Chris Jones — Theater Critic

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.