Charles Isherwood — Theater Critic

The wait proves to be a wholly diverting one in 'Outside Mullingar,' which represents Mr. Shanley's finest work since 'Doubt,' the winner of both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. This isn't to suggest that they are equally sturdy or significant plays. For all its satisfactions - which include supporting performances to savor from the wonderful Peter Maloney and Dearbhla Molloy - 'Outside Mullingar' is a lighter, slighter play, a softhearted comedy freckled with dark reflections on the unsatisfactory nature of life and the thorns of love. But Mr. Shanley's lyrical writing, and the flawless production, directed by Doug Hughes forManhattan Theater Club, give such consistent pleasure that even though we know the equations that define romcoms will add up to the familiar sums, we are happy to watch as they do.

Despite the high body count, this delightful show will lift the hearts of all those who've been pining for what sometimes seems a lost art form: musicals that match streams of memorable melody with fizzily witty turns of phrase. Bloodlust hasn't sung so sweetly, or provided so much theatrical fun, since Sweeney Todd first wielded his razor with gusto many a long year ago...Mr. Mays won a Tony Award for playing multiple roles in the Pulitzer Prize-winning solo show 'I Am My Own Wife,' but the chameleonic performance he gives here makes even that feat seem simple - a matter of filing your nails while whistling 'Edelweiss,' say. In a true tour de force that is hardly likely to be bettered on Broadway this season (apologies to the magnificent Mark Rylance, and those two knights, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, performing Beckett and Pinter in repertory), Mr. Mays sings, dances, ice-skates, bicycles and generally romps through some eight roles - flipping among personas male, female and somewhere in between - at a pace that sets your head spinning...As each precise caricature of British snootiness or silliness comes bounding onto the stage, Mr. Mays seems to be challenging himself to elicit bigger laughs, and he almost always succeeds. All but one of his characters ends up six feet under by the time this daffy, inspired musical concludes, but his brilliant performance deserves to be immortalized in Broadway lore for some time to come.

'After Midnight' does not make much of an attempt to impart any of the Cotton Club history. As the evening's nominal host, Mr. Hill sprinkles the evening with a few snippets of Langston Hughes's poetry, but it's incidental. Instead the focus remains squarely on music and its interpretation, by those amazing musicians, under the snappy baton of the conductor Daryl Waters, and the performers who sing, slide, scat, cartwheel and generally raise a ruckus in front of them.

in a Broadway season quickly beginning to gather its own steam, this mechanical legal procedural cannot, I'm afraid, even outdo the competition in constant rotation on TV...if you've seen the movie, you may at times feel like you're watching it again through a slightly blurry lens, since both Mr. Arcelus and Mr. Page seem to have been cast for their ability to impersonate their counterparts in the film... this competent but bland production goes down like a big tumbler of sweet tea. A really effective courtroom drama should sear the throat like a shot of Southern moonshine.

Anchoring the production is Mr. Rees's perfectly modulated performance as Arthur, on whom the anxiety and notoriety surrounding the case take the most physical toll. When the play begins, he is obviously a man whose physical prowess is on the wane, even if his mind remains sharp, but as the months and years pass, he grows stooped and infirm. Mr. Rees movingly intimates that, underneath his confident exterior, Arthur has also become prey to thoughts of how heedlessly, and perhaps permanently, he has endangered his family's fortunes: his eyes glitter with disturbed imaginings.

Ms. Davies portrays both sides of Janis, I should add. And while she bears a notable physical resemblance to Joplin, and her speaking voice has the same whisper of a twang and down-home earthiness, I'm a little suspicious of that second character. If the real Joplin had the kind of sensible perspective on her life and career that she exhibits in this show - happily reminiscing about her youthful love of painting, or giving a learned docent tour of blues history - she would probably not have died of an overdose of heroin and alcohol at 27...There remains a strange disjunction between the soul-baring singer and the woman calmly telling us that 'the blues is just a good woman feelin' bad,' or 'the blues are a way out of where you are, and they can drag you to where you're going,' or 'it's the want of something that gives you the blues, man.' The Janis we meet in 'A Night With Janis Joplin' spends so much time talking about the blues, you begin to wonder when she had time to truly suffer them.

