutes any reservations were vanquished. In fact the arrival of this production, blazing like a burst of summer sunshine as winter draws near, seems perfectly timed. Who could resist the impulse to bask in a couple of hours of deliriously funny escapism at a time when the world seems to be getting grimmer by the day? Among other things, this joyously juvenile and sublimely funny travesty of legend reminds us that people in the Middle Ages were probably as buffoonish—and bloodthirsty-as they are today.

Timely it may sadly be, but a theatrical triumph it still isn’t. I reviewed the show back in 1997, and while it is changed and improved, it rarely rises above a level of admirable, hard-working professionalism. The score, with music by Mr. Manilow and lyrics by Mr. Sussman, is appealingly various—influences range from Gilbert and Sullivan to cantorial melodies to Kurt Weill to standard contemporary Broadway balladry. (There is even a salsa-flavored song that seems to consciously evoke “Copacabana.”) But it lacks any truly singular or gut-grabbing songs. And the book by Mr. Sussman is hamstrung by both the breadth of the history it seeks to depict and a need to leaven the increasingly dark proceedings with generous dollops of Borscht Beltish humor.

Absent high drama, the director, Moritz von Stuelpnagel (“Hand to God”), massages the play’s turning points effectively. An affecting and surprisingly funny passage finds Sam engaging in a solo game of Sorry!, with Mr. DeVito mustering his considerable arsenal of comic effects to depict a fiercely fought combat. A story about the provenance of an old guitar, formerly the property of a black Vietnam War veteran traumatized by his experience whom Sam once worked with, strikes another moving note.

The contours of Kate’s evolution, as sharp edges are softened by the awakening of feelings new to her, dates back at least to Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Katherina. But Baker renews the theme for the early 20th century with perspicacity and humor. And the cast, under the brisk direction of Jackson Grace Gay, brings lively coloring to all the characters, with the bracingly cynical, or perhaps just realistic, Maisie bringing a crisply funny snap to the play’s nicely turned denouement.

With Mr. Gad and Mr. Rannells pinballing around the stage under the direction of Alex Timbers (“Here Lies Love,” “Moulin Rouge!”), working up visible sweat as they dash between characters, “Gutenberg!” proffers much comic ingenuity. The silly accents are a delight. Cockney in 15th-century Germany? Why not? Still, even at a fairly pacey two hours the fun eventually turns to wheel-spinning, since the central gag—the ludicrous mismatch between content and form—is established from the start and then merely elaborated. The show will probably best please those who know the difference between a charm song, an “I Want” song and an 11 o’clock number, all of which are mentioned here. Which is to say besotted lovers of musical theater.

As Ryan, Mr. Weiler gives a similarly nuanced performance. The jittery young man remains traumatized from his time in prison, and is prone to panic attacks. But Mr. Weiler also underscores how deeply grateful Ryan is to Peg underneath his truculent exterior, and how the sudden death of Jim has left a hole in his heart, too. In the role of Dani, Ms. Thompson, looking like a slightly awkward, overgrown girl, brings some leavening humor to the play when she proves to be an unusually sensitive “good cop,” despite being new to the force. And while she has the least complex role, Ms. Fitzgerald fills out the sometimes harsh contours of Sheriff Kris forcefully.