Chris Jones

The central comic thesis of 'Chinglish' — that Americans and Chinese are doomed to misunderstand each other because of their semiotic incompatibilities — only takes the show so far...But it's the new power structure bubbling below the jokes, Hwang's savvy sense of the evolution in the tools of Chinese seduction and in the nature of Western vulnerability, that gives the show its restless undercurrent.

Schaeffer, whose early directing talent on road shows like 'Big' has matured into something quite formidable, has achieved a great deal here. Not the least is the way the younger selves of the former showgirls are integrated into the action, often with the help of choreographer Warren Carlyle. Without the device ever seeming crass or manipulative, these sepia-toned lovelies of the pre-war years alternately flare up with the force of nostalgia and resilience - and, as the ever-intriguing Elaine Paige reminds us, 'Follies' is about still being here just as much as wondering what happened - then recede whenever loss and regret overwhelms. It is a very poignant visual treatment and it gives way to a gorgeous second-act 'Loveland' sequence (designer Derek McLane fills the stage with a plush look that suggests both a womb and a fatal web). The sequence is as caustic as it is beautiful.

For those who do -- or those for whom flying around to impress a girl and save the world sounds like a Saturday night of all Saturday nights -- Broadway now has an efficient, very expensive, very new comic-book musical with cool effects, some amusements, a brooding hero in Carney, a somewhat shellshocked but spunky heroine in Damiano, and, I predict, a line out the door for a good long while. And, of course, pending clones.

The Shirelles, one of the greatest girl groups of all time (heck, they were covered by the Beatles), get a show of such total ineptitude and cynical profiteering that your mouth pretty much dangles open in disbelief for the duration of the entire tawdry proceedings...At least designer David H. Lawrence's parade of ever-changing hair gives you something to watch.

It sometimes feels like Cromer and his fine actors are searching for a core that the play already has considered and dismissed....of the three central characters, only Falco doesn't have this problem, partly because she plays the darkest and most passive character, but also because a soft vulnerability constantly lurks around the eyes of this remarkable actress; America has yet to scratch the surface of what she can do.

As anyone who saw this theatrical piece in London well knows, to experience 'War Horse' onstage is to wonder how these puppets manage to etch themselves so deeply into your soul. It's partly the sentiment of the story, for sure...These horses (young Joey's puppet-swapping change to maturity is simply breathtaking) seem to pulse in the very air - breathing, churning and always teaching us, or maybe just reminding us, that the world never stands still and that all you can do is find your love and not get mowed down by the big guns.

Rock just about gets through this assignment. Just. But you can see the fear in his eyes. Which would be fine if he were playing a weak character. But in 'Hat,' Rock is, in fact, playing the principal aggressor in a play about love and chemical addiction among a small group of characters in modern-day New York...It's a shame, really, because the first scene of this show, a blistering moment set in a so-called residential hotel in Times Square that takes place between Cannavale, playing a recovering addict named Jackie, and Rodriguez, as Veronica, his zesty-but-jumpy girlfriend, ignites the show as if someone had just poured gasoline on the theater.

Given the way that style, racy and uninhibited though it may be, pervades so much of O'Brien's production, it makes it much harder to buy in emotionally to the themes that the musical brings up more successfully in Act 2. Frankly, the show gets caught between worlds. It doesn't want to fully embrace the caustic 'Chicago'-style edge -- aside from Mitchell's choreographic pastiche, Shaiman's varied score has a typically romantic heart, and the lead actor, Tveit, is more rooted in sweetness and charm than edge. The show also has a powerful and very traditional 11 o'clock number for Kerry Butler, who plays Frank's eventual love, nurse Brenda Strong. But Butler's vocal emotions, rich and strong as they surely feel in this terrific Shaiman melody, 'Fly, Fly Away,' seem as curiously out of place as her uncertain performance, mostly because we never see the two youngsters actually falling in love.

The dark, rich and provocative Rajiv Joseph play 'Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,' a worthy finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, has arrived on Broadway with Robin Williams in the title role...Frankly, the tiger could liven up, although the biggest problem with Williams' performance is that it seems to miss much of the amoral ferocity of the beast (a tiger can be depressed or antic, but he is still a tiger). And a bigger problem yet is that Williams' Tiger is, as things go, not so much the protagonist as a sardonic observer of Baghdad ironies.

Ashford does a couple of very shrewd things. First and foremost, he pairs Radcliffe -- whose character races up a corporate ladder with the help of the titular self-help book (Anderson Cooper provides the famous recorded voice) -- with veteran sitcom star John Larroquette, who plays J.B. Biggley, the company president and the show's surrogate father. Larroquette, whose sardonic sense of comedic timing is flawless and whose pacing is relentless, tutors and draws Radcliffe through the book scenes, pulling more laughs than the work of book writers Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert usually now snags.

But just as it starts to feel as if watching the 'South Park' guys deconstruct the apparent illogicalities of Mormonism is starting to sound the same, one-sided note, Parker, Stone and Lopez engineer a very savvy twist in the narrative. This re-energizes the show early in the second act, focuses it more acutely on those 'Avenue Q'-like themes of young people seeking out their purpose and propels it to a conclusion that leaves audience members feeling they've attended something weightier than a series of pointed laughs fired into a soft religious target.

But 'Priscilla' has a pulsing theatrical heart and soul, not least because its characters are inveterate creatures of the stage. As directed by Simon Phillips, who has been on this bus for years, the tone is warm and inclusive. 'Priscilla' has a rich dynasty of queens, unfazed by any desert and very much at home on Broadway.