Given this unusual blend of elements, it should be no surprise that 'Soul Doctor' is a bizarre and at times bewildering musical. Carlebach's life certainly makes for a fascinating story...But 'Soul Doctor'...lays out Carlebach's journey in mostly blunt, often hoary strokes...Carlebach's music, much of which was written to accompany traditional Jewish songs and prayers, is often beautiful and blends folk instrumentation with more recognizably traditional liturgical sounds. Mr. Anderson sings with a soft, captivating intensity, and the orchestrations often appealingly evoke Carlebach's original recordings. But Mr. Anderson's performance is limited by the superficiality of Mr. Wise's book.

Does any of the following sound familiar? An instant lack of rapport; a growing aversion as the minutes pass; a mysterious sense that time has suddenly stopped; a desperate hope that the apocalypse will arrive, preferably right this minute. Magnify those feelings, set them to bland pop-rock music, and you'll have some idea of the oodles of fun I didn't have during my evening at 'First Date,' the singing sitcom that opened on Thursday night at the Longacre Theater...I have been harsh on this modest musical, efficiently if facelessly directed by Bill Berry, so I should underscore that Mr. Levi and Ms. Rodriguez are both appealing performers. Although his singing is merely adequate, Mr. Levi brings a vitality and off-kilter humor to his performance...Ms. Rodriguez has the drearier role - it's obvious that the show was written by three guys, since only the female characters are accessorized with flaws - but her singing is ardent and assured.

Tangy and funny as much of Mr. Logan's writing is, the play would hardly transmit the contact high it does without the presence of Ms. Midler. As a performer she shares certain qualities associated with her subject: an ability to make the crassest vulgarities sound like crystalline repartee, an earthy glamour and a preening, kittenish imperiousness that's somehow warmly endearing. It is hard to imagine any other actor imbuing the character with the same seductive effervescence - or giving a feeling of perpetual motion to a 90-minute monologue without even standing up. (Dressed in a shapely blue tent adorned with silvery spangles designed by Ann Roth, Ms. Midler looks smashing enough to single-handedly revive the muumuu.)

Mr. Cumming...is a versatile performer who here gets to indulge in the kind of high-hurdle challenge (or ego trip) that can prove irresistible to actors...Watching him perform this personalized rendition of 'Macbeth,' I was at times more intrigued by the battle going on between the serious actor and the shameless entertainer than I was by the tense struggles taking place in the divided mind of Macbeth...In terms of stamina and ingenuity, Mr. Cumming's achievement is certainly remarkable. But I came away from my second viewing of this production - I first saw it when it was presented by the Lincoln Center Festival last summer - with the confirmed impression that while Mr. Cumming had persuasively differentiated all the key roles, he had not fully inhabited any one of them.

Mr. Maroulis meets the throat-thrashing challenges of Mr. Wildhorn's score with aplomb, his high-reaching pop tenor evincing little strain when rising to the piercing climaxes. I was also impressed by Mr. Maroulis's quietly intense performance as the obsessive Dr. Jekyll...Statuesque and beautiful, Ms. Cox brings a suffering dignity to this cliché in corsets. More important for those who have come to hear a pop diva do what pop divas do best, her dark, lustrous voice does nice justice to her character's signature song...Unfortunately there's no way to digitally airbrush away the hokum that pervades the whole show, like the ample stage smoke puffing away throughout the proceedings, giving a most commendable featured performance as the fabled pea-soupy London fog.

..ultimately this Roundabout Theater Company production, which marks the first Broadway revival of 'The Big Knife,' doesn't argue persuasively for its enduring merits. Even Mr. Cannavale cannot make Charlie's overblown speechifying sound like anything other than what it is: Odets in soapbox mode, chewing away with gusto on the Hollywood hand that had been feeding him for some time.

