Chris Jones — Theater Critic

The ensemble acting in director Sam Mendes’ blistering production from London’s West End is off the charts when it comes to veracity, intensity and the manifestation of how childhood trauma invariably impacts adulthood. And the characters Butterworth forges are so empathetic that I never wanted this three-act show to end. Or even to pause. Not with everyone in such pain. As I write the morning after, I feel like I am still recovering from the level of emotion this thing churned around in me.

This is a production built to move on tour, and that means some limitations of spectacle in a show originally conceived to be this huge; the Dementors, those nasties who chomp on human happiness, will not here pursue you all the way in the balcony. The show stays behind the proscenium and there are not as many secret traps to facilitate Jamie Harrison’s singular illusions, not that you will notice. And, in all honesty, I miss much of the text shorn from the original two-part version, as written by Jack Thorne, Rowling and Tiffany. That’s especially true at the beginning as Harry, Ginny, Hermione, Ron and Draco (Benjamin Thys) send their kids off to Hogwarts, a familiar bittersweet experience for those of us who’ve sent kids off to school or college. The even shorter tour version is a little frenetic in places but then again (as Tiffany has said), the tour makes the show more accessible to more people. Incontrovertibly true. Incontrovertibly a good thing.

It’s near-impossible to look away from Mia Farrow’s riveting performance as a lonely Iowan in Jack O’Brien‘s staging of Jen Silverman’s quirky one-act, one-set play “The Roommate.” One fears looking down at the floor for a second and missing an implosion. Maybe “explosion” is the better word. It’s hard to know. That’s because Farrow’s organic fusing of externals and internals is so central to her work as an actress. When you get to experience Farrow live, as you now can at Broadway’s Booth Theatre, you can see, far better than on film, how deeply she immerses herself in a character.

Not in “Once Upon a Mattress.” Not as the above-the-title star climbs all over the signature bedding in search of a pea, or whatever. It takes guts, skill and talent, and Foster always has had all three of those happening at once. She’s clearly having a good time and you either jump on the Good Ship Sutton, or you’ll keep falling overboard all night long.

Second, the director Sam Pinkerton moves the show at such a lightning pace that we’re all on to the next laugh before you start to wonder about the merits of the one before or even dare to question the whole tawdry enterprise. Blackouts come so hard upon the lines of dialogue that the actors have to rush to get their gags out, which makes them all the funnier because it both raises the stakes and keys into one of the key ingredients of great farce: the mutual experience of the chaotic.

This is obviously not the first deconstruction of a classic Broadway title, but what makes this one different from say, the very chilly Daniel Fish “Oklahoma!” or the recent inuring “Cabaret,” is that this “Cats” doesn’t shock or confront but meets audience members of different ages and persuasions wherever they may land. (Rauch, especially, has a long history of knowing how to include everyone.) The show, sexy throughout, comes off as a celebration of love and resilience, timeless Broadway themes long proven to work with middle America. and what is yet more impressive (and, frankly, surprising) is how much crew actually respects the material. You read that right. They respect “Cats.” They dignify “Cats.” They elevate “Cats,” and certainly make it work for a new moment where queens now sit on thrones unimaginable in 1981. There are some fresh, more percussive orchestrations but I know this show well, and as far as I can tell, they play every note of the score. And speak almost every line, with a few lively additions.

“Home” is opening at a chaotic time of year, filled with Tony Award parties and costly competitions for attention. I hope this unpretentiously and gently staged story of Cephus’ quest doesn’t get lost in the noise; it’s emblematic of what so many of us seek from time at the theater.

“Illinoise” is far from a typical Broadway show, and if you’re headed to this 90-minute piece, be aware that you are in for a sensorial experience primarily, even if the emotional underpinning of Peck’s work occasionally reaches out from the stage and grabs your heart. The piece sits very comfortably in the St. James Theatre, a more intimate venue than “Illinoise” enjoyed either in Chicago or on Park Avenue. It’s not a show for all tastes but it certainly makes the case that it belongs on Broadway.

