Chris Jones — Theater Critic

That’s not a fair assessment of the show, though, which is directed by Stephen Kessler and actually is far more complex and better written than I think many will anticipate. Ross gets away with such a surfeit of sentiment precisely because of his naturally caustic inclinations; the jokes are sharp enough and the laughs are hard and plentiful enough that all of the schmaltz feels not just charming but well-earned.

That’s not a fair assessment of the show, though, which is directed by Stephen Kessler and actually is far more complex and better written than I think many will anticipate. Ross gets away with such a surfeit of sentiment precisely because of his naturally caustic inclinations; the jokes are sharp enough and the laughs are hard and plentiful enough that all of the schmaltz feels not just charming but well-earned.

The big takeaway for me is that even as the U.S. underestimated this band, so Broadway underestimated this brand. It’s a one of a kind. Just watch how many people will come and have fun. Limited run? We’ll see.

The big takeaway for me is that even as the U.S. underestimated this band, so Broadway underestimated this brand. It’s a one of a kind. Just watch how many people will come and have fun. Limited run? We’ll see.

But for “Parade,” which is a magnificent tour featuring far more organic and high-quality singing and acting than the nonetheless award-winning 2023 Broadway revival, all of that applies. Spectacularly so. Director Michael Arden clearly is still in charge. And I’ve seen enough of Jason Robert Brown in a rehearsal room over the years to know he does not mess around when performers are working on his music (I went all the way to Green Bay, Wisconsin, 25 years ago to see the first tour of “Parade” and found Brown in the pit, conducting his own score). All of that is self-evident at the CIBC Theatre, where I really can’t praise the two lead performers, Max Chernin and Talia Suskauer, highly enough.

All that is to say “Call Me Izzy” is not a total bust, especially given Smart’s formidable acting chops. Monologic shows like this with no explicit person being addressed require deeply conversational kinds of performance, as if the audiences were all your best friend who just happens to be outside the bathroom door. Smart is skilled and experienced enough to forge such a bond. I believed her entirely as a woman from small-town Louisiana capable of both great stoicism (often a feature of those in abusive relationships) and profound artistic yearning. Her performance is somewhat under-scaled and under-vocalized for so large a Broadway house (and why are we here in so huge a space, one wonders), but then it has been 20 years and the deeply honest Smart is clearly immersed in her character, with nary a note of condescension.

This craziness apparently was Yazbek’s idea. He and Della Penna (best known as Natalie Merchant’s guitarist) have a lot of fun with their internal rhymes and by contrasting gorgeous music of romantic longing with characters who have no actual access to their own feelings. But when combined with Moses’s very shrewdly toned book, the show does explore substantial themes, beyond its immediate purpose of persuading an audience not just to confront the certainty of their own death (always fun on a Saturday night) but their own corporal decay. The show notes that nothing ever was truly sacred or revered on the American frontier, the living and the dead all attracting their price, all susceptible to transactional exploitation. The notion lingers that not so much has changed. I’ve no idea how the modestly scaled, 100-minute “Dead Outlaw” will fare in the Midtown marketplace, or if enough of the touristically curious will eschew the familiar and abandon the reliably living for a gander at the truly distinctive.

Trujillo, an old pro, understands his material and his lively choreography is both created for the bonafide dancers in the cast and designed to make everyone else look and feel good. So they do. There’s a song about menopause that went over like gangbusters at the show I saw, determined ballads of hopes, fears and resilience and even a bit of PG semi-nudity when the factory gets too sweaty and confidence rises. The curves promised on the marquee are vivaciously delivered.

Trujillo, an old pro, understands his material and his lively choreography is both created for the bonafide dancers in the cast and designed to make everyone else look and feel good. So they do. There’s a song about menopause that went over like gangbusters at the show I saw, determined ballads of hopes, fears and resilience and even a bit of PG semi-nudity when the factory gets too sweaty and confidence rises. The curves promised on the marquee are vivaciously delivered.

In the end, people will come mostly to see Groff, as well they should. He’s fabulous. Plus the timing is just right as this musical-theater actor, shy all those years ago in “Spring Awakening,” now takes up the vital mantle of big Broadway star, a status he has approached before but never fully inhabited. Not until Bobby Darin came along to help. Toward the end, Darin, having been through the wringer but not quite yet met his maker, takes his preferred stage at the Copacabana and shouts, with the cathartic joy of a man who has found his way home, “I am a creature of the nightclub.” On the night I was there, the audience roared, thinking that also of Groff and yet also well aware he’s a talent who will just as easily roam elsewhere.

There are similarities of design with “Harry Potter,” and a few visual tricks that recall that prior enterprise, which in general has a lot more emotional pull than this newer one, which relies a lot more on tech. That said, the two leads, Louis McCartney as Henry Creel and Alison Jaye as Joyce Maldonado, are both emotionally resonant and generally stellar, and both Rosie Benton and T.R. Knight, who play Henry’s parents, certainly know what they are doing.

There are similarities of design with “Harry Potter,” and a few visual tricks that recall that prior enterprise, which in general has a lot more emotional pull than this newer one, which relies a lot more on tech. That said, the two leads, Louis McCartney as Henry Creel and Alison Jaye as Joyce Maldonado, are both emotionally resonant and generally stellar, and both Rosie Benton and T.R. Knight, who play Henry’s parents, certainly know what they are doing.

Sure, this show is about more than Floyd Collins. It has much to say about how America exploits human and familial tragedy, then and now, but it just cannot work fully without a deep connection taking place between the audience and the main character... In this new design by the team known collectively as dot, you don’t so much see the real hills of Kentucky as a kind of surreal dreamscape that looks cool in an arty kind of way, but still doesn’t truly connect you to Floyd himself... Simply put, the emotional waves that all musicals need to surf in order to fully work just seem here to stop at the surface. We understand the issues, but don’t feel all the feels underground.

I wish “John Proctor” made its very fair point about girls forging their own narratives with more ambivalence and less certitude, especially in its less-than-credible last few minutes, which you could subtitle “Abigail’s revenge,” or even that it gave Miller some consideration of how things have changed over time, not just from the witch trials to the 1950s but from then to now.

That blend of repetition and freshness in Susan Stroman’s production is all a bit of a head rush, frankly, and fans of ‘Smash’ won’t be sure whether they are supposed to be looking at things anew or enjoying a nostalgic rerun. I suspect the cast was never sure, either. Thus, the new product ends up in that ever-dangerous no-man’s land, fully landing nowhere, bereft of a palpable reason for being.

But the main takeaway here is that not only is Sondheim now gone, his peers are no spring chickens, either. [...] And these are real ‘Old Friends’ on stage at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. [...] This whole crew was mostly in the original creative kitchens; I say, catch ‘em while you still can.

But the main takeaway here is that not only is Sondheim now gone, his peers are no spring chickens, either. (Neither are some of us critics who adored his work). And these are real “Old Friends” onstage at the Manhattan Theatre Club.

Director Jerry Mitchell’s sing-and-smile-along production of ‘Boop! The Musical’ is like gulping a glass of fizzy sangria after a rough day, heck, after a rough three months and counting of stress and strife.

Director Jerry Mitchell’s sing-and-smile-along production of ‘Boop! The Musical’ is like gulping a glass of fizzy sangria after a rough day, heck, after a rough three months and counting of stress and strife.

Director Jerry Mitchell’s sing-and-smile-along production of ‘Boop! The Musical’ is like gulping a glass of fizzy sangria after a rough day, heck, after a rough three months and counting of stress and strife.

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.

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.