For all the richness of its gold-and-platinum-plated soundtrack, 'Motown' would be a much more satisfying nostalgia trip if Mr. Gordy and his collaborators were more effective curators of both story and song, rather than trying to encompass the whole of the label's fabled history in two and a half hours. Irresistible as much of the music is, I often had the frustrating impression that I was being forced to listen to an LP being played at the dizzying, distorting speed of a 45.

Although it's far from fully loaded in a conventional sense, this scrappy, sincere new musical brings a fresh, handmade feeling to Broadway, which mostly traffics in the machine tooled. (Last year's Tony winner 'Once' was a notable exception.) Burrowing into the troubled hearts of its characters, it draws a cleareyed portrait of an America that's a far cry from the fantasyland of most commercial musicals. 'Hands on a Hardbody' simply sings forth a story of endurance, hardship and the dimming American dream, which increasingly seems to hover on the distant horizon like some last-ditch motel whose neon lights are blinking out one by one.

In Durang Land, of course, heartache is generally fodder for belly laughs. There are enough sprinkled throughout his latest play to keep the temperature in the theater from cooling for long, although this romp through an Americanized version of Russian anomie is more a series of loosely connected set pieces than a cogently put-together play.

To put it as the plain-talking Richards might, this one-dynamo show — Ms. Taylor is the lone cast member — is neither a shapely work of drama nor a deeply probing character study. But admirers of Richards probably won’t give a darn. She was a brightly shining political star and an inspiring figure during the years of her renown, and Ms. Taylor is essentially just giving this beloved dame one more chance to bask in the spotlight.

...thanks to the superb performance of Laurie Metcalf as Juliana, the less we are sure of, the more we are engaged. Our perceptions of Juliana's journey through a life upended by trauma may continually shift, but one thing remains fixed: the intense, complicated humanity of Ms. Metcalf's performance....'The Other Place' is a cunningly constructed entertainment that discloses its nifty twists at intervals that keep us intrigued. In what is shaping up to be a lousy season for new plays on Broadway, perhaps this alone is worth a cheer or two.

The skills [Sher] evinced in that rewarding revival [“Awake and Sing!”] are on view here, too: a knack for making Odets’s vernacular language feel like fresh mint instead of stale corn, and a gift for cutting to the emotional quick of a conventionally structured melodrama…As the young hero, who is determined to make himself over into the kind of man the world reveres, Mr. Numrich (“War Horse”) moves with an antic grace in the play’s early scenes...There is music in the way Mr. Numrich moves that hints at the lyric temperament Joe once felt as a salvation..., and now feels as an inhibiting burden…The process is watched from a distance by his loving father, played with impressive delicacy by a sad-eyed, soft-spoken Tony Shalhoub….Mr. Shalhoub infuses his performance with an elegiac tenderness that never descends into the maudlin….“Golden Boy” is at times dragged down by predictable plot mechanics that obscure the ripped-from-the-gut honesty that glittered more fiercely in earlier Odets plays. Some passages are too bluntly written, tapping out the play’s moral message in telegraphic language that makes you wince….But even the play’s pulpier excesses...are brought home with conviction by the cast.

Every year at this time Broadway producers are seized with the urge to pick parents’ pockets with splashy holiday fare aimed at young audiences. “A Christmas Story,” based on the popular 1983 movie adapted from the writings of the radio personality Jean Shepherd, wins points for being less glitzy and more soft-spoken than the garish, overbearing musical versions of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Elf.”…I found the heavy doses of voice-over in the rather clunky movie to be obtrusive and irritating. Happily, the stage version lightens up a little on the cute, smart-alecky asides…making room for the music and allowing the story mostly to speak for itself… “A Christmas Story” features a sizable group of young performers that makes the small band of orphans in “Annie” look positively skimpy...You’re welcome to your Red Ryder carbine action BB gun, Ralphie. What I want for Christmas is a pair of tap shoes.

