David Cote — Theater Critic

Charles Chaplin had an amazing first act—a rags-to-riches tale of artistic triumph—and a crummy second one—personal scandal, political exile, and after The Great Dictator, a string of mediocre talkies. Such extremes don’t apply to the spunky, hopeful biomusical Chaplin, but after we see the origin of those iconic silent comedies featuring a bowler-hatted, square-mustachioed clown, the material does shuffle downhill. However, when this generally well-executed and likable piece works (for its first hour), there’s a surprising rush of wonder, excitement and childlike delight.

Want to make a ton of money? Peddle God to fools. Want to lose a ton of money? Invest in a Broadway turkey. You can’t have it both ways. It’s perfectly fine—even desirable—if your religion is crude and nonsensical, but a show as bland and confused as Leap of Faith is not going to make rich men of its producers (among whom are actual church leaders). The fake cash distributed by actors to audience members—so we may place it in the offertory baskets at Jonas Nightingale’s revivalist hoedowns—is all the green this wanly tacky production is likely to see.

Was it really four years ago that Camoletti’s Boeing-Boeing brought the house down with howls of laughter, with Mark Rylance’s bizarre antics and the sight of color-coordinated stewardesses tumbling in and out of doors? Don’t Dress is technically a sequel, bringing back horny Bernard and comparatively guileless Robert for more girl trouble and elaborate deceptions. But this time, due to an uneven ensemble, uninspired direction and a too talky script, the farcical magic never materializes...You shouldn’t be aware of time passing during a farce. Although individual actors carve out genuinely funny moments—Daniels becomes amusingly flustered, Tilly is sexily brazen, and Kayden wields a dangerous deadpan—you mainly wait for this busy, bland meal to end, so you can get dessert someplace else.

John Lithgow is a natural for this kind of role, and he may be doing his best stage work. His Alsop is a vigorous, contradictory figure, brimming with intellectual fire and just a dash of camp. Lithgow has always combined great strength (physical or mental) with a touching vulnerability, an almost girlish embarrassment flickering somewhere behind the eyes. As self-righteously monstrous as Alsop grows, Lithgow never completely loses our sympathy. And yet Auburn never gets us inside his subject...The world doesn’t need more monologues, but you wish Auburn had told this story with a single voice. Let’s call this Auburn’s sophomore slump. And hope he makes his next deadline before another decade passes.

Hunger, like all urgent and uncontrollable bodily functions, is an eternal wellspring of humor. Think of Charlie Chaplin grimly carving up his boot in The Gold Rush, Mr. Creosote’s last supper and that old, reliable sight gag, the fellow desert-islander who morphs into a talking turkey leg. Tummy rumbles equal belly laughs, and both abound in the National Theatre’s gobsmackingly funny One Man, Two Guvnors. Driven in its first half by the peckish desperation of freelance flunky Francis Henshall (James Corden), this virtuoso banquet of slapstick farce and verbal jousting brings with it a shocking revelation: How starved we were for comedy.

Hunger, like all urgent and uncontrollable bodily functions, is an eternal wellspring of humor. Think of Charlie Chaplin grimly carving up his boot in The Gold Rush, Mr. Creosote’s last supper and that old, reliable sight gag, the fellow desert-islander who morphs into a talking turkey leg. Tummy rumbles equal belly laughs, and both abound in the National Theatre’s gobsmackingly funny One Man, Two Guvnors. Driven in its first half by the peckish desperation of freelance flunky Francis Henshall (James Corden), this virtuoso banquet of slapstick farce and verbal jousting brings with it a shocking revelation: How starved we were for comedy.

Peter and the Starcatcher has indeed grown up: It’s on Broadway with a steeper ticket price than during its intimate maiden voyage at New York Theatre Workshop last year. And while the production is bigger and shinier, beneath the dazzling, tricked-out proscenium beats the exhilarated heart of a kid who wants to fly. And you can be sure: Peter soars—deliriously high and gloriously far.

