Chris Jones — Theater Critic

'Great Comet' goes so much further than any of those aspirational predecessors, with Lien and her team sending part of the audience through a faux-Soviet backstage, building a series of walkways that can carry actors to the back of the balcony, installing ramps and catwalks throughout the orchestra and stuffing the stage with risers and banquettes that really do look like they were built with the rest of the theater. (Bradley King's lights seem to explode everywhere.) It's a seamless work of retrofit design that will, I think, carry historical import. Especially when combined with Malloy's quirky, unconventional and thoroughly beguiling suite of songs.

Therefore, any production of this play requires Valmont to have a palpable ticker. Simply put, you just don't believe that here. Schreiber, handsome devil though he may be, just does not appear to have enough skin in the game. There is a listlessness to this performance - which is problematic since the basic equipment required of even the lowest tier of Casanova is great enthusiasm for the task at hand. Schreiber seems to want to expend the minimum amount of energy, nothing really beyond his probing hand and fingers, which works against the operating procedure of a smooth-tongued seducer whose flattering charm is his principal weapon. More problematic yet, the crucial turn-key scene in the play where Valmont's true feelings and insecurities are revealed feels no different from any other.

Some of the individual moments of this Lincoln Center production are fantastic - Block, who is so well cast here and doing the best work of her Broadway career, does everything you could ask with the show's great, reflective ballads. You are never entirely convinced that Borle and Rannells are deeply in love, partly because Rannells does not sufficiently communicate the confidence that comes from being desired, but both these charming actors have moments that delight. The show centers on men in its structure, but the women in this cast all are so strong that you sense a realignment from 25 years ago.

He had the advantage of the John the Baptist that is Robert Morse and, in his wily partner John Slattery, the oldest, driest and most cynically unlikely Hildy Johnson that ever snagged a scoop. But at the Broadhurst Theatre on Thursday night, America's master farceur grabbed Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's creaking, dramatic homage to the beleaguered but indomitable craft and calling of Chicago newspapering by the scruff of its scraggly 1928 neck. And - nearly a century on - Nathan Lane declared it to still be beautiful.

It is no mean feat to revive an archaic but seminal Broadway musical...and create an entertainment that not only celebrates the classic song-and-dance material but ennobles it further by showcasing the royal talents of Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Brandon Victor Dixon and Joshua Henry, thus vaulting it to new heights. But it is a yet-greater achievement to simultaneously offer what is essentially a lesson in theatrical and racial history...'Shuffle Along,' the final new Broadway musical of the 2015-16 season has achieved all of this. There has been debate about whether this is a musical revival or a new musical. Self-evidently, it is both. It should really be in a Tony category of its own.

Lange plays that drugged-up mother with courage. Her Mary Tyrone has fewer moments of lucidity than most, and too few moments when lucidity and the heebie-jeebies are duking it out before our eyes, but who nonetheless really goes to some dark spots. And there's nothing artificial about that state of her being. It is expressed with profundity and truth. And that, along with Shannon's unceasing attempts to unlock some of these scenes and spill out their devastating emotional content, is about the only truly successful aspect of this strangely marauding and meandering theatrical experience.

The score, by Chris Miller, has echoes of 'Finian's Rainbow' and 'Brigadoon' and often showcases the sound of flute or penny whistle. And the choreography, by director Casey Nicholaw, is balletic, pretty, interested in the social dance forms of the 19th century and fundamentally circular, sending the ensemble members swirling through the years. Even much of the acting is plumby and fantastical. For a competent Broadway show aiming to capture the family market, such a safe approach is hardly unreasonable...But it removes much of the tension from a story filled with agonizing decision-making and enough talk of life and death to keep anyone awake at night.

