Charles McNulty

I wasn’t expecting the actors cast in these roles at the Pantages, where the musical opened Wednesday, to compare in magnetism or intensity to their movie star predecessors. Fortunately, the way the musical is written by Ingrid Michaelson (music and lyrics) and Bekah Brunstetter (book), they don’t really have to.

Williams’ shift from prostrate grief to helpless amusement hints at hidden dimensions of a character who will always be a couple of steps ahead of the men trying to control her. But O’Neill was indeed truthful about the ending. Winningham’s Marthy doesn’t have to appear to hover as a specter of Anna’s unglamorous future.

Daniel Aukin’s production, which had its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2023 before moving to Broadway the following year, hasn’t lost its confident flow. The storytelling is lucidly laid out. But the tantalizing peculiarities of the characters have been whittled down.

The show might not have the crackling vitality of “Hamilton” or the bluesy poignancy of “The Scottsboro Boys.” It’s a good deal more earnest than either of these history-laden musicals. There’s an educational imperative at the heart of “Suffs,” which deals with a subject that has been marginalized in schools and in the collective consciousness.

But Oedipus’ strengths — the keenness of his mind, his heroic commitment to truth and transparency — mustn’t be overlooked. Strong, who won an Olivier Award for his performance in Ivo van Hove’s revival of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge,” exposes the boyish vulnerability within the sophisticated politician in his sympathetically beguiling portrayal.

“& Juliet” bestows the alternative ending everyone wishes they could script for themselves — a second chance to get it right. This feel-good musical is just what the doctor ordered in these far less carefree times.

“Parade,” which delves into antisemitism, systemic bias in our judicial system and the power of a wily demagogue to stoke atavistic hatred for self-gain, has a disconcerting timeliness. But the production — momentous in its subject matter, human in its theatrical style — lets the contemporary parallels speak for themselves.

Rather than try to compete with the technological thrills of the 2012 film that earned director Ang Lee an Academy Award, this national tour of 'Life of Pi' succeeds through magical simplicity. My senses were dazzled when I first saw the show on Broadway in 2023, but my heart was completely won over at the Ahmanson Theatre.

The musical takes an amusing leap into Vegas parody when coroner Thomas Noguchi (an electric Thom Sesma) is allowed to strut his medical examiner stuff. Ani Taj’s choreography, like every element of the production, makes the most of its minimalist means. Wanderingly weird, “Dead Outlaw” retains its off-Broadway cred at the Longacre. It’s a small show that creeps up on you, like a bizarre dream that’s hard to shake.

Rebecca Frecknall, who directed the recent Broadway revival of “Cabaret” that made a choppy Atlantic crossing, has brought to Brooklyn the best revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” of my lifetime. The production had two touted West End runs, but I didn’t expect to hear Williams’ play as if for the first time."

The lesson of ‘Kimberly Akimbo,” as expressed in the final number “Great Adventure,” is that we’re all “sailing to a distant shore,” so “just enjoy the view, because no one gets a second time around.” Sometimes, however, second chances do come about. Although I admired the heralded Broadway production, I found myself more open to the quirky charms of “Kimberly Akimbo” at the Hollywood Pantages.

Akhtar reanimates this dialectical discussion of artistic freedom in the fraught context of AI. The problem is that the play is overwhelmed with ideas, themes and talking points. “McNeal” is swirling with things to say about literature — how it’s created, where it gets its value and why its truth can be so dangerous — but it’s as if ChatGPT had been asked to spit out the pros and cons of advanced technology on the practice of literature. The human story gets lost in the shuffle.

“Clue: Live on Stage?” is a possibility I would never have thought to ask about, but it’s safe to say the target audience for this commercial romp isn’t a theater critic with Shakespeare and Sondheim yearnings. I’m happy to report that the North American tour production of “Clue: Live on Stage!,” which opened on Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre, earns its exclamation point through the breathless exuberance of its physical comedy.