Gleaming with busy video backdrops and stadium kliegs, Thomas Kail’s production is light, speedy and gamely acted by the spunky ensemble. Kevin Daniels and Tug Coker were obviously cast for extreme verticality, but they also acquit themselves with humor and grace. Slipping in and out of a variety of supporting roles, Peter Scolari and the wonderful Deirdre O’Connell add emotional ballast to the whoosh of statistics and ESPN-friendly trivia. If the total package is less effective drama than “Lombardi” (the creative team’s previous foray into sports history), it’s an affable and warmhearted diversion.

Gleaming with busy video backdrops and stadium kliegs, Thomas Kail’s production is light, speedy and gamely acted by the spunky ensemble. Kevin Daniels and Tug Coker were obviously cast for extreme verticality, but they also acquit themselves with humor and grace. Slipping in and out of a variety of supporting roles, Peter Scolari and the wonderful Deirdre O’Connell add emotional ballast to the whoosh of statistics and ESPN-friendly trivia. If the total package is less effective drama than “Lombardi” (the creative team’s previous foray into sports history), it’s an affable and warmhearted diversion.

Shatner and his director, Scott Faris, aren’t exploring any formal frontiers in this minimalist setup. There are a couple of chairs, a few unused props and a large planet-shaped screen upon which the crew projects photos and videos from Shatner’s career on stage and famously in the “Star Trek” series and movies. In between these video interludes, Shatner pilots a rolling office chair, regaling us with tales of his boyhood in Montreal, early thespian experiences with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and how “Star Trek” led to a long-standing friendship with NASA.

Shatner and his director, Scott Faris, aren’t exploring any formal frontiers in this minimalist setup. There are a couple of chairs, a few unused props and a large planet-shaped screen upon which the crew projects photos and videos from Shatner’s career on stage and famously in the “Star Trek” series and movies. In between these video interludes, Shatner pilots a rolling office chair, regaling us with tales of his boyhood in Montreal, early thespian experiences with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and how “Star Trek” led to a long-standing friendship with NASA.

Having missed Kathleen Chalfant in a role that she was apparently born to play—Dr. Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson’s powerful medical drama, Wit—I can’t weigh her performance against Cynthia Nixon’s in the Manhattan Theatre Club revival. But it is easy to imagine that Chalfant’s patrician starch and throaty low register perfectly conveyed a literature professor who can anatomize verse as easily as she verbally flays her students. Nixon has an innate warmth and coltishness that works against her, and she struggles in the first third of Lynne Meadow’s production to project sufficient froideur and hauteur. Still, it’s a testament to this remarkable play and Nixon’s skill that we ultimately believe her as the cancer-stricken teacher. Believing, we also weep at her fate.

On balance, does it work? Yes, as a version of Porgy and Bess. There have been valid variants on the classic ever since the 1942 musical-theater adaptation on Broadway. I’m not going to pine for an “authentic” take or howl that Paulus & Co. have sold out the Gershwins. Due to a fine cast, some clever dramaturgy and the inherent musical glories of the material, the new Porgy and Bess has integrity. Does it have more or greater integrity than what you’d see in an opera house? I’m no purist, so it ain’t necessarily so.

On balance, does it work? Yes, as a version of Porgy and Bess. There have been valid variants on the classic ever since the 1942 musical-theater adaptation on Broadway. I’m not going to pine for an “authentic” take or howl that Paulus & Co. have sold out the Gershwins. Due to a fine cast, some clever dramaturgy and the inherent musical glories of the material, the new Porgy and Bess has integrity. Does it have more or greater integrity than what you’d see in an opera house? I’m no purist, so it ain’t necessarily so.

It was broke, but they sure ain’t fixed it. In fact, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever’s bumbling show doctors should be sued for malpractice and felonious misuse of star talent. Manslaughter, too: The patient died on the slab. The famously flawed 1965 Burton Lane–Alan Jay Lerner romantic comedy about extrasensory perception, past lives and a kooky gal with a magical green thumb has been reincarnated into a clunky bore that switches time periods and gender, inserts a gay subplot and turns its putative hero—psychologist Dr. Mark Bruckner (Connick)—into a creepy, manipulative stalker. Is this a tuneful retro quirkfest or Dressed to Kill?