Mueller's is a performance stripped of condescension, lived in the moment and rich in musical pleasures; surely there is no singing actress of Mueller's generation better able to play a woman of low power and self-esteem....In this show she immediately moves her lips whenever Jenna is asked a question - signaling to the audience that Jenna's main problem is that she worries so much about pleasing others that she never has learned how to put her own needs first. Jenna eventually grabs such an opportunity with her comely-but-married gynecologist (played by Drew Gehling), and it is here that the show stutters: Gehling's Dr. Pomatter feels like a sitcom doc rather than a serious love interest for a serious young woman, and thus you don't pull for them as you should. I had the same issue with Nick Cordero's Earl (Jenna's husband), played as a standard-issue man-spreader when the show would be better if you saw deeper into his anger and depression - especially since Bareilles has given him 'You Will Still Be Mine,' one of the most poignant songs in the show.

...directed with relentless, sensationalist expediency by Rupert Goold...There is no question that 'American Psycho' is a highly unusual Broadway musical. And one that is cleverly self-protected against the aesthetic police. Goold's staging, and Lynne Page's limb-spewing choreography, evidence little in the way of consistency: Goold, whose work is about as a subtle as Bateman's preferred methods of dissection, switches styles in almost every scene...'American Psycho' thus is a smug show that games its audience, much as Bateman games his lovers and victims...The score, by Duncan Sheik, employs a narrow and familiar range of notes...It's a myopic mess, musically...underused Alice Ripley and Helene Yorke...Of course, there's no denying Walker's literate attractions, buoyed by the actor's disciplined determination to take the deepest of narcissistic dives with the full knowledge that truly competitive narcissists never self-promote.

A lone wolf prowls through Salem, Mass., in Ivo van Hove's eye-popping and wholly unconventional revival of Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible,' that great dramatic cautionary tale about the perennial dangers of a rampant theocracy fueled by ignorance and mass hysteria...But van Hove is not so much interested in McCarthyism and history as in tyranny of the more perennial sort; this production feels more attuned to our world of school shooters and suicide bombers than blowhard anti-communists...But in Miller's play, the hysterical girls are the antagonists...With Ronan as his chief asset, and Ciaran Hinds as a relentless political prosecutor, van Hove brilliantly manipulates that counterintuitive aspect of 'The Crucible.'

If you had any doubt of the formidable polyglot of talent that makes up one Steve Martin, or you were under the misapprehension that his banjo was primarily the accessory of a stand-up or Hollywood comic, the very conception of 'Bright Star' should be enough to lay that to rest. In collaboration with the folk-rock musician Edie Brickell, Martin forged score, book and story for this wholly original musical -- a piece that, despite its tonal unevenness and frequent, needless diversions from truth, still feels like a significant, distinctive and artful entry into the Broadway repertory. And it comes replete with a beautiful leading performance from Carmen Cusack, an actress who has worked often in musicals in Chicago but here makes a gorgeously authentic Broadway debut that looks likely to change her life.

Even with stars like Michelle Williams and Jeff Daniels in the lead roles, and direction by Joe Mantello, 'Blackbird' is far from a typical Broadway drama. For some of those attracted by the bold-face names, it surely will come as a sparse shock, a tough, toxic 80-minute ride into the corporate gray of fear and regret...this drama -- which I regard as one of the best pieces of writing of the last decade -- offers the uncompromising actress Williams the rare opportunity to contort body and soul into a character...What makes Williams' performance so distinctive and, to my mind, remarkable, is the way the corruption in her character's soul seems to occupy the limbs of the actress.

In the great disaster-movie epics of the 1970s, star casting was a crucial weapon...'Disaster!,' the tatty, dotty, daffy, trashy new jukebox spoof of the genre that unaccountably opened on Broadway Tuesday night, attempts much the same gimmick - albeit with Broadway rather than Hollywood royalty...It was too late for me about halfway through Act 1 of 'Disaster,' a cleverly self-protected show that embraces kitsch with aesthetic intensity. This embrace extends to many of the irony-free ballads of the '70s...Sometimes, the likes of 'Don't Cry Out Loud' are sung relatively straight...But most of the time they are mugged up, parodied, over-sung and thus the musical joke is telegraphed all the way to the back of the house. In terms of subtlety and satiric nuance, 'Disaster!' makes the heavy-metal spoof 'Rock of Ages' look like Cole Porter.

