Chris Jones

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.

There are two main reasons why this show works. Most important is the songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, who might be a Broadway newcomer, but whose lyrics eschew the mawkish pitfalls in favor of simple, direct communication of intense but familiar emotions through melody and song.

Mayer's staging makes some very smart choices for the moment. In essence, he downplays the show's satirical soul in favor of its baked-in truths. Especially when it comes to Blanchard's truly stunning Audrey, a performance far from Ellen Greene and a piece of acting willing to embrace the cause of Audrey's chronic lack of self-esteem and depict it, especially during the iconic 'Somewhere That's Green' number, with total seriousness.

Ryan, whose performance is tart, vulnerable, and unstinting, shows us a character slowly realizing that her unswerving belief in the hierarchy she serves — heck, the way she has ordered her entire life — is incompatible with her moral and practical quest. The similarly excellent Kazan, whose teaching nun has the assets and drawbacks of youth, can only stare horrified at a future that she now understands is coming for her, too. It’s just a matter of time.

The twin lead performances are musically exquisite and courageous to boot; the target audience for this melancholy musical will be Guettel’s many fans as well as admirers of stars willing to head to a tough place with only each other for company. Watching O’Hara in particular is to be drawn as ever to her voice but also to watch her explore self-destruction in a way few of her fans ever will have experienced.

We’re all here just for a moment, of course, stuck in the middle of events mostly out of control. Whatever your identity, rarely in a Broadway theater will you have so powerfully felt your own vulnerability.

In the end, this is Dorothy’s quest and, as everyone else stands aside for the crucial Act 2 11 o’clock show-stopper “Home,” Lewis simply has to command the entire theater with the force of her spirit and the depth of her heart. That’s going to take a lot more work. Yet “The Wiz” won’t work without that payoff in place.

Frankly, I wish the revival, directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, had more of an explicit and distinct point of view, put itself in more interesting conversation with the original production and offered a deeper dive into the Python aesthetic, maybe as a bit of a necessary history lesson. There are times when the cast’s exuberance adds too much moisture to the sandpaper-dry humor and even gets in the way of Du Prez and Idle’s lyrics. As one example, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, fun as she is, would get more laughs if her Lady of the Lake focused first and foremost on the character, rather than the vocal pyrotechnics.

Theater sophisticates often take harmonizing for granted as a fundamental part of the craft, akin to learning lines. But to many Broadway audience members, it’s a rare pleasure and the vocal arrangements here (by Manilow and John O’Neill), come with an uncommon amount of theatricality — well, uncommon unless you are a longtime Manilow fan, given his decadeslong mastery of the kind of arrangements that bring anthems to a climax and people to their feet. The score will have its detractors, perhaps, as did much of what Manilow created, early on. But those will be snobby views, oblivious of his incomparable skills in musical communication.

“Gutenberg! The Musical!” certainly knows how to structure narrative gags, replete with little bits of emotion immediately followed by jokes structured so as to cut the treacle. And it does have a little scenic climax that’s well worth waiting for, and that goes at least some way toward justifying those Broadway prices for this kind of off Broadway-style entertainment, familiar to anyone who enjoys improv and sketch comedy. But the reality here is that this is a show relying on two skilled comic actors and their contrasting relationship. These two stars could do this kind of thing in their sleep, should they so choose, and I suspect their challenge will come from messing with each other and keeping everything fresh. On most nights, and if they feel free to deviate a tad from the script, that will be fun for at least their fans to watch.

You don’t need to be a Black woman with braids to enjoy this play: heck, it might teach you something about the intricacies of a craft you only have observed from afar. But this play is also trying to reach a Black audience, long ignored by Broadway. It took producers a while, but there are signs in this still-young season that many have finally figured out that many of the audience members they want to reach are not looking for dramas about pain, aimed mostly at white audiences, but instead want affirmative experiences that offer laughs at human foibles and celebrate doing something really well, day in, day out. “Jaja’s” is a comedy about life as it is lived in this place, about community, aspiration and entrepreneurship. Mostly, though, it’s a show about immigrants getting the job done, and having fun doing it, one braid at a time.

