Charles Isherwood — Theater Critic

Sometimes plain old pasta with red sauce is just what the doctor ordered. 'A Bronx Tale,' which opened at the Longacre Theater on Broadway on Thursday, might be called the musical-theater equivalent of that classic comfort food. It doesn't break ground or dazzle with an unusual recipe - like, say, mixing rap and American history - but it delivers reliable pleasures with polished professionalism and infectious energy.

Under the astute eye of the director, Rachel Chavkin - one of the most gifted working today - the show remains a witty, inventive enchantment from rousing start to mournful finish. It is both the most innovative and the best new musical to open on Broadway since 'Hamilton,' and an inspiring sign that the commercial theater can continue to make room for the new. (Heresy alert: I prefer this show to that one.) Oh, and as for Mr. Groban, making his Broadway debut? He's not merely adequate; he's absolutely wonderful.

There's hardly a moment in the exhilarating, devastating revival of the musical 'Falsettos' that doesn't approach, or even achieve, perfection. This singular show, about an unorthodox family grappling with the complexities of, well, just being a family - unorthodox or otherwise - has been restored to life, some 25 years after it was first produced, with such vitality that it feels as fresh and startling as it did back in 1992. The achievement seems almost miraculous, because in the intervening years, America has gone through cultural changes that might, in theory, have made the show, with its sweet-and-sour score by William Finn, and its economical book by Mr. Finn and James Lapine, seem a relic.

The interpolated songs are integrated into the plot smoothly enough, without lifting the show's mild temperature or bringing new definition to the characters. And unfortunately the choreography, by Denis Jones, features numerous tap routines that are more workmanlike than inspired, and occasionally seem to go on forever. A spirited jump-roping number is the freshest novelty.

True, it may take a few minutes to process the process, as it were. A mild case of sensory overload may have you reeling in the opening minutes, as you adjust to the necessity of taking it all in, and figuring out where to focus your concentration at any given moment. But a heady dose of sensory overload is what the best musicals deliver anyway; that's why people become obsessed with them. Here it's just different elements that contribute to the sensation.

Unfortunately, while aspects of Newton's tale are indeed noteworthy, maybe even amazing, the musical itself unfolds as an overstuffed history lesson trimmed in melodrama, with a standard-issue romantic subplot and some dutiful attempts to explore the lives of the slaves (although the focus remains squarely and maybe a little uncomfortably on the British characters)...Smith's score is pleasant and serviceable...'Amazing Grace' isn't particularly subtle when it comes to psychology, or, for that matter, exposition...Nor does the plot avoid some faintly preposterous excesses...r. Hewitt and Mr. Cooper, both stalwart musical theater veterans, give forceful renderings of their minimally drawn characters. Ms. Mackey's pure, radiant soprano delights the ear...Mr. Young's tenor matches Ms. Mackey's in its bright, limpid richness - although I couldn't help but imagine that if a Ken doll could sing, its timbre would be similar...The song is simple, beautiful, immortal; the musical, not so much.

Ms. D'Amour's dark comedy...draws a compassionate but unvarnished collective portrait of the underclass of New Orleans, a city where millions of tourists converge to party, little noticing that among the bottles and beads littering the streets are plenty of people who refuse to let the party end, and often pay a hard price for it. The production...brims with humor and pungent life. It features a flawless cast led by the Tony winner Julie White ('The Little Dog Laughed'), whose harrowing performance handily surpasses her superb prior work in lighter comedies. Ms. D'Amour's play has a loose, baggy structure that sometimes works against it, but this aptly reflects the aimlessness of its characters, who live day to day and would rather not think about the unhappy past or the foggy future.

...the dismay here has to do with the musical itself, a turgid throwback to the British invasion of Broadway in the 1980s...If full-throated love ballads and thundering militaristic anthems, baggy plots, highly expositional dialogue and doomed romances are your cup of tea, fire up the samovar and give the show a try. But be warned...'Doctor Zhivago' is inferior in most respects to the musicals it is emulating...Ms. Simon...supplies a hefty measure of love ballads, melodic and skillful but tending to become indistinguishable...Mr. Weller's book does a reasonable job of keeping the complicated political and social upheavals comprehensible. But there's more emphasis on the conflicted romance between Lara and Zhivago...More unfortunately, the actors render their characters without much spark or individuality. Ms. Barrett's Lara looks lovely and sings beautifully but radiates a blandness...In the title role, Mr. Mutu sings strongly and with commitment and does a decent job of communicating the divided loyalties that tear at the heart of Zhivago.