Most great American dramas of familial anguish and conflict are driven by outrageous individual behavior. But what distinguishes Stephen Karam's inestimably kind, rich and beautiful new play 'The Humans'...is not that Karam lacks awareness of human failings. On the contrary, his characters wear their flaws on their sleeves. But while this extraordinarily talented young writer has an innate sense of dramatic tension and theatricality, he also has a rare understanding that you do not need to pop pills or hit the liquor cabinet for tragedy to bang persistently on your door...Mantello has cast a plethora of superb ensemble actors...'The Humans' is written without excessive sentiment but also without condescension, and Mantello and his cast avoid both those qualities.

For the first time in its long history of dramatization, 'The Color Purple' has been afforded an incarnation fully in sync with one crucial aspect of Walker's original authorial intent -- that the audience must participate in the imaginative act in order to comprehend its richness of theme and story...Hudson's portrayal of Shug Avery is notable in the way it forces an audience to measure the extent and limits of its attraction to this glamorous siren with her life-affirming but hedonist ways. For those of us who watched Hudson in concert early in her career, this performance, which is vocally exquisite, shows the remarkable growth as an actress...But Hudson is not the performer who brings down the house...That work belongs to Cynthia Erivo, the British actress playing -- actually, inhabiting is the better word -- the role of Celie and who, better than the several other actresses I have seen play this role, captures not just the fullness of her pain but the stature of her resilience.

For his much-anticipated return to Broadway, and the very theater where his ubiquitous kitties pawed and warbled their way through a different era, the ever-savvy Andrew Lloyd Webber has kept himself and his ditties more in the background. He has pushed to the fore a group of rockin'-out U.S. youngsters so capable, charming, vulnerable and aspirational, their open hearts surely will fell any and all resistance... You keep waiting for a really great rock number that never quite arrives, a sticky but repetitive ditty called 'Stick it to the Man' notwithstanding. But with the help of lyrics by Glenn Slater, the score more than does its job theatrically.

What are we to make of these bizarre later Broadway endeavors by the man from Chicago who wrote some of the greatest dramas of the 20th century? Are they soupcons? Digressions or meditations yet to be understood? Anarchistic jabs of defiance at the hyper-liberal, perpetually self-examining theatrical establishment with its committees, action groups and abiding impotence?...Herewith, a script and production so provocatively dismissive of all that is generally associated with theatrical craft, rule keeping and hive-driven aesthetic understanding that it feels at least partially deliberate.

The fundamental problem, alas, with the performance of Willis, the star of some of the highest-grossing action movies in Hollywood history, is that his reaction to all of those realizations, upon which the forward trajectory of this theoretically scary play depends, are wholly homogenous - to the extent, that is, that one can detect any reaction from him at all. Metcalf is, of course, an inveterate creature of the stage, and in the first few minutes of 'Misery,' which is directed by Will Frears without enough attention to those old-fashioned fundamentals, you can enjoy her fussy, annoying Annie. In those early scenes, she's a carefully wrought Metcalf creation, credibly rooted in a certain reality - you feel, as you should, like you have met this Annie on a prior occasion.

The white-hot director Ivo van Hove is not the first to embrace the passionate smolder behind Arthur Miller's 1955 play of forbidden passion in Italian-American Brooklyn...But it is hard to recall another staged production -- beyond this exquisitely profound Broadway import from London's Young Vic Theatre Company starring Mark Strong, Nicola Walker and Phoebe Fox -- that has depicted with such complexity and intensity what Eddie and his niece actually had together, before his infuriatingly effeminate usurper Rodolpho arrives, illegally, from the motherland...this is the very rare production that matches the complexity of the text, with its mixed-messaged collision of the cerebral and the sensual, a dichotomy at the heart of everything Miller ever wrote...Van Hove's brilliance is multifaceted, but much rests on his ability to focus the mind and soul on a work's tiny moments.