Do we get a profound overarching narrative akin to Bruce Springsteen’s existential Broadway howl? No, but not really the aim here. This charming show, playing for just nine weeks, is both a valediction and an introduction, perhaps for a younger audience, to a folk-rock artist who kept everyone’s faith, including her own.

Director Kenny Leon’s supremely well-toned revival of Ossie Davis’ “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch,” the new arrival at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre, is a knockout show, as hilarious as it is cutting and as emotionally warmhearted as it is politically potent. In the great Broadway tradition, it also should make a star out of the fearlessly fabulous Kara Young, playing Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins, the naive, countrified partner in crime of the loquacious preacher Purlie Victorious Judson, as played by the “Hamilton” star Leslie Odom, Jr.

The movement in the show is recognizably in the Jackson gestalt, but it’s not a replication. It’s a fresh, independent, complicated and often dazzlingly beautiful choreographic suite, as interpreted not by actors who dance but by dancers, first and foremost. Now that I’ve seen it a couple of times, my admiration has only grown for how well Wheeldon satisfied the imperative of offering people the moves they think they came to see while at the same time extending everyone’s choreographic vocabulary, both presentationally and emotionally. It’s a brilliant fusion of originality and reference, art and commerce, homage and the subtlest of challenges to the record. And it’s fabulous to watch, just like the King of Pop.

“What psychological insights into Shaw might we be offered?” I wondered on the way into the theater, “What deep-dive revelations await from a creative act that would appear to be both hubristic and profoundly courageous?” The younger Shaw must have had a window into his father that would have eluded most biographers. Or so you’d think. Alas, the show doesn’t deliver much at all. Not only is the low-stakes script dull and pedestrian, but the characters change not at all, despite the premise of three wild men sitting in a boat, waiting not for Godot but sharks and Spielberg. “The Shark is Broken” had its origins at the Edinburgh Festival, and in that context, it no doubt was a good campy laugh, especially for an audience that had followed Shaw’s pre-gaming example. But it makes for thin Broadway gruel, alas, with a 90-minute running time, a straight-up POV, and a series of behind-the-camera recreations of a situation that already has been much dissected and discussed.

Alas, the musical constantly makes easier, cheaper choices, dropping its own aesthetic rules if it serves a joke in the moment. Bubbles appear in the house for no reason. The fourth wall is dropped and rebuilt every other scene. Nothing ever pauses for reflection, for vulnerability, for hope. Even the ballads in Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard's serviceable score feel rushed and unwilling ever to go below the surface. This thing just never breathes. At times, the wackiness is sufficiently wacky that it appeals, such as a truly bizarre dance number from Bailey that opens the second act featuring Bart and a bunch of weirdly clad dancers doing god knows what.

And if you are in the mood for matchstick penis jokes, more gag props than a Coney Island funhouse and a ensemble of cheerfully over-the-top players contorting body and soul to squeeze every last laugh out of Sandy Rustin’s ridiculous yarn, then the director Jason Alexander just rescued you from the sweaty streets outside and poured some buck’s fizz into your prosaic existence.

This show has been around for several years but is only now making it to Broadway, and it has a couple of formidable assets. One is the Byrne-and-Slim soundscape, which is to my mind more beautiful, more exciting and more surprising than any score on Broadway last season, even to those who have listened to the album for years. I hear Byrne’s Scottish folkloric tradition in the melodies, but that actually increases its poignancy, given how it melds with Slim’s beats. I suppose some will argue it’s not an original score but akin to Green Day’s “American Idiot,” but no one will care. The music is gorgeous. Especially in the last half hour. The second strength is director Alex Timbers’ conceptual staging. It’s hard to mess with these old Broadway palaces and yet Timbers and his design team (the set is by David Korins, projections are by Peter Negrini and lights are by Justin Townsend) have transformed the creaking quotidian auditorium with platforms and runways aplenty. You can sit and observe the show all around you or you can pay to hit the orchestra floor and party with the Marcoses. Whee!