Christopher Kelly

For the most part, Linney resists the high-camp dudgeon that Davis brought to the movie, opting for a more psychologically grounded Regina. But while that's a laudable choice, it also drains the proceedings of some potential electricity -- a matter compounded by Sullivan's steady, but restrained pacing. This 'Little Foxes,' with its predictably handsome set and costume design (by Scott Pask and Jane Greenwood, respectively) evoking a sense of faded Southern glory, never quite gets the pulse racing.

Of course, this brand of theater -- Broadway by way of a PBS documentary -- can be very tricky to pull off, not without drowning an audience in exposition...But Vogel...and director Rebecca Taichman have created a fast-moving yet lucid drama whose short scenes convey a tremendous amount of information and a surprising amount of feeling. The creators use a full array of theatrical tools...to lend a sense of poetry, spectacle and scale to what might otherwise have been a too-modest tale.

On the other hand, for those who've grown tired of seeing powerful women forever portrayed as shrill and feuding divas in popular culture (see everything from Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj on 'American Idol' to the new Bette Davis-Joan Crawford melodrama 'Feud') 'War Paint' attempts an alternative -- a portrait of competition between women that is nuanced, empathetic and maybe even exemplary.

The show is based on the 2001 French film 'Amelie,' one of those aggressively whimsical fantasies that you either find adorable or insufferable. (Count me in the latter camp.) It proves to be more challenging source material than you might imagine. In trying to translate to the stage the visual language of the film -- hyper-stylized imagery, oddball non sequiturs, fantastical special effects -- the creators end up tripping over themselves and losing sight of the story. Even if you've seen the film and know the plot, this 'Amelie' comes off as muddled and often baffling.

Yet if 'Miss Saigon' hasn't necessarily refined with age, this is nonetheless a handsome, accomplished production -- an artful application of lipstick on a pot-bellied pig. (It originated in London in 2014.) The director, Laurence Connor ('School of Rock'), does an exceptional job moving the more than three-dozen actors across a busy, sometimes cluttered set (designed by Totie Driver and Matt Kinley), and he keeps a firm grip on the potentially confusing storyline. When that famous helicopter arrives in the second act -- during a recreation of the Fall of Saigon -- it does so with eye- and ear-popping grandeur.

The actors are everything you might hope for with such a starry cast, intelligent and moving and honest, with particular props due to DeVito (in his Broadway debut) and Shalhoub. Solomon is the play's most comic figure, and DeVito scores serious laughs -- just watch him work slapstick wonders with a hard-boiled egg which he never seems to stop chewing. But the diminutive actor also conveys extraordinary gravity and mystery. What could have been played as stereotype and broad shtick ends up being a fascinating study of a man whose entire life has been about negotiation and dissembling. You'll be debating the meaning of his final laugh during the car ride home.

For the newest Broadway revival, though, we get not just humanity and warmth, but intimacy, tenderness, bursts of humor, and flashes of tremendous beauty -- we get, in effect, as accomplished a production of 'Sunday in the Park with George' as we are likely to ever see. Headlined by a very impressive Jake Gyllenhaal (yes, he really can sing), and an altogether stupendous Annaleigh Ashford, what could be a mere exercise in coy postmodernism becomes something moving and true.

The applause starts when the curtain rises, to reveal a forty-person orchestra onstage -- according to the producers, one of the largest in Broadway history. The mad clapping starts up again a few minutes later, when Glenn Close enters the proceedings, revisiting a role that twenty-two years ago won her the Tony. On the night I saw the show, even a single line of Close's dialogue -- the famous, 'I am big, it's the pictures that got small' zinger -- generated a new round of cheers. This isn't merely the fault of an overeager audience, though. Director Lonny Price and his lead actress seem determined to force you out of the moment, overloading the production with so many 'Major Theatrical Event' moments and signposts that it all starts to sag beneath the weight of its own self-importance.

Yet however gimmicky and commercially cynical as it might sound, 'In Transit' very quickly wears down your defenses. This is a modest show created and performed with palpable affection and infectious enthusiasm; the show's creators -- Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Russ Kaplan, James-Allen Ford and Sara Wordsworth -- wants us to love a cappella as much as they so evidently do.

