Chris Jones — Theater Critic

Mueller shows us a reluctant star, a woman who only really starting singing out of necessity and would always have been happier with a few hit songs, a nice home and a man she really could trust. At the end of 'Beautiful,' she's not that different from how she is at the start. Most jukebox shows swing on that obscurity-fame-meltdown-comeback-maturity axis. 'Beautiful,' in its best moments, manages to suggest that the life of our artist is really just small moments that fall together, unknowingly.

Mueller shows us a reluctant star, a woman who only really starting singing out of necessity and would always have been happier with a few hit songs, a nice home and a man she really could trust. At the end of 'Beautiful,' she's not that different from how she is at the start. Most jukebox shows swing on that obscurity-fame-meltdown-comeback-maturity axis. 'Beautiful,' in its best moments, manages to suggest that the life of our artist is really just small moments that fall together, unknowingly.

Mueller shows us a reluctant star, a woman who only really starting singing out of necessity and would always have been happier with a few hit songs, a nice home and a man she really could trust. At the end of 'Beautiful,' she's not that different from how she is at the start. Most jukebox shows swing on that obscurity-fame-meltdown-comeback-maturity axis. 'Beautiful,' in its best moments, manages to suggest that the life of our artist is really just small moments that fall together, unknowingly.

Mueller shows us a reluctant star, a woman who only really starting singing out of necessity and would always have been happier with a few hit songs, a nice home and a man she really could trust. At the end of 'Beautiful,' she's not that different from how she is at the start. Most jukebox shows swing on that obscurity-fame-meltdown-comeback-maturity axis. 'Beautiful,' in its best moments, manages to suggest that the life of our artist is really just small moments that fall together, unknowingly.

You have the sense that the show, which currently stars the red-hot Fantasia, did not want to be seen as a historic re-creation, and indeed, the traps there are self-evident. For many of us, hearing the fabulous Adriane Lenox belting out 'Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night' is better than any clever Broadway conceit. And the notion of fusing old school and new school certainly has an effect of enlivening the former and rooting the latter.

Despite the play's reputation as an exquisite fusion of simmering menace and incontrovertible sexual desire, the haunting, richly textured Broadway revival of Harold Pinter's backward-traveling 'Betrayal' has been infused with an aching ennui by the redoubtable Mike Nichols, a director who has lived long enough to have seen that even adultery grows old, and the aging adulterers sad and pathetic. Run an affair through the relentless wringer of time and it becomes as confining as a marriage...[Rafe] Spall is, of course, much lesser known than his A-list co-stars, but it is Spall who runs off with the show at its crucial junctures, an imbalance that strikes me as perfect for 'Betrayal,' and, frankly, very much to the credit of these actors. With the wily Nichols putting the wind in their sails, Craig and Weisz, both of whom are up for the exposure, are engaging in a little deconstruction of their celebrity marriage as well as probing the inevitable terror felt by the established and the over-40 when some virile youngster comes nipping at his heels.

Despite the play's reputation as an exquisite fusion of simmering menace and incontrovertible sexual desire, the haunting, richly textured Broadway revival of Harold Pinter's backward-traveling 'Betrayal' has been infused with an aching ennui by the redoubtable Mike Nichols, a director who has lived long enough to have seen that even adultery grows old, and the aging adulterers sad and pathetic. Run an affair through the relentless wringer of time and it becomes as confining as a marriage...[Rafe] Spall is, of course, much lesser known than his A-list co-stars, but it is Spall who runs off with the show at its crucial junctures, an imbalance that strikes me as perfect for 'Betrayal,' and, frankly, very much to the credit of these actors. With the wily Nichols putting the wind in their sails, Craig and Weisz, both of whom are up for the exposure, are engaging in a little deconstruction of their celebrity marriage as well as probing the inevitable terror felt by the established and the over-40 when some virile youngster comes nipping at his heels.

With the indefatigable, deeply engaged and seemingly irreplaceable Norbert Leo Butz driving its storytelling and willing the show's crucial emotional subtext into being by sheer force of talent and will, 'Big Fish' arrives on Broadway as an earnest, family-friendly, heart-warming and mostly successful new American musical. Modestly and movingly scored by Andrew Lippa, 'Big Fish' is set in the Deep South and honors that region's love of tall tales without exploiting the Southern stereotypes so common to the genre of musical theater.

As you can see both in director John Tiffany's beautiful Broadway revival that opened here Thursday night and in a smaller but equally insightful and yet more intense Chicago revival that was the highlight of last season, directors have finally realized that there is no shame in presenting explicit memory in the only medium that can fully serve it...Cherry Jones, one of the great American stage actors, understands that playing a character in a memory play does not mean work informed by the ephemeral. Her Amanda is a great, gutsy woman from a time lousy for her gender. In this fine performance, you discern that her attempts at survival and modest progress are laid low by her own awareness of life's fragility for women, such as her daughter, without visible means of support. Keenan-Bolger spends much of the two hours of stage traffic trying to find some small victories to overcome her own despair; it is another beautiful performance.

