David Cote

Perhaps with a more nuanced book and flexible frame, Scottsboro would have more punch. It’s almost exactly the sort of show we need now. A whole resistance movement has grown in the past two years around no discernible cause other than horror at a black man in the White House. Can Tea Party protesters in blackface be far off?

Researchers have calculated that in your average three-hour NFL broadcast, the ball is in actual play for roughly 11 minutes. I can guarantee that, for the 95-minute duration of Lombardi, Dan Lauria’s bellowing-to-speaking ratio is twice as much. Portraying the iconic coach who transformed his losing Green Bay Packers into serial winners in the early ’60s, Lauria barks, shouts, howls, roars, and—for subtle effects—growls ominously. Vince Lombardi, we learn in Eric Simonson’s canny and humorous script, was not a man given to understatement or mild utterance; through force of will and steel-reinforced lungs he vociferated his way into sports history.

Mark Rylance's turn as boorish, babbling Valere—available for your delectation in La Bête—ought not to work. This eccentric performance is compounded of broad prop acting, lowbrow sight gags (spitting food, wiping ass), redundant flourishes (recalling molestation as a boy, he steals a kiss from David Hyde Pierce) and alternating deadpan delivery with overwrought affectation. You could argue that such outré tics and the overall stylized tactic are true to Rylance's character and to the bouffon spirit of David Hirson's 1991 verse comedy, a critical homage to Molière. And you’d be right. But that doesn't diminish the fact that this daredevil actor rides the line between brilliance and awfulness—usually coming down on the side of genius.

Songwriter Friedman has always had an uncanny knack for the catchy hook and the clever lyric that rises to philosophical wistfulness. And here, he works in the surly emo-rock mode, finding exhilaration in the pent-up rage and nihilism that both demands center stage and shrinks from scrutiny. Not since Stephen Sondheim played bitter variations on “Hail to the Chief” for Assassins (1991) has a Broadway musical so starkly and brutally examined the underside of the American Dream. Particularly in the subdued penultimate number “Second Nature,” Friedman moves past the Sontag and Foucault namechecking to offer a hushed, plangent elegy for this land of strip malls over killing fields.

Cherry Jones, on the other hand, makes a full meal of a role for which she is perfectly suited. Jones is deliciously sensual and arch in a series of gaudy outfits, and her second-act speeches about pulling herself out of poverty are utterly spellbinding (a wobbly accent notwithstanding). Debonair Mark Harelik does sturdy work as Warren’s bullish business partner, Crofts, and Adam Driver is amusingly oleaginous as Vivie’s charming but morally flaccid lover, Frank. With grand sets and Doug Hughes’s smart, careful staging, so much goes right here. The only thing lacking is Vivie’s ruthlessness.

Although Brief Encounter offers plenty of comic embellishments and artful stage business, it is most powerful when it quiets down to give the material’s sorrow full scope. Adapter and director Emma Rice’s use of Coward’s songs—“A Room with a View” and “Mad About the Boy,” to name two—makes structural (if not always tonal) sense, even if you wish the cast included stronger singers. But then again, it’s the whole artful package, not its individual parts, that seems to sweep some people off their feet.

Leon elicits sensitive work from Hornsby and the stalwart Stephen McKinley Henderson as Troy’s loyal coworker friend, Jim Bono. And, with her second-act breakdown upon hearing that Troy has betrayed her, Davis blows the roof off the Cort with the spectacle of a soul in agony. No one does good-woman-done-wrong with Davis’s volcanic fury. Happily, Washington keeps pace with her on the other side of the temperature spectrum. When Fences first swept Broadway 23 years ago, James Earl Jones’s Troy was reportedly phenomenal. But Washington shows he can hit his share out of the park, too.

