Christopher Kelly

If 'The Sound Inside' has lost some of the intimacy that I previously found so arresting, it's only gained in richness and mystery. As Christopher strikes up an uneasy relationship with the professor and begins telling her the story of the novel he's trying to write, Rapp asks big questions about life, literature and the intersection between the two. How do we define honesty in fiction? Can we find salvation in art? How does one leave a mark on the world? 'The Sound Inside' offers few answers to these questions - and instead ends on note of jarring and spooky ambiguity. It's a brainy show that also pierces your heart, and it will leave you debating its meaning for days to come.

The eight-member cast, all but one of whom (Kalukango) originated their roles off-Broadway, is fearless in anatomizing a group of very complicated people (special note to Nolan, playing arguably the most emotionally and physically exposed character, and Ato-Blankson-Wood, who serves up an anguished portrait of a queer black man trying to come into his own). The set design, by Clint Ramos, is at once simple and absolutely arresting, with a wall of mirrors forcing the audience to literally see themselves in these proceedings. The director, Robert O'Hara, handles this incendiary material with just the right mixture of ferocity and grace, periodically nudging the drama towards chaos, but then reeling it right back in.

If you ever wondered what might happen if a karaoke machine exploded into a million bejeweled and bedazzled pieces, 'Moulin Rouge!' is your answer. For the most part, it's also a smashing entertainment - exuberantly performed, briskly paced, and sumptuously designed in more shades of red than you previously knew existed on the color spectrum.

The exuberant and entertaining drama 'Ink,' which opened on Broadway on Wednesday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, does something very canny: it makes a largely liberal Broadway audience root for conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

All of this is directed with great spirit and charm by Scott Ellis, and it's held together by the extraordinary Fontina. More than just a marvelous physical feat - he changes personas and clothes with quicksilver grace - the performance never soft pedals Michael's steamroller ambition, even as Fontana makes us feel the character's desperation and frustration. Which is to say: You root for Michael even if he's sometimes an immense jerk.

Still, if this is your first visit to 'Hadestown,' it's likely to be a satisfying one. Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin ('Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812') do an impressive job updating an oft-recounted myth; in this telling, Orpheus (Reeve Carney) falls in love with Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), who in turn flees to Hadestown after its ruler Hades (Patrick Page, whose basso profundo is the stuff of nightmares and/or action movie trailers) promises to end her hunger. The actors are all excellent, with one standing slightly above the rest: In the role of Hades' queen Persephone, the extraordinary Amber Grey (who originated the role off Broadway) gives us a kind of Hellenistic Age Real Housewife, both garishly funny and romantically yearning.

She looks like no King Lear you've ever seen before - a small, thin woman in a black suit, her silver pageboy combed neatly to the side. Yet when the legendary British actress Glenda Jackson begins to speak - and then to fulminate and rage as only the narcissistic, aggrieved Lear can - she mows down men three times her size. The contrast is thrilling, and a key to the success of Sam Gold's smashing new production of the Shakespeare chestnut, now playing at the Cort Theatre on Broadway. This is a 'King Lear' that wholly captures the complexities and contradictions of its title character, a still-roaring lion who refuses to accept that winter has dawned.

I hadn't seen 'What the Constitution Means to Me' previously, so can't measure whether this show loses any of its intimacy in a larger venue, the 597-seat Hayes Theater. But if the scale of 'What the Constitution Means to Me' is small, the emotions are big - and after months of performances, this formally complicated show (mostly a monologue, sometimes a play, occasionally improvised) is now a beautifully-oiled machine.

Without much in the way of energy or chemistry between them, the seams of this show's occasionally slipshod construction are more apparent than usual. The act two curtain raiser, the alternately breathy and breathless dance number 'Too Darn Hot,' is certainly arresting (the choreography here is by Warren Carlyle) - so much so that you start to dwell on the fact that, dramatically, the number has no real reason to exist within the story. Despite the visually impressive set (designed by David Rockwell), featuring a multi-tiered backstage where most of the action takes place, there's also no disguising that the story doesn't travel very far, physically or emotionally.

Yet even if this 'Network' doesn't entirely hang together, it's still a fabulous piece of entertainment, directed and performed with verve and showmanship. Just about every directorial choice here - the clocks that count down to Beale's news broadcasts; the applause signs demanding the audience's interaction; a final scene magic trick straight out of 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' - manages to be audacious without feeling show-offy. If you're going to transfer a movie to the stage, this is exactly how to do it, by respecting both forms and then taking a sledgehammer to them. Let the pieces land thrillingly where they may.

This nearly plotless drama probably had more of an impact two decades ago, before stories of Alzheimer's patients in movies like 'Iris,' 'Away from Her' or 'The Notebook' were more common. Lonergan's writing, with its rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue meant to evoke the chaos inside Gladys' mind, also demands a precision that director Lila Neugebauer (making her Broadway debut) isn't able to bring. The comedy played at the expense of Gladys' struggles is handled too broadly, particularly in the first act, and the show occasionally flirts with tastelessness.

What's most impressive about this stage version, written by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell and directed by Leigh Silverman ('Violet'), is that it transforms something potentially insider-ish and wonky into a surprisingly funny and urgent drama. Radcliffe and Cannavale are perfectly cast foils, the one earnest to a fault, the other all swagger and self-importance. The terrific Jones functions as the audience stand-in, her allegiances shifting each time the persnickety Fingal finds another point of complaint in D'Agata's essay.