Allow me to be a dissenting voice: Having seen 'Dear Evan Hansen' twice now -- with its wildly implausible storyline and its repetitive pop-rock score -- I am mystified by the enthusiasm for it. Maybe the show's celebrants are responding to the creators' willingness to tackle such dark themes, or the admittedly hard-working performance of star Ben Platt (Benji in the 'Pitch Perfect' movies), who plays the neurotic title character. But laudable ambitions can't disguise the fact that nothing about 'Dear Evan Hansen' makes very much sense.

The overused phrase 'you've never seen anything like it' usually amounts to empty hyperbole, but in the case of the thrilling new musical 'Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,' now playing on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre, it really does apply.

Schreiber misses badly here, offering up a kind of Ray Donovan take on Valmont, brutish and creepy. He's less a bodice-ripping villain than the kind of guy who in modern times would be hanging around school playgrounds wearing a trench coat. Schreiber generates little in the way of chemistry with McTeer, and even less with the actresses who play his two conquests, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen (HBO's 'Vinyl'), as the virtuous Madame de Tourvel, and Elena Kampouris ('My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2'), as the virginal Cecile. (On the night I saw the show, he also mangled a few of his lines.)

There are a handful of take-your-breath-away numbers in the new revival of the musical 'Falsettos,' now playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway, but none quite so impressive as 'I'm Breaking Down,' a comic wail of despair sung by Stephanie J. Block. Playing Trina, whose husband Marvin (Christian Borle) has just left her for a man with the curious name of Whizzer (Andrew Rannells), Block manages to draw out both the comedy and anguish of this woman's unusual plight - sung all the while she's ostensibly making dinner. ('Let me turn on the gas / I saw them in the den / with Marvin grabbing Whizzer's ass.') Block sends the show to such dizzying heights that it takes the audience a few minutes to recover.

Karam's is not a completely invalid interpretation, even if it doesn't quite hang together (Chekhov, of course, was writing about the decline of the Russian aristocracy at the expense of the rising lower classes). Far more problematic is that Godwin doesn't seem to know if he wants this production to feel classical or modern, bleakly comic or just plain bleak, and so we get a jarring mishmash of styles and approaches.

Parker acts up a storm (she's all anxious tics and mile-a-minute patter), while Arndt takes a more restrained approach - but neither ever fully convinces us that these characters' behavior is rooted in any recognizable reality. Just as in Anderson's movies, these aren't people so much as props being manipulated by their author to create a mood and affect. You either go for this sort of thing and find it endearingly odd, or fast grow weary of it. Even though 'Heisenberg' is directed with efficiency by Mark Brokaw ('Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella') and has its share of smart, charming dialogue, I grew weary.

But as directed with generosity and warmth by Gordon Greenberg (who also co-wrote the show with Chad Hodges) - and as performed by a pair of dashing and very endearing leading men, Bryce Pinkham and Corbin Bleu - this 'Holiday Inn' wears down all defenses.

A one-joke sketch dragged out to, er, ungodly lengths, 'An Act of God' feels like little more than a cash grab designed to prey on tourists drawn to its well-known star and cutesy premise. (I didn't see the Jim Parsons version, so this was my first encounter with the material.) Written by former 'Daily Show' writer andMaplewood native David Javerbaum (or 'transcribed' by him, since the show purports to be the word of God) and directed by Joe Mantello ('The Humans,' 'Blackbird'), the play features Hayes in a white flowing robe, accompanied by two angels (James Gleason and David Josefsberg), riffing on assorted topics such as religious piety and creationism versus science ('I invested more time and energy into falsifying an airtight case for evolution over Creation, than I did Creation itself,' God insists).

This proudly flashy, impressively ambitious show is the very last production to open in the 2015-16 Broadway season. Talk about finishing on a high note...The first act is a particularly fluid dramatization and distillation of a tremendous amount of historical information, presented through a series of razzle-dazzle, tap-heavy production numbers. As might be expected with a show trying to do so much, 'Shuffle Along' sometimes bites off more than it can chew. There are six major characters here...and keeping track of their assorted backstories and rivalries proves daunting. After the rousing first act, the second act seems to meander...And while Wolfe does a fine job conveying the social and cultural complexities of a work like 'Shuffle Along'...some of the essence of the source material is lost...But what a dream team Wolfe has assembled here, and what unadulterated joy they evince at being able to perform together.