“Mother Play” has the aura of a valedictorian effort, the completion of a canon by coming home, even a push for a confirmed spot among the greats of this era of American playwriting. Vogel certainly does not shy from her own admiration of Martha. It’s especially apparent in the final scene when she visits and cares for a mother with dementia whom the play has just shown us she has good reason to ignore. Some writers would worry about how that looked, but I suspect Vogel decided that was the truth of it. It’s her mother’s play after all. And who could argue with that?

That said, this new musical, as penned by Kait Kerrigan with music composed by Jason Howland and lyrics by Nathan Dylan, makes you feel very little, except when Howland’s lush melodies are reaching their climax. Even then, the feelings that flow are more admiration for Howland’s craft than the kind of emotion that flows back into an embrace of story.

Molina, relentlessly and yet deliciously loquacious, has the unexamined life down cold. But that’s about the only performance that feels fully secure here, mostly because this is a character utterly oblivious to the needs of other human beings. Elsewhere, it feels like the cast is living in their own little pools of life-light on the giant Lincoln Center stage, with a design from Mimi Lien that might look quite lovely but alas de-emphasizes the human traffic on the stage. You feel like you are watching nine different performances in nine different shows. Laughs are few and far between, even though they are typically a staple of this particular drama, the relief they offer being crucial to its themes. Frankly, when the most interesting moment is when it rains on stage and your eyes go to the drainage mechanism rather than anyone’s ecstasy or soggy despair, that’s not an especially good sign. Part of the issue here is Heidi Schreck’s translation, which somehow doesn’t pull people together enough, even though that’s the director’s job too. It’s a wry and smart adaptation, in places, but it doesn’t land either as an overtly contemporary interpretation nor something trying to amplify the era of the 1895 play. Indeed, temporal confusion is one of the main problems here. Kaye Voyce’s costumes read as contemporary, mostly, but that fights the lines the characters are speaking and most certainly the setting. “Uncle Vanya” never works without a strong, clear point of view and this one is just too hard to track.

Amy Herzog’s beautiful play “Mary Jane” is, at its core, a study of the extraordinary lengths to which a mother will go to care for her child. But the takeaway from time spent at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre goes beyond even that realization. You leave after 90 minutes with a near-crushing awareness of the unfairness of life.

Morgan’s characters explain themselves at times like they are walking Wikipedia entries. As with “The Crown,” these histories always run the risk of making people think they are watching historical fact, not a dramatic rendition with imagined dialogue. But very few people know the Putin backstory; as such, “Patriots” is a helpful, cautionary tale of unintended consequence.

Ideal fodder, then, for a modestly scaled and warm-hearted jukebox show that might prove to be one of the sleeper hits of the season. That’s thanks to an inestimably witty book with plenty of hard laughs and a suite of winning lead performances under director Gordon Greenberg.

The young actress Moon has a formidable task on her plate here and she’s a charming lead. But she doesn’t always sing in the middle of the notes of these blazing Keys songs, or at least that was the case at the performance I saw. In all fairness, it sounded like her instrument was not at its healthiest in the typically exhausting run up to opening night. So that may not be your experience. Dixon, though, sounds just as spectacular as Bean and Lewis, embodying as he does the unreliable charmer — a stereotypical musician-dad for sure, and I had to fight some irritation there and elsewhere at the broadness of the narrative strokes. But kudos to Keys for making her younger self a needy pain in the neck, otherwise known as an artistically inclined teenager.

You may look at all this differently. But I have to say that selling a dinner “upgrade” to the “Pineapple Room” offends me. That fruit is what Herr Schultz offers to his love, prior to being shipped off to a concentration camp, or so the show strongly implies, given that he is already in the Nazis’ sights. In this show, fruit is a symbol of generosity and love in a world of horrors. It’s not a flavor of costly cocktail nor a high-end status symbol. How gross.