Just about everything in this happily dance-drunk show moves with a spring in its step, as if the newly liberated Paris after World War II were an enchanted place in which the laws of gravity no longer applied. Even the elegant buildings on the grand boulevards appear to take flight... 'An American in Paris' is very much a traditional Broadway musical, with a book by the playwright Craig Lucas that amplifies the movie's thin story line, mostly to witty and vivifying effect.

What the production's creators cannot do, unfortunately, is plump up the thin story or elevate the quality of the score, which doesn't rank among Lerner and Loewe's greatest...There is plenty of scrumptious eye candy to feast on...And the cast, with one unfortunate exception, makes the most of the material. Ms. Clark...brings her customary warmth to Mamita...As Gaston, Mr. Cott nicely suggests the chronic restlessness of a rich and handsome young man bored beyond his years, and he sings with bright, clear tone. Making her Broadway debut, Ms. Hudgens dashes around the stage with perky impetuousness, looking smart in her schoolgirl uniforms and, later, as chic as a runway gazelle in sleek gowns. Her characterization comes to life when Gigi pours her heart into her throat...But in between songs, Ms. Hudgens's performance flattens into two dimensions, at most. Gigi's spunkiness is there to see, but her vulnerability and ardor are mostly missing in action. The actress has energy to spare, but the performance is emotionally vacant...For the musical to inspire excitement, or even affection, we need to feel that the romantic fate of a young woman of vibrant heart and spirit hangs in the balance.

In a Broadway season dominated by the usual fodder - musicals new and old, and a healthy serving of Important British Dramas - Mr. Askins's black comedy about the divided human soul, previously seen in two separate Off Broadway runs, stands out as a misfit both merry and scary, and very welcome...Mr. Boyer's performance as Jason is tender and touching, his performance as Tyrone outlandish and hilarious; put them together and you have that rarely seen (although often hailed) acting achievement: a true tour de force...What makes the play so sneakily resonant is how Mr. Askins exposes the base impulses, the sexual, self-destructive, potentially violent ones, that just about everyone harbors to some small degree... Pick up a newspaper and you read another grim report about men and women little older than Jason succumbing to far more destructive passions. Maybe if more of the world's troubled youth discharged their demons with the help of sock puppets, things might not look so grim.

Ms. Moss, a superb actor who possesses an unusual ability to project innocence and smarts at the same time, inherits a role played by many since Joan Allen originated it...Fortunately, under the direction of Pam MacKinnon and in the hands of a fine supporting cast, notably Jason Biggs and Bryce Pinkham as the men in (and largely out) of Heidi's life, the play's humor retains its buoyancy, even when the specific matters at hand [...] have acquired the distancing patina of textbook history...For me, the moving heart of 'The Heidi Chronicles' remains the wonderful monologue in the second act. Heidi is speaking at a gathering of her high school alumnae, but instead of the usual manicured, upbeat speech, she delivers an off-the-cuff, emotionally exposed anecdote. It's really a play in itself, about the sense of alienation she felt that day from other women in a gym locker room: women she respects and admires, in some senses, but whose choices to pursue life's more superficial rewards leave her feeling 'stranded.' Ms. Moss, her eyes moistening even as her voice remains strong, delivers this beautiful speech with a grace that grows stronger as Heidi's peppery, self-aware humor gives way to lacerating honesty. Those are, as it happens, key notes in Wasserstein's durable play, and Ms. Moss and her collaborators in this sterling production sing them forth with a revitalizing warmth.