But although it revolves around the Kimura family, ripped apart by life in the camps, 'Allegiance' gets trapped in the very freneticism of its own storytelling. Relationships are built and fall apart without anyone seeming to take the time to think through the implications of anything. Even the small number of emotionally potent ballads in Kuo's florid, traditional and mostly romantic score are taken at a tempo where you wonder how the singer has any time to emote anything. So go the scenes, designed with retro fluidity, by Donyale Werle. Nobody seems to take the time to think, or to feel.

..the shrewd book writer Alexander Dinelaris finds conflict instead in the Estefans' insistence to the skeptical men in suits that the Sound Machine's signature hybrid of guitar, synthesizer and Latin rhythms...actually is the new sound of an America with a changed face...Dinelaris finds more tension in Gloria's long estrangement from her mother...You never doubt that all of these obstacles will be overcome by hard work and mutual affection...but one great asset of this show is that the struggles still feel emblematic of the greater immigrant struggle, which Broadway has charted as long as there has been a Broadway...In the lead role of Gloria, newcomer Ana Villafane has found her voice and emotional core since a more tentative Chicago debut. Villafane does not have the formidably rich Estefan lower register...but her interpretations of the Estefan hits are quite lovely because they feel rooted in the kind of warmth and sincerity that marks the reputation of their subject.

So why have an affair? How about if you're Keira Knightley? The very capable British screen actress...has the chance to explore that question with paparazzi-free impunity by playing the title role in the Roundabout Theatre Company's new production of Emile Zola's 'Therese Raquin'...on a spectacular set from the redoubtable Beowulf Boritt that is at once expressionistic, operatic and aquatic...The overarching problem with this production is that neither Knightley nor Ryan evidences any joy in their initial coupling -- I speak not, necessarily, of wild partying of un-Zola-esque frivolity, but merely of a palpable connection, of anticipated pleasure. Even their extramarital sex is perfunctory -- and executed with a positively unsettling rapidity of the kind one might suffer with one's husband, maybe, but surely not with one's chosen lover.

...Broderick does not really show us a vulnerable guy on some kind of journey...[he] is pretty much the same at the end as he is at the beginning: He delivers his lines with much the same cadence in both acts, which can be funny in a technical sense, but does not move us much of anywhere, dramatically speaking, nor provide the requisite complexity of relationship..That's not to say 'Sylvia' has no laughs...Ashford navigates many of the pitfalls of this role well -- her doggy is a detailed set of observations, and her crotch nuzzling, couch laying, sitting, begging and the rest are all executed with amusing aplomb on a romantic Central Park-themed set from David Rockwell that tacitly acknowledges the retro, patriarchal nature of the play.

For the Founding Father never had a friend so loyal and true as Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose audaciously ambitious and supremely executed new musical is surely the most entertaining, provocative and moving civics lesson in Broadway history...it's true that the language and nomenclature of 'Hamilton' feel wildly fresh and distinctive...But what makes Miranda such a uniquely potent Broadway figure is that he also is steeped in the craft and tradition of the American musical and can forge melody and lyrics that hold up to the work of the old masters...Thomas Kail, the immensely skilled director of 'Hamilton,' not only unleashes all of this excitement with abandon, but he also forges a wholly consistent world, aided by the best work of choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler's career.

in the deeply emotional performance from Chuck Cooper, who plays Newton's personal slave and surrogate father in this new musical, there is profound longing, pain and hope for the future...Very little of that was evident in the show's Chicago tryout last fall. Much good work has been done on 'Amazing Grace'...'Amazing Grace' wants to tell the story of a conversion...But it feels rushed and unsatisfying, although not as sudden as the appearance of the title song at the conclusion of the night, even though we are hungry for more exploration of its genesis and legacy...he book, an overly linear piece of storytelling never better than serviceable that lacks nuance and ambiguity, even as the production it accompanies lacks a truly vibrant theatrical metaphor.