Chris Jones — Theater Critic

If they gave out Tony Awards for the most mismatched book and score, “Shucked!” would slay all other contenders. In essence, you get a couple of hours of Horn’s signature howlers interspersed with a country-pop-vibed score by Brandy Clark and Shane McNally. Of limited ambition, it offers a little suite of accessible ballads and specialty numbers. And there are no bravura production numbers in Jack O’Brien’s staging (well, save for a barrel-rolling one in Act 2). This is a far more modest affair and O’Brien, a wily old hand at all this stuff, just concentrates on making the punters in the orchestra giggle. And no one who has experienced “Shucked!” in a full house could argue that he is anything less than successful in that endeavor. Talk about paradise for the post-Red Lobster crowd, cheerfully over-served.

Many Broadway revivals of musicals from decades past insist on revising, reconsidering and imposing. Thomas Kail’s triumphant revival of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” does none of that. At once funny, scary and disarmingly moving, this must-see production is content to peel back any cobwebs or artifice and let Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Gothic revenge tragedy of a musical howl anew with the agony of human injustice and the ameliorating constancy of love.

It’s like everyone involved here tried to get down with the high school kids and what they’re thinking these days but Lloyd Webber, writers Emerald Fenell and Alexis Sheer and lyricist David Zippel — even the typically excellent director Laurence Connor, whose “Les Miserables” was better than excellent — all end up looking like nervous chaperones telling pandering jokes at prom and proving only that they can’t buy a laugh.

That truth surely dances around your head at “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’,” the fascinating, if deeply conflicted, new Broadway revival of the hit 1978 revue “Dancin’.” It’s now more tightly branded around its famous, or infamous, choreographer and restaged at the Music Box Theatre by Wayne Cilento, an original cast member working with a knockout big band sound, a wildly zesty costume design from Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, and 22 ensemble company members with equal billing and, I imagine, no living recollection of 1978.

The strengths of the show? Depth of intimacy. There is something very arresting about hearing these famous old lines given this kind of immediacy. The cast is made up of highly skilled and experienced actors and it’s really and truly something to hear how well all of them handle the need for dramatic tension to build in their mouths, even if their bodies often seem to writhe against their own director’s constraints. The piece is not boring: it has weight and power and gravitas. And, at times with Chastain, Nora’s mental pain (and Herzog’s deft adaptation focuses strongly on the leading character’s mental health) overflows to the actress’ tear-stained face.

But White, and Sher, and this cast, keeps the focus on the right questions. As Broadway obsesses over youth and revolt, here’s a sweet and wise Broadway play about just wanting your mom and dad to keep on going, to wish they could live for ever and to realize that any artist can complain and roar but some wise ones choose instead to render their loved ones immortal. And the real stars of a starry Broadway show, too. A rare gift, to be wisely used.

That’s actually a problem endemic to Broadway at present: musicals have long sold sexuality to the punters in the seats, all coughing up their cash and looking for a sensual escape from their boring suburban or hinterland lives. Like so many of the new musical comedies, “Some Like It Hot,” of all titles, sees that realm as, well, the kind of risk it does not want to take and thus none of these characters seem especially attracted to each other. Rather, they all have their preordained roles in this carefully wrought world and they play them very well.

Kenny Leon’s production focuses a bit too much on memory and not enough on the imagined present, to my mind. The tension that Kennedy built into the piece would be more palpable if, for a second, we believe that Hampshire will be good for Suzanne, but the conclusions here always appear foregone. If Pinkham softened his character some in the early stages of the piece, that would help bring about the twisting agony of disappointed expectations. But McDonald, clearly laboring of love here, is just wonderful in this part. On Beowulf Borit’s fractured, dislocated set, she shares her final bow with an image of Kennedy, a prescient writer, perhaps born too soon in America but still having flourished, notwithstanding all that her now regretful university put in her way.

But to its credit, as directed with care by Michael Mayer, “Beautiful Noise” also comes with some fresh ideas, not the least of which is Steven Hoggett’s choreography, a kind of postmodern tribute to the retro 1970s movement stylings of the likes of Pan’s People in the U.K. or Up With People on this side of the Atlantic. It’s far from traditional Broadway movement and happily so: it won’t be for all tastes, but I enjoyed the way Hoggett works with the “vocal designer,” AnnMarie Milazzo, to really physically pop the pa, pa, pas in “Sweet Caroline,” and to play, multicorporally, with the show’s central theme — that the Diamond catalog was a beautiful noise constantly playing in the creator’s head and needing to be resolved.

The noir-like design for the show by Dane Laffrey, though, is really something, and its sudden visual tricks and life-affirming pleasures far exceed what most people would expect from a one-person show. Joshua D. Reid’s sound offers as visceral and riveting a sonic affair as any show currently on Broadway.

Enter “& Juliet,” a savvy if stunningly unsubtle mashup of a musical from London that aims to redress that balance for Broadway fun and profit. This nonstop party-empowerment show gets its theme of feminist revisionist British history from “Six,” its Shakespearean humor from “Something Rotten,” its nonbinary savvy from “Head Over Heels,” and its collage-like spectacle from “Moulin Rouge.”

It's a great truth that acting is not so much about people but people in motion. And that's what is so enthralling about the luminous work of both Clark and Cooley. As is the case with Tesori's roiling score, their work here is kinetic. They throw out their hearts on to a cruel wind and hope for at least a little gust in their sails, before the tempest that awaits us all.