This beautiful and wrenching musical, lovingly directed by Bill Condon, asks us to step inside their skins and feel what it's like to be celebrated one moment, rejected the next, and to have the strange consolation of a companion who shares it all: the pain, the joy, the hope, the frustration...As portrayed with layered complexity -- and pin-you-to-your-seat vocal chops -- by Erin Davie and Emily Padgett, the Hilton twins embody an essential truth about the human condition: On some level we are forever divided in our desires and, life being what it is, thwarted in at least some of them. Also: It's just a wonderful musical. Imperfect, yes, but most shows are. And in this engrossing showbiz saga, story and song are knit together with liquid finesse, particularly as newly revised by its authors, with the help of Mr. Condon (the films 'Gods and Monsters' and 'Dreamgirls'), whose direction mixes the goth and the glam to flavorful effect...The rich, melodic score and a passionate cast bring alive the tumultuous yearnings in the characters' hearts.

But along with its accomplishments, which include a host of vital performances from its ample cast under the direction of Joe Mantello, 'The Last Ship' also has its share of nagging flaws. The book, by John Logan ('Red') and Brian Yorkey ('Next to Normal'), and inspired in part by Sting's own upbringing in the northeast England town Wallsend, where the show is set, is unfocused and diffuse. It's hamstrung by a division between a David versus Goliath story - of the little folk fighting against the faceless forces of the global economy - and a romantic love triangle.

Mr. Akhtar's play, which was first seen in New York in 2012 and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, has come roaring back to life on Broadway in a first-rate production directed by Kimberly Senior that features an almost entirely new cast. In the years since it was first produced here, the play's exploration of the conflicts between modern culture and Islamic faith...have become ever more pertinent...Although 'Disgraced' runs under 90 minutes, with no intermission, Mr. Akhtar packs an impressive amount of smart, heated talk -- as well as a few surprising twists, including a shocking burst of violence -- into the play's taut duration. Ms. Senior...continues to find fresh currents of dramatic electricity...Most important, Mr. Dillon, who played Amir in a London production, brings a coiled intensity to his performance that makes Amir's increasing antagonism all the more unsettling. Flickering underneath his cool, crisp exterior is a pilot light of resentment that holds the key to the play's eventually devastating denouement.

I had a suspicion that Mr. Gurney's play, first seen in New York in 1989 and trotted out regularly since then at regional and amateur theaters the world over, might by now feel as dated as the means by which its characters trade their thoughts. I also thought I detected a little cynicism in bringing what is essentially a staged reading to Broadway, sprucing it up with big names, and charging roughly $140 for a top-price ticket. But before long, my qualms began to erode under the sweet, sad spell of Mr. Gurney's deceptively simple and quietly moving play. As performed by a sterling Mr. Dennehy, playing the rock-solid, letter-loving Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, and an utterly extraordinary Ms. Farrow, as the flighty, unstable and writing-averse Melissa Gardner, Mr. Gurney's intimate drama gains steadily in power, as life keeps ripping away at the seams of its characters' well-tailored existences. The play's means may be economical, but it etches a deep portrait of life's painful vicissitudes.

The beats are sweet, and the words often have an electric charge in 'Holler if Ya Hear Me,' a new Broadway musical inspired by the lyrics of the popular but troubled rapper Tupac Shakur, who was shot and killed at 25 in Las Vegas in 1996. Unfortunately, much else about this ambitious show, which opened on Thursday at the Palace Theater, feels heartfelt but heavy-handed, as it punches home its message with a relentlessness that may soon leave you numb to the tragic story it's trying to tell.

Now 86, Ms. Parsons has lost little, if any, of her energy, and absolutely none of her ability to bring sustained, animated life to a well-drawn character...While the conversation occasionally strays into unprofitable byways, the play passes by breezily because Ms. Parsons is such fun to watch...'What the world is taking away from me, what time is taking away from me, what God is taking away from me - is me!' she says with a wail of despair at one point. In these moments, and in Ms. Parsons's more than capable hands, Mr. Coble's play rises above its slightly formulaic structure to become a dry-eyed, moving rumination on the hard fact that the progress of human life being what it is, truly happy endings are rare indeed.

If the time has come for Ms. Foster to take her place among the first rank of Broadway musical theater performers (fittingly in a season uncommonly rich in fine work from women), the moment also seems ripe for Violet, originally produced Off Broadway in 1997, to be acknowledged as an enduringly rewarding musical...But the musical concludes on a satisfying but not too sugary note of uplift. By shedding her illusions, at however painful a cost, Violet has also found a new kind of faith: a belief that her life's promise does not depend on divine intervention but the homelier comforts of human attachments.