Just before the end of playwright David Adjmi’s masterful “Stereophonic,” a three-hour dissection of ego, insecurity and the messy, messed-up gorgeousness of the creative process, I decided I’d had enough of these beautiful people in the recording studio with their complaints, their cocaine, their obsessive-compulsive neuroses, their phenomenal talents. A Zen-like “Let it be” had twisted in my skull to “Let me out.” And then I realized that was precisely what Adjmi wanted everyone at the Golden Theatre to be feeling at the final curtain. He’d just explained why great bands break up; why famous geniuses who seemingly have all the gifts, money, autonomy, adulation and sex that anyone could possibly want just can’t hold it together; why having a Billboard hit does not stop the childhood-driven imposter syndrome ringing inside your brain but actually makes it louder. Heck, I’ll go even further: He’d just explained why things end. Period. What a brilliant piece of must-see Broadway. It’s Chekhovian, babe.

That’s not entirely inaccurate: The historical figures in the way of the likes of Alice Paul (Taub), Carrie Catt (Jen Colella) and Ida B. Wells (Nikki M. James) are buffoonish paper tigers devoid of argument or veracity. It makes this scrupulously egalitarian musical sometimes feels like it was first cleared by an intersectionality committee that made sure everyone was listed in strict alphabetical order, and that the key pieces of the musical, narrative power and authorial sympathy were doled out in equal shares. But, in the end, “Suffs” does what all of the best Broadway musicals do: It humanizes, empowers, entertains and moves an audience. Taub’s enormous talent — she is arguably the first woman ever to compose, write and star in the same Broadway musical — is the biggest single reason. She’s a fresh, relatively youthful musical voice and an assertive, empathetic and vulnerable star who, with the gentle help of director Leigh Silverman, brings just enough of contemporary womanhood into the story to take the musical out of the realm of class project or Wikipedia trot and more toward the center of why people pay big bucks for Broadway shows.

This revival, directed by Schele Williams and with a book update by Amber Ruffin, toured the country before coming to Broadway, and will ease on back out there later this year. I first caught it in Chicago, when the production remained a bit of a mess, and can report that the Broadway version reflects a lot of good new work. An initially bizarre approach to “Brand New Day” has been visually retooled and, although JaQuel Knight’s choreography retains an eccentric dimension (and I say why not?), it’s now a bright detour into psychedelic “Hair” territory. The show is modestly scaled; the quirky set is from Hannah Beachler and the costumes, which are fun and referential, are by Sharen Davis. Wayne Brady has been added to the cast in a title role that’s more of a cameo, really. But The Wiz really has to be a face that audiences recognize, that’s just about as important as the quality of the performance, and Brady is well within his wheelhouse and perfectly fine. He does what needs to be done and is bathed in a warm responsive bath.

Indeed, a perceived need to glob on enough sexy-modern Broadway pizzazz to appeal to a broader public might well be what torpedoed “Lempicka,” now at the Longacre Theatre. This potentially appealing show would have sat more easily as a feminist, non-musical drama in a less pressured space, where the director, Rachel Chavkin, and the performers, all too aware of their need to liven up this clunky bio-musical, did not have to push so darn hard.

It also doesn’t help that the young guy’s love interest drops away from the narrative. All in all, and with all due respect to the many capable artists here and the fame of the book, the emotional landscape just has not been shaped to fit the needs of a Broadway musical. “The Outsiders” needed greater expansion of character, a gentler, simpler touch, a better sense of authentic teenage angst and a deeper focus on the heart.

Pete Townshend’s prescient 1969 rock opera “Tommy,” a horrifying if ultimately transcendent howl of anger and anguish at the damage wrought on the boomer generation by their war-scarred parents, has returned to Broadway in a new, born-in-Chicago production from director Des McAnuff that will sock you right in the gut. Many a replay can be expected at the Nederlander Theatre, whatever else bounces off the current Broadway bumpers.

Stone shares credit with Shana Carroll, “circus director” and co-choreographer with Jesse Robb for the show. I don’t know who did precisely what, but the result is one of the most authentic circus-themed shows to make it to Broadway. There’s almost none of the sparkly smiles found in “Pippin” or “Barnum,” but the piece is a richer accounting of why many Americans fell in love with a world constantly in motion and filled with equal measures of pain and joy.

Whatever the limit of the Gold shenanigans, they all feel very much in service of the message of a prescient play about the dangers of populist manipulation by those invested in the status quo.