As you can see both in director John Tiffany's beautiful Broadway revival that opened here Thursday night and in a smaller but equally insightful and yet more intense Chicago revival that was the highlight of last season, directors have finally realized that there is no shame in presenting explicit memory in the only medium that can fully serve it...Cherry Jones, one of the great American stage actors, understands that playing a character in a memory play does not mean work informed by the ephemeral. Her Amanda is a great, gutsy woman from a time lousy for her gender. In this fine performance, you discern that her attempts at survival and modest progress are laid low by her own awareness of life's fragility for women, such as her daughter, without visible means of support. Keenan-Bolger spends much of the two hours of stage traffic trying to find some small victories to overcome her own despair; it is another beautiful performance.

As you can see both in director John Tiffany's beautiful Broadway revival that opened here Thursday night and in a smaller but equally insightful and yet more intense Chicago revival that was the highlight of last season, directors have finally realized that there is no shame in presenting explicit memory in the only medium that can fully serve it...Cherry Jones, one of the great American stage actors, understands that playing a character in a memory play does not mean work informed by the ephemeral. Her Amanda is a great, gutsy woman from a time lousy for her gender. In this fine performance, you discern that her attempts at survival and modest progress are laid low by her own awareness of life's fragility for women, such as her daughter, without visible means of support. Keenan-Bolger spends much of the two hours of stage traffic trying to find some small victories to overcome her own despair; it is another beautiful performance.

As you can see both in director John Tiffany's beautiful Broadway revival that opened here Thursday night and in a smaller but equally insightful and yet more intense Chicago revival that was the highlight of last season, directors have finally realized that there is no shame in presenting explicit memory in the only medium that can fully serve it...Cherry Jones, one of the great American stage actors, understands that playing a character in a memory play does not mean work informed by the ephemeral. Her Amanda is a great, gutsy woman from a time lousy for her gender. In this fine performance, you discern that her attempts at survival and modest progress are laid low by her own awareness of life's fragility for women, such as her daughter, without visible means of support. Keenan-Bolger spends much of the two hours of stage traffic trying to find some small victories to overcome her own despair; it is another beautiful performance.

In its home base of Chicago, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's studiolike production of Kenneth Lonergan's closely observed and emotionally potent 'This Is Our Youth' was an intimate, immersive affair...On Broadway, though, 'This Is Our Youth' is very different proposition...Shapiro's enjoyable production remains a sincerely acted and smart-eyed take...[Dennis is] exceptionally well played by Kieran Culkin, the cast member here who is most at home on a Broadway stage. He drives the production much more explicitly than was the case in Chicago. Cera ('Arrested Development,' 'Juno') remains his minimalist self, his back stiff and his body constantly residing on the lines of various acute angles. Not all of his work lands as easily on the bigger stage -- to expand Cera is not necessarily to improve him -- but this still is a very smart, funny and painful take on Warren, a tricky character whom Cera turns into an inept but empathetic soul...Gevinson...does not find the technical demands of working in a big Broadway house easy.

There are shows that revive aging material through revisionism. And there are productions that prefer to celebrate the pull of nostalgia, especially when the songs are great. 'Pippin,' the brilliant Diane Paulus revival of the fantastically playful musical by Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson, with a special place in the theater-loving hearts of many, somehow combines the best of those two approaches, at once re-energizing this 40-year-old musical with freshness, vitality and eye-popping exuberance without ever making it feel like the crucial sweetness and naivete of the piece has been undermined or exploited.

Midler, as you might imagine, gives good dish. Superlative dish, even. There will be some for whom 90 minutes in the presence of an outsize character playing an outsize character will be a most delightful evening, leaving ample time for post-show martinis. That's the appeal of this pain-free bit of cannibalism. Meanwhile, the rest of America, the one without the invite, has to worry about more substantial matters.

Midler, as you might imagine, gives good dish. Superlative dish, even. There will be some for whom 90 minutes in the presence of an outsize character playing an outsize character will be a most delightful evening, leaving ample time for post-show martinis. That's the appeal of this pain-free bit of cannibalism. Meanwhile, the rest of America, the one without the invite, has to worry about more substantial matters.

It was Dahl who invented Matilda, the spunky, over-achieving, proto-feminist, grrl-power heroine of what is far and away the best new musical of the Broadway season, indeed one of the best family-oriented shows of any season, and a work of musical theater that feels like a grand cultural experience...'Matilda,' which features a faithfully wrought and happily insouciant book by Dennis Kelly and that score, that remarkably rich, occasionally anthemic score by Minchin, has arrived on Broadway with a formidable West End pedigree. One could nip at 'Matilda's' heels: the Broadway production, directed with great skill and a determined lack of sentimentality by Matthew Warchus, is a tad cool to the touch in spots...But that is about the only reasonable complaint. Warchus' superb cast is remarkably deep in craft and talent.