We hear much (too much) of this sorry story during the show, written by Lanie Robertson and directed by Lonny Price, and first produced Off Broadway in 1986...Mr. Robertson has created a persuasive voice for these reflections, salty and sassy, occasionally flaring into hot bursts of anger, and prone to gin-fueled digressions. Ms. McDonald moves between the moods with a jittery sharpness, conveying the warmth and humor in bright, glowing bursts that can quickly subside into dark, bitter ruminations on the wayward, reckless groove into which her life gradually fell...Still, it's worth putting up with the show's tackier (and duller) aspects for the pleasure of hearing Ms. McDonald breathe aching life into some of Holiday's greatest songs.

Plays as funny and moving, as wonderful and weird as 'The Realistic Joneses,' by Will Eno, do not appear often on Broadway. Or ever, really. You're as likely to see a tumbleweed lolloping across 42nd Street as you are to see something as daring as Mr. Eno's meditation on the confounding business of being alive (or not) sprouting where only repurposed movies, plays by dead people and blaring musicals tend to thrive...The disjointed push and pull of Mr. Eno's dialogue is not easy to master: He emphasizes the way in which we so often do throw words at one another, although most of us don't have the arsenal of curveballs that, say, John does. You may come out of this play hearing a new strangeness - and perhaps a lunatic beauty - in the way a casual conversation can unfold, or at least wishing that your interactions held the entrancing oddity of Mr. Eno's characters'...For all the sadness woven into its fabric, 'The Realistic Joneses' brought me a pleasurable rush virtually unmatched by anything I've seen this season.

...this 'Les Miz' will offend none of the musical's fans with any directorial innovations, and will give them a chance to assess how a new generation of performers meets the challenges of the score. The big winners, happily, were the actors playing the dominating roles of hero and villain: Mr. Karimloo as the bread stealer, single father, long-sufferer and future saint; and Will Swenson as Javert, dogged pursuer of said hero and general scourge to all noble causes and pure hearts...Making a sterling Broadway debut, [Karimloo] sets a high standard in the prologue, performing Valjean's angry soliloquy with fiery intensity and full-throttled vocalism that gradually shades into more nuanced coloring as Valjean...The highlight of his performance, and perhaps the production as a whole, is Mr. Karimloo's beautifully restrained but richly felt rendition of 'Bring Him Home'...The rest of the cast doesn't always meet the same high standards, although all are creditable performers within the limits of their roles...

The prospect of 'Aladdin,' promising another weary night in the presence of a spunky youngster and wisecracking animals, didn't exactly set my heart racing. But this latest musical adapted from one of Disney's popular movies, which opened on Thursday night at the New Amsterdam Theater, defied my dour expectations. As directed and choreographed (and choreographed, and choreographed) by Casey Nicholaw, and adapted by the book writer Chad Beguelin, 'Aladdin' has an infectious and only mildly syrupy spirit. Not to mention enough baubles, bangles and beading to keep a whole season of 'RuPaul's Drag Race' contestants in runway attire.

Riding the crest of his fame from 'Breaking Bad,' Mr. Cranston strides onto the Broadway stage with an admirable confidence, meeting the challenge of animating Mr. Schenkkan's sprawling civics lesson as if he's thoroughly at home. Although Johnson is not the exclusive focus of the play -- many passages focus on the strategizing among various black civil rights organizations -- Mr. Cranston's heat-generating performance galvanizes the production. Even when Johnson is offstage or the writing sags with exposition, the show, directed solidly if a little stolidly by Bill Rauch, retains the vitalizing imprint of his performance.

Strange though it may sound, this pinstriped pantheon sits down to dine together in a dream sequence from 'Bronx Bombers,' an affectionate celebration of Yankee greatness (with a smidgen of Yankee angst) written and directed by Eric Simonson...The drama inherent in clashing egos gives 'Bronx Bombers' some natural juice in the early innings, but the suspense about whether Martin will be axed - and Berra will agree to replace him - more or less gets benched in the play's second act.