Chris Jones — Theater Critic

At its core, Jason Robert Brown’s two-character musical “The Last Five Years” is about the difficulty of maintaining a relationship while working in high-pressure creative fields. Its score, provocative and beautiful, is filled with songs about loneliness, insecurity and isolation and about how hard it can be to sustain the power balance within a marriage when one partner’s career is on the rise and the other’s is stuck perpetually in the weeds. It’s also a show about early-career artists, those years when big breaks have to be grabbed by the horns but also when the agonizing realization first dawns that they might never happen (one chills out either way, as one ages). And that’s the first disconnect with the disappointing new Broadway production at the Hudson Theatre, featuring the truly bizarre casting of Nick Jonas, the pop star of Jonas Brothers heritage and fame, playing the rising novelist Jamie, and Adrienne Warren, best known for playing the title role in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” a character that is about as far away from the struggling summer-stock actress Cathy as Jupiter is from Mars. That’s always a risk with this 90-minute show, which I first saw in its lovely premiere at the Northlight Theatre in Chicago in 2001, where it starred Lauren Kennedy and Norbert Leo Butz, working with director Daisy Prince. That’s because Brown structured the show so that the five-year relationship between Jamie and Cathy unspools in opposite directions. Jamie’s story is told in chronological order. But Cathy’s story is recounted in reverse, akin to “Merrily We Roll Along.” In the first scene, her song mourns the end of her marriage. Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas in 'The Last Five Years' on Broadway.

Cromer has taken a mostly prosaic, procedural media drama... and turned it into something that scorches with the heat of today’s political turmoil.

Culkin, though, has a staccato delivery, a halting rhythm and an innate sense of vulnerability, all qualities that have made him a much-cherished star. But they don’t easily make a Ricky Roma, and his work in the role, although far from sloppy or embarrassing, throws off the rhythms of the play. He’s been miscast.

Those digital selves are rendered on separate screens of various shapes and sizes, aptly resembling pictures in, say, the National Portrait Gallery. They’re kinetic, flying in and out, landing at different angles, sometimes rendering whole bodies in silhouette and, at others, offering a series of characters at a gossipy table. All are richly realized, down to the mutton-chop mustaches (in some cases) or the elaborate headwear (in others). All, of course, are played by Snook. Unless you saw this piece in London, I doubt you will have seen quite the like before.

Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Iago, certainly gives the Moor of Venice plenty to fight against, if he chose to do so. Here is far and away the most dynamic performance of the night, a riveting, turbo-charged interpretation that avoids any and all villainous cliches, or flowery self-doubts, and just presents a malevolent but highly effective military guy who sets out to do what he wants to straightforwardly do, a train hurtling down a track, gaining speed with every scene, determined to knock the Othello and Desdemona carriage into the ditch.

While it’s a retro wartime story, the overall sensibility here is both contemporary and self-aware, filled with sly critiques of the domination of wartime intelligence services by members of the British ruling class, exerting their sexist ways. For the most part, the show is composed of zany humor that bleeds into comic songs with witty internal rhymes (the songs of Tim Minchin are a helpful comparative).

Still, few people in the house are there for the story. They bought tickets to hear the great music and watch the thrilling dance, here rendered as an ebullient social form with balletic flourishes, as skillfully crafted by co-choreographers Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck. Bravura performances flow to the ear and eye from pretty much the entire company.

In the end, ‘Purpose’ is a major new American play about what it’s like to be trapped by powerful parents whose public personas their children can easily see through, even as they are condemned to try and live up to their import. A thumping blend of tragic-proximate horror and schadenfreude, it’s riveting to watch.

But The Jonathan Larson Project, conceived by Jennifer Ashley Tepper, directed by John Simpkins and staged, aptly enough, at the Orpheum Theatre in the East Village, concentrates on adding to that catalog. The 90-minute revue features songs that were cut from both Rent and Tick, Tick … Boom, but is dominated by songs penned either as standalone compositions or for shows unproduced and rediscovered after Larson’s death on various cassette tapes, sheets of paper, music files, journals, yada, yada.

I’ve seen “English” before, in Chicago (it also was seen Off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre). The separate Goodman Theatre production had more of a sense of the world outside, to its betterment, and suggested that the classroom wasn’t just a place where you lost yourself but an escape from chaos. But Adams has chosen a rather more ethereal path, scoring the show with emotive piano music and revolving the set in such a way as you feel like these students, and their teacher, are floating in a kind of linguistic netherworld, denying themselves with the prize of getting ahead.

At times in “Eureka Day,” it feels like these mostly older, elite do-gooders, the kind with “White Fragility” on their nightstands and the right “woke” language in their mouths, are overly easy targets. And I had moments when I wished the play had at least hinted at the nonprofit theater’s own complicity in all this stuff. Acting out of self-interest and self-preservation while using virtuous language hardly is an unknown thing in the arts, especially these past few years. And Spector is careful not to really take risks when it comes to potentially giving offense to the industry’s dominant ideologues, not all of whom are hippyish white boomers.

That’s in play here, too, and there are times in Trip Cullman’s very present and very savvy production when it feels like you are actually watching a Judeo-Christian Christmas ghost story with the Baby Jesus or an Old Testament prophet about to make an appearance, or at least some Ghost of Christmas Past showing up with sawdust to sprinkle to promote the belated acceptance of personal difference. The play actually discusses Christianity quite specifically and in a very nuanced way. That’s unusual in Broadway satires, and the play is all the better for having the guts to do so.