Lauper, a genuine and necessarily fearless original - happily lassoed for duty on a Great White Way in dire need of a woman with so many melodic hooks in her bag of tricks - has been promoting dance-fueled tolerance for decades. And that distinguished history, judiciously coupled with a book by the famously droll and direct Fierstein, is riveted into the stiletto heels dancing through industrial Britain in this show - a witty, striking and emotionally centered movie-to-musical transfer about a down-at-heel Northampton shoe factory that reinvents itself by making reinforced footwear for hefty drag queens.

The generally likable, small-scaled and well-meaning show...revolves around an endurance contest staged by a car dealer. Be the last person with your hands on the truck and you can take it home. Let go and you're road kill....The main problem with the piece (aside from some lyrics that feel forced and obvious) is that you probably could guess the casting breakdown without seeing the show.... The piece is not without interest and is quite enjoyable throughout: Trujillo has some zesty one-handed dance numbers, the actors bring a good deal of truth and, more important, the plotting feels far more original than the character types.

The problem here is of simpler vintage: There's no palpable connection between Fred and Holly, the unlikely and surely ill-fated couple of Capote's imagination...The other problem with Mathias' show...is that it misses the exuberance of the 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' novella...Capote understood the dangers of trying to start from scratch - the past will come out, and all that - but he also knew its appeal...Greenberg tries to underscore this crucial ambivalence in his text, and he tries to set out a fatalistic celebration of courage, but the invasive mores of this production keep toppling all that.

The fundamental problem with Douglas Carter Beane's perplexing, wholly unromantic and mostly laugh-free new book for this Broadway 'Cinderella' - which turns the heroine into a social reformer like a better-looking Jane Addams, the stepsisters (Marla Mindelle and Ann Harada) into sympathetic, wounded creatures of thwarted desire, and Prince Charming (Santino Fontana) into a myopic dunce who needs his eyes opened to the poverty of his people - is that it denies the audience the pleasure of instant reversals of fortune....Not for the first time, Broadway wants it all ways - the hip and the retro, romance and self-aware sniping, Rodgers and Hammerstein melodies and atonal satirical jabs, a golden title for family audiences and yet something else entirely once their credit cards have been charged.

The fundamental problem with Douglas Carter Beane's perplexing, wholly unromantic and mostly laugh-free new book for this Broadway 'Cinderella' - which turns the heroine into a social reformer like a better-looking Jane Addams, the stepsisters (Marla Mindelle and Ann Harada) into sympathetic, wounded creatures of thwarted desire, and Prince Charming (Santino Fontana) into a myopic dunce who needs his eyes opened to the poverty of his people - is that it denies the audience the pleasure of instant reversals of fortune....Not for the first time, Broadway wants it all ways - the hip and the retro, romance and self-aware sniping, Rodgers and Hammerstein melodies and atonal satirical jabs, a golden title for family audiences and yet something else entirely once their credit cards have been charged.

Scarlett Johansson...unlike so many young movie stars, she has no problem expanding her performance chops to the live theater, booming out a character that has been precisely forged and defined but ill-advisedly contained...a clear point of view is absent in this generally confused, low-stakes and halting production - that went through changes and subtractions in its preview period and now seems stuck. It's neither a traditional staging nor a suite of fresh ideas on a great American drama that should both embody timeless interpersonal truths and reflect how much our world is changed, sexually speaking, in little more than a half-century.

In Daniel Sullivan's high-profile Broadway revival of a great American drama of prosaic Midwestern business, a masterpiece that can withstand almost any out-of-whack revival, even this one, the great American actor Al Pacino blinks straight out at the audience. He will do this, beyond all bounds of common practice, for the next two hours, a choice at once interesting, sweet and weird...An hour or two later, you come to see that the production has its high points, its entertainments, its solid performances and there is nothing herein to kill the appeal of this brilliantly constructed and spectacularly theatrical play...But this production...ultimately does not succeed pretty much for the same reasons that the last Broadway production of Mamet's 'American Buffalo' did not work out. Although hardly an everyman in whom we can see ourselves, Pacino's Shelly is certainly playful, unpredictable and rhythmically impulsive...Pacino certainly captures Shelly's vulnerability, even if he channels much of that into eccentricity. The problems arrive more when it feels like these actors don't understand the huge stakes of small events in these third-tier salesmen's lives.

There are two quite different performances here. LuPone cut her teeth on Mamet during the St. Nicholas Players days in Chicago, and she is a consummate interpreter of his works: She understands how to foreground his language without giving up the rest of what an actor does. She consumes this Cathy with a palpable hunger, forging a very shrewd and well-crafted performance. Winger, though, tends to lean back from the debate even as LuPone leans into its demands.