Fully competent and coherent, 'Almost Famous' also has many skilled and engaging performers and a nicely droll visual pallet from the designers Derek McLane, David Zinn and Natasha Katz. But when Penny Lane overdoses, the pain of that moment is brushed over with a nervous joke. That's also true of William's sexual awakening and, ultimately, even the rebellion of sister Anita Miller (Emily Schultheis). Irony and pain only rarely enter the building.

'Walking with Ghosts,' directed by Lonny Price, has some quirks. It's only loosely staged with minimal visual accoutrements and it hews too closely to the memoir. The piece, which could use more narrative drive for a two-act night of theater, unfolds, chapter-like, on the stage. Some of the transitions are abrupt. And the mix of theme and chronology sometimes feels better suited to the page than the stage.

Suzan-Lori Parks' 'Topdog/Underdog' is a phenomenal two-brother drama, every bit as intense and rich as anything by Sam Shepard and, frankly, as good an American play as most anything written during the last quarter century. And on Broadway, the director Kenny Leon has put this 2001 masterpiece back on a fresh, vital pedestal.

In the present, though, the show is often superb: the scene between Willy and Howard, ruthlessly played by Blake DeLong, is riveting, amplified by unspoken racism as are the scenes with Stanley, played by the same fabulous actor, here taking what's usually a plot functionary and forging a blend of obsequiousness, kindness and racism, all at once. Clarke's monologues are potent, rooted and deeply touching and, as Happy, McKinley Belcher III brings far more to that role than we usually see; in this production, the relationship between Happy and Willy seems more central than between Biff and Willy. And Delaney Williams (also known for 'The Wire') is an honest, earnest Charlie, a decent white guy holding up a Black family in crisis, understanding he's probably next for a cemetery that levels us all.

In short, then, you have a revival that wants both to revive the material and blow it up, even though '1776″ hardly was a crude work of musical triumphalism. Sure, '1776″ is problematic, not unlike most cultural entities from 1969, but if that it was it wanted to foreground, the production needed to have better sense of the irony of bringing it back to our attention. As distinct, say, from supporting a new musical by people of color about the complexities of American history.

what will impress the audience the most will be Michele's acting chops. She's very touching as her Fanny gets trapped in the net with that same handsome loser and you get the sense, as a young star who has been through the wringers of Twitter and its snap-judgement squeeze, that Michele now knows full well how fame and fortune ain't ever all fun, not least because men usually can't easily handle successful women.

The actors, working under the direction of Jo Bonney, are honest and solid; Mozgala is a veritable forcefield of signals and manipulations. But the performance from Young is on its own plane. She's a formidable young star in the making, richly detailed, moving, present and profoundly vulnerable. Her reactions alone are enough to sustain a couple of hours of provocative drama, revealing quietly desperate American characters whom we so rarely see.

Marber's production has enough energy and forward motion to ensure that the emphasis on character does not impede its dramatic intensity. And he helps make it easier to follow (it's not always easy to recall who is related to whom, as the years spin on to 1955). But the unfussy direction also lets everyone talk, emote, kvetch and, of course, go on with their lives as best as they can.

Seeing everything through one pair of narrative eyes limits what the show can achieve on stage. And time and time again - most notably when Amir finally explains the past to his underwritten new wife, Soraya (Azita Ghanizada) - we are told about a scene rather than shown. Sure, there's an imperative to be honest to the novel and the protagonist's journey through guilt is easily understood by a broad audience. But this is now a play and it's a different time. It's clear that Sirakian is a deeply moving actor; but the show never gives him enough power in his own part of the story to fully demonstrate. The same applies to Ghanizada, playing the one woman on the stage with any kind of role. Frankly, it's egregious.

There is an alternate way to do this show, which is to say in a less stylized and less comic way than deBessonet chooses. It can be played as if these characters were realistic humans and I'd like to see it done that way again someday on Broadway, for I have it seen work a different kind of spell that way. More than once. But this is a legitimate way to go and deBessonet and her supremely talented cast certainly deepen their vulnerability as the material darkens and the winds of agony and change swirl around the forests of life.

The songs are witty and droll, but they're mostly what they used to call specialty numbers and you never entirely feel like they're integrated into the emotional logic of the whole. As directed by John Rando, 'Mr. Saturday Night' feels more like a play with music: its focus is on the price paid to be funny, a fee not just exacted from the comedian, but also a family. In an ideal world, all of the comedic energy in those routines would flow directly into the songs, making them an organic part of the comedy-pain axis on which this show turns as it probes Buddy's shifting but perpetually destructive psyche. But that never entirely happens, partly because the juiciest sections of the show are given over to comedy routines and scenes.

As directed by Stephen Brackett, 'A Strange Loop' presents a dilemma for critics. It has many stunning sequences and, more than any musical in years, charts a brave path determined to confront not just the assumptions of the genre but their impact on those who take up the mantle of writing them. But it will not appeal to a broad swath of the theatergoing population. It's not for kids. It likely will offend Black conservatives. And some gay theatergoers will not care for its amplification of self-loathing, nor its determined argument that racism is always in the bedroom.

Watching the performance of this 28-year-old actress actually feels like a living referendum on what now makes a great lead performance in a classic musical comedy. Feldstein struggles mightily with the internal vocal demands of numbers like 'Don't Rain on My Parade' and 'People,' her voice coming and going. She has, though, figured out how to sustain the crucial final note, which is, for some, what matters most. She throws back her head, summons up every inch of her heart and soul and lets fly on, like, 'pa-RAAADE.' Boom. Its amalgam of theatricality and raw determination inspires forgiveness. All of Feldstein's chips are in the middle of the table at every moment and who does not enjoy seeing that in a Broadway theater on a Saturday night, surrounded by people who need people?