Like a chef too fond of her ingredients and bored with the recipe, Diamond overstuffs and undercooks this rich stew of identity politics and parent-child resentments. As a result, the characters (played with grace and gusto by an appealing ensemble) give us plenty of high-attitude verbiage, but too few glimpses into their inner lives. Still, Diamond spins out lively dialogue by the yard, and it’s often fun to wriggle in her web.

There’s always danger when writers lampoon the publishing world: You never believe their wünderkinds are so wonderful, and they tend to burlesque bad writing beyond credibility. The acid test comes when someone reads aloud a passage that is purportedly genius or dreck. Rebeck wisely curtails recitation of manuscripts. Instead we watch as Rickman’s Leonard—being paid $20K to teach a ten-week intensive course at the Upper West Side apartment of Kate (Rabe)—as he pages through student submissions. A curl of the lip, a twitch of the eyebrow, a flare of the nostrils: These nonverbal signals speak volumes. Out of small gestures and that slurry, violoncello delivery, Rickman crafts one of the most vivid, dimensional stage monster in years: a burnt-up monument to cynicism and appetite who beds his students when not pulverizing their egos. Rickman gives the comic performance of the season.

Eyre's production-handsomely designed by Rob Howell (set and costumes) and dreamily lit by David Howe-exudes intelligence and style, but misses the necessary balance of musicality and silliness, of brittleness and bluff-without which Coward comes across as arch, empty fluff. Exquisitely contrived and capriciously sustained, Private Lives is one of his vintage almost-farces, a comedy of marital manners in which the divorced Amanda and Elyot find themselves in adjoining honeymoon suites in the South of France on second marriages. In short order they reunite in shock, feign apathy, fall in love again and adulterously elope, leaving their killjoy spouses (Simon Paisley Day, Anna Madeley) to track them down in Paris.

For Broadway, director Walter Bobbie milks the script more; the action clocks in about ten minutes longer than it did at CSC. Although easing up on the accelerator gives us more time to savor the sensual-slapstick dance between Dancy and Arianda, it also means the climactic 20 minutes-as gender roles and power positions sharply flip-grow a tad overindulgently logy. Undaunted, Arianda maintains terrific tension at all times-as well as full comic release.

Dear reader, I want you to laugh. And to judge from the horribly stale Relatively Speaking, I want you to laugh more than do Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen. Shall I regale you with the tale of getting kicked in the crotch by a potty-mouthed granny, causing me to double over moaning? Or shall I recount, in photorealistic detail, a contretemps between a week-old burrito and my intestines? Maybe I'll just slip on a banana peel and fall on my ass. Such slapstick clichés would generate more guffaws than this tedious three-pack, in which family foibles inspire a trio of famous writers to draft sketches of feeble or nonexistent comic value.

The current production, staged by Kenny Leon with film stars Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett, opens with considerable hype and celebrity wattage, neither of which does it any favors. Miscasting and directorial overkill turn what could have been a beguiling chamber meditation on fallibility and destiny into an awkward, mawkish blend of docudrama, surreal whimsy and pandering black-history triumphalism.

It's hard to imagine a more commanding and forceful actor in the city. Langella is such a master manipulator of space and time, it's hard to believe that his character is destined for a semitragic fall. English director Maria Aitken ('The 39 Steps') deserves full credit for taking a solid cast and keeping them all on the same page. Under her steady gaze Man and Boy clips along, a cynical tale of fathers, sons and human bonds sold for profit. Adam Driver continues to impress.

McNally’s play may be a bit schematic, punctuated by soul-searching monologues about the diva’s tortured affair with Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, but it’s an entertaining vehicle for Daly, and McNally is skilled in balancing bitchy humor and pathos. Moreover, the staging by opera veteran Stephen Wadsworth is stately and dignified without being fussy.

So the final mutation of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is not a multidisciplinary breakthrough, as Taymor hoped; it’s just a musical. Likewise, Peter Parker may have superpowers that let him fly around New York on spiderwebs, but at the end of the day, he’s just a kid.

Baby It’s You! may attract an undiscriminating audience for a spell, but this brand of pandering pap has limited appeal. If I wanted to sit around listening to 50-year-old pop tunes and corny jokes, wallowing in boomer nostalgia while pretending to enjoy myself, I’d visit my mother at her condo in Florida. At least she knows how to cook.