Like, say, its recent Broadway predecessor '9 to 5,' the show gets hopelessly trapped in the succession of very short scenes - in this case, set everywhere from taxi cabs to Telefono boxes - that make up farcical films. By midway through the second act, the audience can no longer track the multicharacter action through chaos suited only for film, and palpably checks out of the entire proceedings.

The show is stuffed with bravura, impassioned, individual performances that fuse into an inestimably powerful ensemble.

But I think the last 20 years have, on balance, been kind to this script. After revealing the idiocy of its hero, 'La Bete' suggests that the cultural establishment is vulnerable to these pretenders because of its reluctance to venture outside its own elitist bubble - a tendency deftly suggested by Mark Thompson's shrewdly intimidating setting of towering bookcases filled with volumes that nobody really wants to read. There are plenty of Valeres out there, pontificating on cable, the blogosphere and at political rallies, all ready to pounce.

But this is still one of those shows that capture a moment, an old moment, a new moment. The young cast looks atypical and, at times, as if its members can't believe their luck. Jackson probably thought much the same.

That Mamet wrote this script when he was still, really, a kid, is both indicative of his prescient understanding of the daily grind to come and his astonishingly early powers of observation. Like 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' 'A Life in the Theatre' is a play about work. It just happens to be toil that takes place in the theater. It has the same deadening effect on the soul.

“Enron” won’t win any awards for stylistic unity, nor for subtlety. It comes with some of that irritating, knee-jerk anti-Americanism — especially anti-anything to do with Texas — that afflicts many left-leaning British writers essaying U.S. subjects from afar and invariably results in brash, crude, stereotypical cocktails of sex, excess and the rodeo. That can still play well in Manhattan, where the avaricious think themselves more subtle. And with Prebble, and director Rupert Goold, throwing in everything from fireworks to musical numbers to puppets to a chorus of ravenous dinosaur raptors (a riff on the debt-eating financial creations of Andy Fastow, Skilling’s CFO sidekick), “Enron” is a mish-mash with one foot in the tatty, good-night-out tradition of British political-populist theater, and another inarguably hypocritical foot clearly enjoying a rare chance to blow a Broadway budget.

And therein lies the problem with Hayes' key performance in Rob Ashland's intermittently amusing but emotionally unsatisfying revival. This invulnerable Chuck feels pre-packaged and self-contained. He doesn't seem to want or need anything, including that troubled waitress. And although Hayes' Chuck talks to us all night, you never really feel that anything has been revealed.

Certainly, Washington eroticizes Troy, a character typically played by more stentorian actors with deeper bass notes and thicker girths (although Washington has put on a few pounds and wants not for gravitas). But that potent sexual appeal — underexpressed in most productions of this oft-revived masterpiece — is very much a part of Troy. He was, after all, a star athlete of the Negro Leagues, and his married state doesn't prevent him from bedding a much younger woman (unseen but with enthusiasm implied) and fathering her child. Viola Davis, who plays Rose, the wife Troy betrays, uses that more powerful sense of sexual betrayal to fuel the play's famous Act 2 howl of anguish with such force that you're moved to tears. If Troy is already a broken, angry man, Rose hasn't lost much. But when you're losing Denzel Washington to some cheap floozy — well, the stakes can't help but rise.

There are many fine performances of these incomparable theatrical compositions. Williams is mercifully irreverent, there is only one Cook, and, while Wopat only goes so deep, Lewis' take on “Being Alive” is formatively and emotionally magnificent. But they are not what stays with you. It is not easy for the performers to cohere as a throbbing ensemble, because the star of the show is not in the building.

And thus “American Idiot,” the show, delivers a thick, gorgeous head rush of a musical soundscape without current Broadway parallel. It turns out to offer the kind of sensual lushness that a lot more traditional musicals would kill to emulate. That's mostly due to the brilliance of Tom Kitt's orchestrations, adding violin, cello, weight and gravitas to the Green Day sound without blunting its aggressive edge. With the gifted director Michael Mayer spreading his eight-member band out across a beautifully cacophonous setting — more a video-filled installation, really — from Christine Jones that evokes a constant blaring of Fox News in an endless sea of 7-Eleven parking lots and crappy urban apartments, you get a stunning musical wash of all corners of human emotion.

Folks are paying a lot of money and some of them like to know where that money went. But the finale is really about the music. And in this case, the money would have been far better spent on hiring a decent dramatic writer who could have added some subtlety and veracity to a crude book from Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux that still dispenses thudding anecdote, easy trivia and crude linkage instead of the live, credible, complex conversation of a quintet of icons of American rock ‘n’ roll.

They don't give out awards for “most improved,” and “The Addams Family” did not undergo some spectacular 11th-hour artistic unification. But clear-eyed changes have moved what was a wildly uneven but ambitiously progressive affair in Chicago much more in the direction of classic, full-tilt, fast-paced, old-fashioned musical comedy — and regardless of reviews, they're almost certain to cement this immensely popular title as a commercial hit on Broadway and beyond. (The show opened on Broadway with a whopping $15-million-plus advance and has been racking up “Wicked”-like box office returns since previews).

But if you accept this show as a populist ballet — Who deserves a populist ballet more than Frank? — you could find yourself entranced. I did. Tharp's achievement here, and it is a brilliant achievement, is to catch, in strident, fearful dance, that sense of an artist at once temporal and immortal.