“& Juliet” does all of that while also skillfully drawing on the enduring box-office popularity of two of the most famous Shakespearean characters, Romeo and Juliet, here recasting Romeo as a dumb, dreamy, boy-band kind of dude and Juliet as a super-smart seeker of personal empowerment and, of course, a voice she can call her own. It’s axiomatic in the world of musicals that women buy most of the tickets on Broadway.

“Death Becomes Her” arrives on Broadway as a silly, campy, go-for-broke show that’s filled with hearty laughs (especially in the stronger Act 1) and a pair of gutsy, zesty and highly skilled lead performances from Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard that land right where a good chunk of the Broadway-going public believe divas like these two should be landing. While looking fabulous. The aim here appears to have been to create a kind of pseudo-feminist, gayer version of “The Producers,” and while those heights are not scaled, the Mel Brooksian template is enthusiastically employed, especially within Mattison and Carey’s patter-heavy ditties and droll lyrics.

I suspect “Swept Away” will end up as the most niche of this fall’s armada of Broadway musicals; it’s an unusual, all-male piece that doesn’t offer obvious commercial appeal, especially given its dire theme for a big Broadway night out. But it strikes me as a weird, sure, but also daring interpretation of a kind of music we only rarely hear on Broadway.

That part of the show, thanks to the honesty and richness of Brayben’s lead performance, is the more interesting one. The more general satirical wash, and it is a tonally constant covering, grows tiresome as the show progresses. “Tammy Faye” feels like it comes from abroad, as indeed it does, because you never believe that any of the creators have any real skin in the game.

Here, two robot characters, for goodness sake, are carrying on that age-old Broadway declaration that love, and only love, is the existential necessity we cannot live without. Only here it’s manifested in ways that even Stephen Sondheim could not have dreamed.

To showcase and to dissect always are tricky, twin ambitions for any jukebox show, and I think the main problem with “Wonderful World” is that it worries too much about the latter, which gets in the way of fully delivering the former. The show, which organizes itself around Armstrong’s career-defining travels from New Orleans to Chicago to Hollywood to New York, has a whole lot of biographical information to deliver and it’s a very heavy load, especially in Act 2, which becomes a bit of a slog when audiences at such shows long have been conditioned mostly to expect a concert-style finale. In the Wikipedia age, information is not what audiences want so much as a point of view and, well, lots of songs and music. We still could do with less history and more time with Louis and his band.

All that said, if you like a jazzy, retro night out, “Some Like It Hot,” which is now in its first national tour, has some appeal, especially in this city. It’s a fast-paced show, as directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, although I found the touring version, which is smaller, to be thankfully less frenetic than the original. Among the standout performances to enjoy are the very droll Tarra Conner Jones as bandleader Sweet Sue and the journeyman Broadway player Matt Loehr, who plays the Tony Curtis role of Joe here. Loehr is one of those consummate pros who often are passed over for starring roles and yet have a daunting level of craft at their disposal.

Alas, while the two leads are sincere, the show itself is (a) altogether too much of too much; (b) a bit of an ill-focused mess; and (c) less than engrossing.

“Left on Tenth” is based on Delia Ephron’s 2022 memoir of that name and its adaptation into a dramatic play is, you might charitably say, modest. Margulies’ Delia narrates her circumstances throughout. Gallagher’s Peter doesn’t get to express much of a point of view; he’s presented as perceived by Ephron. Scenes of the couple going out on a date or Peter ministering to Delia as she lies in a hospital bed are brief and episodic. And while both of these actors are honest, vulnerable and appealing — no faint praise — they are not delivering bravura stage performances. I’d argue such zig-zaggingly internal material does not really allow for such performances anyway. Margulies in particular was still finding her throughline at the show I saw. But it’s still a piece of acting that reflects some courage.

None of Lloyd’s hipster ideas to make extensive use of live video feeds and have his charming and judiciously understated male lead, Tom Francis, start the top of Act 2 while walking down 44th Street and singing live among the tourists into a camera would have worked without a Norma who could deliver Lloyd Webber’s best score. “Deliver” doesn’t do Scherzinger’s performance justice. Her lower register roars through the power ballads “With One Look,” and “As if We Never Said Goodbye,” both of which are immaculately sung and clearly the result of a level of detailed lyrical and physical preparation that you don’t see much with this kind of fearlessness. Both marquee numbers received long, show-stopping ovations at the performance I saw, and not just from fans of the Pussycat Dolls. Scherzinger is fantastic.

Revival of Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ is moving, emotionally stirring production. Kenny Leon’s emotionally charged revival at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre has opened with an engaging if stylistically varied cast and a swift pacing that boils a three-act play down to an intermission-less 105 minutes.

Weird as it may sound, “Yellow Face” is a good time in the company of smart, self-aware people, critical thinkers willing to ponder the lessons and the follies of the past.

Akhtar (“Disgraced”) is a skilled scribe, best when he works in taut situations with characters facing imminent crises of the soul. There are glimpses of that here in the best bits. As counterintuitive as it may seem, and it’s certainly contrary to the instructions in the script, I think “McNeal” would work best in a smaller production where the humans and the technology are scaled to what feels like a fairer fight. As unfair as it may actually be in the future. This is still the live theater.