The English-born multimedia docudrama Enron, about the rise and crash of the Texas energy-trading behemoth, smelled strongly of what I called “transatlantic schadenfreude” in a review of another import: a topical satire in which Brits laugh up their sleeves at greedy, gullible American rubes. I was able to hedge my low expectations with my tremendous respect for director Rupert Goold and my boundless admiration for musical-comedy trouper Norbert Leo Butz, who portrays Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. What a surprise, then, to discover that Lucy Prebble’s multilayered play is not your typical Yank-bashing, but a darkly exhilarating portrait of hypertrophied capitalism and a society that allows faith-based fiscal systems to ravage the body economic. Drawing from a deep bag of theatrical tricks and riffling through found text, news videos and observed gestures, Prebble and Goold supply Broadway theatergoers with the sort of play they demand—a sharp-witted and rollicking business thriller to dazzle the eye and tickle the brain. If Enron’s stock were still circling the ticker, my advice would be to buy, buy, buy.

If Donald Margulies were a novelist, he'd churn out airport fiction, like John Grisham or Michael Crichton: popular, but not to be confused with art. Now Manhattan Theatre Club has revived Margulies’ 'Collected Stories,' a 1996 two-hander set in the world of genuine literature. It’s skillful, diverting stuff, but essentially, light reading.

For Sondheim fanatics, the video bits are musical-theater catnip. You see the master himself reclining in his office, sharpening pencils, explaining how he lets the libretto inspire the songs and, in a painfully honest moment, what a poisonous relationship he had with his mother. What emerges is a portrait of a tightly-controlled artist who approaches human emotion with a mix of mathematical coldness and deep empathy. But hey, this is more than a TV show, right? Unfortunately it is, and this is where the show becomes hit or miss. No question, there are talented actor-singers in the eight-member ensemble, such as the comedy belter Leslie Kritzer and the charming and funny Euan Morton, not to mention the lovely Vanessa Williams. Norm Lewis and Tom Wopat add manly pipes, and Barbara Cook is a national treasure. But unfortunately, Lapine’s overly-perky staging comes across like a Sondheim Glee Club or a corporate function.

Rage courses through the Green Day-scored American Idiot and fittingly, this andrenalized gut-punch of a musical is bound to piss you off. Whether you’re a Broadway nostalgist longing for middle-of-the-road kitsch, or a sullen teen who vicariously thrills to the show’s grimacing, bird-flipping punks, your heart will pound, your pupils will dilate, you will sweat and breathe hard. Such a state is intense but not permanent: Anger is just a drug, after all. But for the 90 minutes that American Idiot has you in its white-knuckle grasp, it will electrify and overwhelm your senses. Here’s a musical to thrash to. Goodbye, orchestra pit; hello, mosh pit.

For a Broadway megamusical that celebrates antisocial behavior and schadenfreude, The Addams Family inspires mixed emotions. It’s a night of pleasant, clever songs and sly jokes, charming performances and swoony visuals—but the whole never soars to the heights we now expect of a bona fide blockbuster. Don’t brace yourself for the pop-fantasy spectacle of Wicked or the ruthless comic proficiency of The Producers. Instead, The Addams Family is a Frankenstein creature: adult and juvenile, idiosyncratic and generic, grandiose and homey. Maybe that’s its triumph: Not even this household is sick enough to settle for straightforward razzle-dazzle.

Let’s be cynical for a moment and speculate as to why Red was such a hit in London, generating sufficient hype to catapult it over the pond. It wasn’t the subject, AbEx icon Mark Rothko, even though he’s bigger in London than here. It wasn’t the star, Alfred Molina, wonderful though he is. It wasn’t even the Hollywood pedigree of author John Logan, who scripted Gladiator and Sweeney Todd. The answer, I think, is simple: Red offered English audiences the spectacle of a great artist rejecting American mammon: Rothko returning his $35,000 commission for the Seagram Murals in 1959. Those ominous, throbbing, blood-colored ciphers may puzzle us, but one lesson is clear: Never underestimate the British public’s appetite for transatlantic schadenfreude.

Stanley Tucci makes a slam-bang Broadway directing debut, with the brio and instinct for timing that you would expect from a seasoned actor. He has, moreover, inspired a cast of comic equals (even in the smaller roles) to harmonize the insanity, land the gags and top each other for the daffy monomania that is the sine qua non of farce. And what a vehicle they have: Ludwig’s old-fashioned screwball door-slammer is structurally perfect, all missed connections, mistaken identities, girls hiding in closets and an enraged impresario throttling his deceased tenor—multiple times.