The book is unwieldy and far too complicated for a musical that shifts gears into songs that have their own lyrical intricacy. The numbers are staged in a manner that’s more or less independent from the fictional dilemmas giving rise to them. Sometimes the performers croon before a standing microphone. Other times they assemble in the style of a gospel chorus. “I Want You” is one of the exceptions, coming at a time when Gene and his ex-girlfriend Kate (Chiara Trentalange) are acknowledging in song what they are doing a shabby job of hiding in their cool goodbye. (Biggers and Trentalange make the most of their number.)

When McCrimmon’s Fanny is wooed by the elegant, smooth-talking, alluringly shady Nick Arnstein (Stephen Mark Lukas), she never loses Fanny Brice’s protective comic armor. No, the romance between this Fanny and Nick isn’t as sultry as it was when Michele’s Fanny and Ramin Karimloo’s Nick melted into each other at the August Wilson Theatre in New York. But what Lukas’ Nick sees in McCrimmon’s Fanny — a bright, lovable, hilariously original woman — redounds to his credit.

The revival’s tacky side can’t be glossed over. The built-to-travel scenic design by Hannah Beachler has some set pieces that look like misshapen items I might have assembled, substituting glue for screws. Projection designer Daniel Brodie conjures enchantment with an impish wink, but visually the show is nothing to look at.

Subtlety is not a prevailing virtue, particularly when comedy and villainy collide. Melody A. Betts is affectingly human as Aunt Em, bringing out the gorgeous emotional color of her number “The Feeling We Once Had,” which she sings to restore Dorothy‘s spirit after a run-in with school bullies. But when Betts plays Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, she turns into a Saturday morning children’s TV baddie. The performance is so scenery-chewing that Tyler Perry might even object.

The Broadway revival was originally led by Sara Bareilles, who played the Baker’s Wife. But top-tier talent cycled in and out during the New York run. By the time I saw the production in December, there had been quite a number of changes. But the company still had the fresh vitality of an opening night cast.

Good Night, Oscar provides a vehicle f...

With its laughter shot through with loneliness, 'Funny Girl' seems less a vehicle for a star on the rise (or a diva in need of rescue) than a well-wrought musical comedy with a dramatic through line that's unusually psychologically acute. Streisand showed us this already, but Michele clarifies that it's the show that provides the material. Proving herself a trouper, she makes Michael Mayer's production seem less frivolous than when it first opened. I wasn't particularly excited by the prospect of sitting through this revival again. But I left understanding why tickets are going for a king's ransom. Lea Michele is delivering a tour de force for the ages.

Cromwell, however, treats the play as though it were carved entirely in air. The scenic design by Anna Fleischle allows only the barest minimum of set pieces to swoop in from above and sketch the various settings. Incorporating live music as a theatrical emollient, the staging risks turning 'Death of a Salesman' into a funhouse with an array of expressionistic effects that only the great De Shields is able to stylishly pull off.

I never thought I'd see anything on Broadway quite like 'A Strange Loop,' Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical that probes the inner reality of a 26-year-old Black, queer artist who's trying against the odds to transform his alienation into art. For much of this triumphant, emotionally lacerating show, which had its official opening Tuesday at the Lyceum Theatre, I sat with my mouth agape, astonished and grateful that something so brutally honest and rigorously constructed had finally broken through to a Broadway stage.

Feldstein has a mobile face and a knack for pratfalls, but she's not yet a master clown. And her singing is a mixed blessing. She can belt 'Don't Rain on My Parade' with enough power to bring the audience ecstatically to its feet at the end of the first act, but her nonbelting voice rarely gains traction.

Long ago, I was enthralled by Van Hove's deconstructions of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Henrik Ibsen at New York Theatre Workshop. But since this iconoclastic director won a Tony for his staging of 'A View From the Bridge,' he has been operating less like a daring artisan than a factory for a multinational company. But this intrepid reworking of 'West Side Story' marks more than a return to form for Van Hove. The production, which set its official opening for Thursday at the Broadway Theatre, restores the vitality to a musical that can seem ersatz and lumbering when treated like a museum piece.

The urgency of this context is an inescapable part of a drama that is more impressive as a species of theatrical journalism than as a form of imaginative playwriting. Although it may seem hard to credit, the road to Brexit and Donald Trump was paved by what happened when Murdoch bought a lackluster broadsheet and turbocharged it into a leading tabloid.