“The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson,” as the show is subtitled, are actually much more fascinating than you would gather from this formulaic Broadway musical...“Scandalous'...condenses and rearranges McPherson’s story to fit smoothly into the familiar grooves of celebrity biography. In the process the show reduces McPherson’s remarkable life to a cliché-bestrewn fable about the wages of fame…“Scandalous” isn’t so much scandalously bad as it is generic and dull…Ms. Carmello, a gloriously gifted singing actress, has never managed to snag a star-making breakout role on Broadway — not all that surprising in these difficult days for musical theater. Sister Aimee certainly provides plenty of opportunities for Ms. Carmello to thrill us with the purity and power of her voice. She leads a few rousing come-to-Jesus gospel-tinged numbers with bright-beaming intensity. She delivers the climactic soul-baring ballad with plenty of emotional heat. What she cannot do — no singer without the power of miracle could — is bring distinction to songs that never rise above the serviceable.

In an era when Broadway revivals of beloved musicals can seem dispiritingly skimpy, this handsome production offers a generous feast for the eyes, trimmed in holiday cheer for an added spritz of currency...And the evening’s performers — including a bona fide Broadway grande dame, Chita Rivera; a host of plush-voiced singers; and the jovial imp Jim Norton as the evening’s M.C. — throw themselves into the winking spirit of the show...Despite its varied charms, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” remains a musical that ultimately adds up to less than the sum of its hard-working parts. The overelaborate finale — which includes not only the choosing of the murderer but also the selection of a detective and a happy couple to be paired off — somewhat taxes our delight in taking part…But then, who has not felt a bit deflated upon completing a page-turning detective story?...The musical “Edwin Drood” at least leaves behind moments of shimmering musical pleasure to savor, long after the miscreant of the night has been booed off the stage.

The soul ache this superlative staging leaves behind is accompanied by a feeling far more emotionally enriching: the exhilaration of a fresh encounter with a great work of theater revitalized anew. This Steppenwolf Theater production, the first necessary ticket of the fall Broadway season, establishes beyond question that at the half-century mark, an age when many plays, not to mention many people, are showing signs of flab, Mr. Albee’s scalding drama of marital discord still retains the bantam energy and strong bite of its youth. The revelation here is the performance of Tracy Letts, making an electrifying Broadway debut as an actor...Under the tightrope-taut direction of Pam MacKinnon...Mr. Letts brings a coiled ferocity to George that all but reorders our responses to a play that many of us probably thought had by now vouchsafed all its surprises.

The pedal-to-the-metal approach has its advantages. With voices clamoring from the stage at top volume for much of the evening, your attention is rarely likely to stray from the finely spun web of ideas animating Ibsen’s play, about the ruckus raised in a Norwegian spa town when the local doctor discovers that the waters are poisoned.

While it has its moments of memorable wit and some appealing rhythmic Broadway-pop songs, “Bring It On” is by no means in the same league as those musicals [Next to Normal, In the Heights, Avenue Q], and has the feel of a daffy lark embarked upon as a summer-vacation goof…It’s when the cast members drop the bonding and the mean-girl bitching to take part in Mr. Blankenbuehler’s exciting cheerleading routines, arranging themselves into dazzling human starbursts, that “Bring It On” really brings something fresh to the ever-expanding roster of shows aimed at the teenage demographic.

The Pulitzer Prize committee may have never erred more egregiously than it did in favoring “Harvey” over Tennessee Williams’s first masterwork, “The Glass Menagerie.” But handled with care, as it has been in this Roundabout Theater Company production, this winsome comedy about a lovable eccentric can cast a satisfying spell. Mr. Ellis’s amiable staging—which features expert supporting performances from Jessica Hecht, as Elwood’s dithery sister, Veta, and Charles Kimbrough, as the eminent psychiatrist she hopes will lock her troublesome brother up for good—strikes the right, gently dizzy tone. Most important, Mr. Parsons carries the weight of a role immortalized on film by the inimitable James Stewart as lightly as Elwood does the hat and coat he keeps on hand for his furry companion. Mr. Parsons possesses in abundance the crucial ability to project an ageless innocence without any visible effort: no small achievement for an actor in these knowing times.