Nauffts’s script is a deft blend of urban comedy and pathos, exploring the legal rights of same-sex partners, religious tolerance and the crucial moral importance of speaking the truth before it’s too late.

What’s to savor here, then? Two words: Christopher Walken. Who cares whether or not Carmichael was written with his eccentric delivery in mind; Walken can retune any text to his dissonant, syncopated key. Innocuous lines become menacing, and psychotic remarks provoke giggles. Carmichael’s true nature or motive is never revealed, but then no one bothered making him a real character; we’re just enjoying a beloved film star who can get laughs from his zombie stare and demented, wistful phrasing.

If you’ve never seen a production of this romantic classic, by all means, go. The principals are suave and poised, and although Nunn seems to have encouraged them to sing their lyrics somewhat pedantically over the music, they sparkle and charm. Not to be missed is the venerable Lansbury putting her personal stamp on another Sondheim character. Alexander Hanson is a dashing figure, the sort of mature leading man we hardly ever see on Broadway. Would someone please steal his passport?

Although Jones proved in 2006’s Spring Awakening that he could play the Broadway game, adapting his modern-dance aesthetic to musical storytelling (and garnering a Tony), who knew he was this much of a showman? Working with book cowriter Jim Lewis, a fierce dancing corps and the sexy, commanding Ngaujah, Jones has orchestrated a soul-scorching mash-up of pounding African dance, political protest and intoxicating Afrobeat—the style Kuti pioneered, which mixes funk, jazz and drumming. Fela! is more than a musical; it’s an ecstatic phenomenon.

In the ’80s, let’s say you never grew a mullet, squeezed into acid-washed jeans or threw the horns at a Quiet Riot concert. Doesn’t mean that the pop hits of the period didn’t fuse with your hormones and secure an unassailable seat in your pleasure center. That sweet spot is exactly what the insanely fun mixtape musical Rock of Ages relentlessly tickles, with its familiar heavy-metal ballads married to an impish, self-mocking book. Think it’s just a cheap retro goof? Rock of Ages shatters irony with a killer drum solo, then melts the wreckage with a smoking guitar riff.

If anything, the transfer indoors produces more heat than last summer in the open-air Delacorte. The walls fairly shudder with Galt MacDermot’s polymorphously perverse rock score, and the stage gets a thorough pounding from the cast’s nonstop dancing, stomping and sprawling. Directed with tireless inventiveness and intensity by Diane Paulus and groovily choreographed by Karole Armitage, Hair speaks to a new generation faced with unpopular wars and a cynical society.

God of Carnage is the author's most satisfying work since Art (1998), which also balances her very French tendency to jumble philosophy and farce with a surgical dissection of bourgeois pretension and slippery social identity. Matthew Warchus masterfully stages the work, heeding the playwright's command to eschew strict naturalism and embrace the artificial nature of the action. The characters exist as stock types (Daniels as the callous lawyer and Davis as an icy wealth-management consultant), yet the loopier script convulsions allow for ridiculous (and theatrically bracing) psychological leaps.

Elton John’s score is, let’s be honest, a dullish parade of midtempo ballads and soft rock, and Lee Hall’s book is superior to his merely adequate lyrics, but this production is emphatically more than the sum of its parts. Director Stephen Daldry (who also helmed the movie) does wizardly work balancing the various dialectics that give the material its crackle of sublime storytelling: broad spectacle versus tight dramatic focus, collective sacrifice versus individual excellence, escapism versus social duty.

Based on novelist Gregory Maguire's 1995 adult variation on the Wizard of Oz mythology, Wicked provides a prequel to the children's book and movie. The lavishly designed musical addresses complex themes, such as standards of beauty, individual morality and, believe it or not, opposing fascism. Thanks to Winnie Holzman's witty book and composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz's robust and pop-inflected score, Wicked soars.

Almost two dozen hits from the ’70s pop sensation ABBA form the spine of this worldwide smash, which book writer Catherine Johnson has feebly fleshed out into a mother-daughter comedy-drama. As theater, Mamma Mia! is forgettable. As a delivery system for pop-culture nostalgia, it’s ruthless.