Chris Jones — Theater Critic

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!

Edelman first found fame on the U.K. comedy circuit and he has been writing of late for BBC Radio comedy shows or, as he puts it, “podcasts for the dying.” As such, he does write and tell actual jokes, far more explicitly than Birbiglia. “Dumb jokes,” by his own description. These gags are often hilarious. My favorites were the gentle jabs at his brother, Adam, a four-time Israeli national champion in the bobsled-like skeleton event. ”Shul Runnings,” or “The Frozen Chosen” are what Alex calls his brother’s team. Silly, sure, but humanizing at the same time.

The truly awful “Once Upon a One More Time,” which opened on Broadway Thursday night at the Marquis Theatre with direction and choreography by Keone and Mari Madrid and David Leveaux as creative consultant, is not that musical. Instead, it tries to cash in on the repetitive fashion of the moralistic musical moment and use Spears’ songs as a way to critique and deconstruct “problematic” fairy tales. The show, written by Jon Hartmere, has a plot very, very much akin to “Bad Cinderella,” another disaster that trashed a beloved fairy tale, and to the current multi-artist jukebox show “& Juliet,” which looks like “Sweeney Todd” in comparison to the other two attractions. “Once Upon a One More Time” takes an apparent cue from #FreeBritney except that we’re watching a show about the emancipation of Snow White, the Little Mermaid and Sleeping Beauty, as led by that dangerous radical Cinderella.

“Grey House” is trying to honor that unstinting parentage, despite the baked-in demands on a mostly young cast of kids, who give it all they’ve got. The show also has to whip up interest on a hot summer night. That’s not an easy combo, and you can see the strains it puts on the second half of the show, but much of worth gets unpacked here. Scarily so, to boot.

“New York, New York” could have used a clarifying tryout. Then again, some in its audience won’t worry so much about its thematic muddles: Beowulf Borritt’s set, as lit by Ken Billington, shows you sunsets peeking through the city’s vintage skyscrapers, bathing Manhattan’s avenues in warmth and hope. There is a lovely dance number involving rain in the city that showcases all that Stroman does so well. And there is a jazzy finale that puts Uzele up close to the audience as the jazzy music heats up the St. James. Many visitors will buy a show that gives them so much of what they think of as part of a New York visit. In those final moments, you think to yourself that all this show really needed was a greatly enhanced sense that New Yorkers actually do fall in love with each other because they are otherwise lonely. Just like everywhere else.

Granted, not every show has to keep hitting the gas, if its quiet revelations about the mysteries of life are powerful enough. And when you have actors of the quality and appeal of Laura Linney (”Ozark,” of late) and Jessica Hecht (”Breaking Bad”), the two stars of David Auburn’s subtle “Summer, 1976,” an intimate chance to visit with them can be reason enough to buy a ticket.

“Prima Facie” manages to be both political and commercially viable theater, a rare feat these days, and one achieved here through the quality of this gifted actor, the talent and craft of the writer and the rich layering of experiential tension in the direction.

This 2023 “Camelot” has more the nihilistic ambiance of “Game of Thrones” than an East Wing filled with art. It’s the chilliest “Camelot” you ever did see and it embodies so many of the current neuroses surrounding the revival of classic American musicals. These include: unease with sex (the barely danced “Lusty Month of May” number is about as sexy as January wind chill); fear of the narrative dominance of a handsome, confident, heterosexual male, which means that Donica gets heavy eyeliner and Burnap, for all his talent, comes off as a less-than-effectual wimp half the time; and, above all, a profound distrust of the ability of people in power, like kings and queens and presidents, to do the right thing. Such a view is perfectly valid, but begs the question: Why are you reviving “Camelot” if not just to cash in on an audience expecting something completely different? Sure, gorgeous songs like “If Ever I Would Leave You” and “I Loved You Once in Silence” are there, and technically well sung with the underpinning of Lincoln Center’s typically fine orchestra, but they are shorn of belief because the production keeps running scared of love.

But there is nothing dour or overly academic about “Fat Ham,” which has been given a blisteringly well-acted production helmed by director Saheem Ali and staged on the wittiest of satirical sets from Maruti Evans. At no point does this play feel like anything other than a big-fun Broadway show: it’s a smart, fearless and often wildly entertaining 90 minutes, filled with radical ideas and absurdist spectacle. To his credit, Ijames is willing to blow up even his own assertions. You get musical numbers, tableaux, crazy comedic antics and a suite of outsized performances from the likes of the superb Nikki Crawford, making her Broadway debut, like many in this knockout cast. I’d go so far as to say I can’t recall such a well-acted Broadway show with so many first-timers.