Young Jean Lee's play 'Straight White Men,' starring Armie Hammer in his Broadway debut, is a consideration of the experiences of, well, Straight White Men struggling to find their place in these 'woke' times. Or at least I think that's what the play is about, since it's impossible to tell whether Lee is lampooning her characters, who have a tendency to wield their privilege even when they're ostensibly trying to surrender it, or if she finds their plights genuinely worthy of empathy.

I can't speak for non-fans of all things 'Harry Potter' (poor souls), but for those of us who treasure J.K. Rowling's masterful series of young adult novels, the new Broadway mega-production 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two' is a magnificent treat - both an ingenious continuation of the Potter saga and a complete reinvention of it for an entirely new form. I sat through this two-part, five-and-a-half-hour effort alternately awestruck and giddy, much as - come to think of it - I felt first reading Rowling's books. By the end, I would have been perfectly content to watch it carry on for five-and-a-half hours more.

So where did this handsome, but fundamentally inert production of 'Carousel' go wrong? One way is that, instead of approaching the story of Julie Jordan (Mueller) and her doomed romance with Billy Bigelow (Henry) with a fresh, contemporary point-of-view, O'Brien has doubled down on the nostalgia factor, giving us a 'Carousel' that -- save for the darkish lighting scheme and the absence of an actual onstage carousel -- looks and feels like something from 70 years ago. (The set design here is by Santo Loquasto; Brian MacDevitt did the lighting.)

Fey doesn't venture far from the outline of the original movie, in which new girl Cady (Erika Henningsen) falls in with a trio of divas led by queen bee Regina (Taylor Louderman), betraying herself and her other friends in the process. The musical numbers (by Fey's husband Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin) don't grow organically out of the story or characters, so much as feel padded on. (Talk about padding -- the movie was 97 minutes, this show runs a full hour longer.)

At nearly eight hours, unfolding over two parts, the Broadway revival of Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America' is a significant commitment, temporal and financial. But one of the countless wonders of this instant-classic production is the way it energizes, instead of enervates, as it goes along, expanding in scale and scope, spinning out one surprise after another. By the time the stage literally cracks open near the end of the second part, and the main character Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) ascends a neon staircase to heaven, this 'Angels in America' has placed its audience in a sustained state of exhilaration.

The Broadway version, though, is the virtual opposite: a play-it-by-the-book rendering of the story that, in refusing to take any real risks, ends up undermining the story's core message -- namely, that sometimes you've got to 'let it go,' and let your freak flag fly. For a show about magic and wonder, there's shockingly little on display here.

Imagine a half-baked, barely coherent 'Saturday Night Live' sketch, and then imagine it repeated, with only the slightest variation, for 80 interminable minutes, and you'll get a sense of 'Meteor Shower,' the new play written by Steve Martin that also marks the Broadway debut of Amy Schumer.

Yet having now seen 'The Band's Visit' twice, I'm still not able to shake the feeling that it doesn't add up to much -- and that it certainly doesn't stick to the ribs. (When I saw it again last week, I barely remembered anything of the off-Broadway production, despite only ten months having passed.) Director David Cromer and lighting designer Tyler Micoleau keep the light low and dreamy. Voices, too, are rarely raised, even when the characters are supposed to be angry with one another. The show is so low-key, so determinedly un-flashy that it occasionally seems in danger of sliding right off the stage.

Much like this year's Tony-winning 'Oslo,' which previously occupied the Vivian Beaumont, 'Junk' -- bracingly and briskly directed by Doug Hughes on a stylish, two-tiered set by John Lee Beatty -- employs an enormous cast (23 actors) in order to show you how an entire system operates. Among the players are various inside traders, federal investigators, lawyers, union workers, journalists and even a Rudy Giuliani stand-in, all trying to play the angles, and all of whom -- even the purported 'good guys' -- are motivated by self-interest.

As greatest hits compilations go, the new Broadway revue 'Prince of Broadway' is pretty much everything you could ask for: shiny, handsomely packaged, and containing all of your favorites. For two-and-a-half hours, nine tremendously gifted Broadway veterans guide us through the highlights of the career of 21-time Tony Award winner Harold Prince, the producer and director known for his work on such disparate shows as 'Fiddler on the Roof,' 'Sweeney Todd,' and 'The Phantom of the Opera.'

'The Terms of My Surrender,' which officially opened on Thursday night on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre, turns out to be pretty much exactly what you'd expect: A nearly two-hour monologue in which Moore cracks wise about and harangues against President Donald Trump, with frequent, quintessentially Moore-ian lapses into self-aggrandizement and self-congratulation.

Of the large cast, a handful of supporting players -- Cody Costro, as a spoiled Dartmouth kid; Chris Perfetti, as the swindler's Henry Higgins-like instructor in upper class behavior -- make a strong impression. The lead actors, though, all seem off, lacking in substance (Hickey), or mystery (Hawkins), or -- in Janney's case -- unwilling to plumb the depths of anguish that lurk beneath this play's urbane, arch veneer. Save yourself the trouble and rewatch the imperfect but often thrilling 1993 film version instead.

The new revival of Jerry Herman's 1964 'Hello, Dolly!' starring Bette Midler is so surpassingly beautiful, propelled by such glorious razzle-dazzle, and crafted with such joy and intelligence that it deserves to be studied, emulated and above all celebrated. Not since the 2008 revival of 'South Pacific' has a classic been brought back to life with as perfect a mixture of fidelity and freshness. This is what Broadway is all about.