...while Kent's interpretation draws out some of scalding comedy percolating beneath the surface of O'Neill's language, there's nothing here that could possibly be described as transgressive or especially revelatory. The result is a perfectly accomplished, if at times perfunctory-feeling; a revival that's easier to admire than love. Of the four main actors, Lange (who played the same part in London in 2000) is particularly strong, giving us a deeply complicated Mary Tyrone - a woman both steely and desperate whose unravelling is the motor of the story.As the elder Tyrone son, Jamie, Shannon brings the full force of his off-kilter intensity to bear - his final act descent into drunken fury is the strongest, and scariest, part of the production.

The best thing to be said for 'Waitress' is the brightly colored set design by Scott Pask, which features two giant, rotating pie cases on either side of the stage. Otherwise this musical feels like a few too many slices of a much too sugary pie. It sails right past feel-good and instead leaves you with a stomachache.

And the show anchored by a tour-de-force, star-is-born performance by Walker, whose Patrick is much more human and oddly endearing than either Christian Bale's smirky, scenery-chewing version in the 2000 film adaptation, or Ellis' wholly vile original creation. 'American Psycho' still has ice in its veins - Patrick spews his venom at gays, women and pretty much anyone who didn't go to Harvard - but Walker (best known for 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson' and the film 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter') also allows you to feel the faint stirrings of a beating heart within. He makes the convincing case that Patrick is as much a victim in this story as the people he brutalizes.

Once it becomes apparent what Zeller is up to, 'The Father' has nowhere to go - it merely marks time until André completes his dreary spiral into despair and complete confusion. The ever-amazing Langella keeps this watchable for as long as possible, giving us an André who is alternately charming and irksome, pitiable and pathetic. But by the time this poor man is getting slapped around (or is he?) by a man who may or may not be his son-in-law, 'The Father' has turned repetitive and sour. What's the point of this hall-of-mirrors, other than to reflect back the ugliness of humanity?

Van Hove is nothing if not consistent -- just like 'A View from the Bridge,' his approach to 'The Crucible' is alternately striking, lugubrious, and fruit loopy...Whether van Hove is succeeding in his stated goal of stripping away theatrical conventions and cutting to the heart of classic drama -- or, in fact, is doing the opposite, and serving up a 'Crucible' that is affected and artificial -- probably comes down to your personal taste...[Ronan's] Abigail is at once sexually forthright and sadistically righteous; the most nightmarish sorority queen you would never want to cross. As John Proctor, the man who once had an affair with Abigail and who is now suffering the unexpected consequences, the wonderful Ben Whishaw...is wholly commanding, even as he rarely raises his voice. He makes deeply palpable both Proctor's mounting outrage and the man's nagging guilt that his own moral weaknesses are what set this disastrous chain of events in motion.

Michelle Williams tears up the stage, literally and figuratively, in 'Blackbird'...the 'Brokeback Mountain' actress lurches from defiance to pleading, sputtering rage to romantic desperation, offering up an unforgettable portrait of a doomed soul who has long since lost agency over her own emotions. It's a half-terrifying, half-thrilling high-wire act that leaves the actress visibly exhausted -- and the audience in awe...directed here by Joe Mantello ('The Humans'), 'Blackbird' is an unrelenting, unapologetically grim vision. But whether this 90-minute piece is actually saying anything new or original about the human condition -- or simply rubbing our noses in the muck of it all -- is tough to discern.

As it turns out, 'Disaster!' is the season's happiest, most charming surprise. Co-created by Sirius radio host Seth Rudetsky (who also co-stars), Jack Plotnick (who also directed) and Drew Geraci, this show lampoons everyone and everything in sight, and yet still makes us to care about its lovable cast of off-the-wall characters. This is the best kind of campy comedy - the kind with a very big heart.