David Cote

A little too neatly, if we’re being honest. Mantell’s play suffers from poky pacing and schematic storytelling in its attempt to balance quirky romcom and ecological wakeup call. Despite running only 95 minutes, the piece drags in the middle as the characters each get an obligatory monologue about their experience surviving the disaster. Director Sivan Battat establishes a rather too cozy and laid-back vibe, but the writing’s also to blame as coincidences and heavy-handed plot twists pile up and the plot teeters between semi-surreal and plausible. Still, there are lovely speeches here and there.

Apart from the Zoomer window dressing, Gold engages in thoughtful and amusing double casting. Sola Fadiran plays both Capulet and Lady Capulet, neatly distinguishing between the husband and wife without overdoing gender stereotypes. Capulet’s angry rant at the recalcitrant Juliet is especially terrifying. The absolutely electric Tommy Dorfman is a study in opposites as Juliet’s daffy, chatty Nurse and ice-cold killer Tybalt. Gían Pérez takes on various clown roles, such as the douchey Paris and feckless Peter. The always-stunning Gabby Beans plays both Mercutio and Friar Lawrence with tremendous panache and humor. Both characters think they know what’s best for Romeo yet end up hastening his self-destruction. Beans’s Mercutio is an acid-tongued stoner perpetually in shades, whereas the friar is a gentle, optimistic soul. She juggles a third character speaking Chorus lines and delivering exasperated edicts from the Duke of Verona. The first act ends as a bloody brawl on a bed of flowers an alarming juxtaposition of brutality and romance. Choreographer Sonya Tayeh gives the movement her signature mix of muscularity and abandon. In the final scene (a bit rushed perhaps so Gold could keep the action more or less at two hours) Romeo and Juliet die splayed over each other. Their cruciform positioning mirrors the giant LED crucifix against the wall behind the DJ. A pretty tableau, but nothing terribly deep. You could say the same of other directorial flourishes, but they’re easily overlooked, since the language is well-delivered and the ensemble appealing. It’s the least boring or cringe Shakespeare I’ve seen in a long time.

All that luscious black-and-white video, the backstage winks, the fuck-you deadpan in fuck-me boots—it’s fun. I never expected to have fun at an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. (Even this summer’s queer ballroom makeover of Cats was, well, Cats.) Lloyd’s camp yet surgical staging fuses form and content: it’s the resurrection of a faded (kitsch) icon, a critique of the invasive camera, a cosplay of the BDSM rituals of celebrity and fandom. Just as Scherzinger inhabits Norma within giant neon quotation marks, the whole production seems to admit the overall musical is trash. What happens if you dress up trash as art and stick a camera in its face? Twenty feet high, those faces—coldly sensual graven images—demand your abject worship. It’s a thin line (movie-screen thin) between glamour and horror. “We gave the world new ways to dream,” an enraptured Norma sings. Lloyd finds new ways to give us nightmares; who wants to wake?

Butterworth writes sprawling, talky epics with ensembles in the double digits, three-hour run times, and lots of room for showy speeches. He’s fascinated by the death of dreams and the past that haunts us, the slow decay of England. Hills is not essentially different, thought it does focus on women. Men in this world—save one—are feckless husband-enablers and punching bags for Veronica and her mostly unhappy grown daughters. The one man who makes a definitive impact on the Webb household is the Yank talent scout, Luther, played by New York stage veteran David Wilson Barnes. Seeming at first a dryly reserved finder of genius (he claims to have discovered Nat King Cole), Luther reveals darker motives by requesting a private audition with 15-year-old Joan (Lara McDonnell) in “Mississippi” (Seaview’s rooms are named after American states). What makes the offstage encounter between Luther and Joan more disturbing is the suggestion that the girl initiates it—a tragic escape from her suffocating surroundings.

Forbidden Broadway is a goof, but a virtuosic and stylish one, with infectious comic verve and lyrics that range from wittily inspired to boldly dumb (rhyming “earplugs” with “queer drugs”). It’s Mad Magazine with jazz hands; Saturday Night Live with people who can actually sing and dance; the antidote to hate watching; and a much-needed immunization for the season.

Back in 2011, I enjoyed Sleep No More; it was novel and exquisitely executed, plus I dug the Macbeth meets Kubrick vibe. But even the Punchdrunk hit left me with zero desire to return. These Choose Your Own Adventure stunts combine my least favorite states: feeling trapped, being forced to follow a crowd, claustrophobia, FOMO, and humorless dance theater. On top of that, Life and Trust is too long to sustain interest in its heavy-handed Faustian spin on American capitalism. In terms of content, the “what” is mid, but the “how” is crazily busy—to the point of exhausting. You would think that an immersive event—sweaty, physical, three-dimensional—is the polar opposite of bodiless, isolating social media, yet I found the torrents of trivial visual information and absence of thoughtful language to resemble, well, wasted hours online. But, hey: You’re young, attend spin class, love escape rooms, and don’t care about narrative coherence. For you, Life and Trust may be a gold mine of fun.

In its slow-burning and fitfully engaging middle, Job ramps up from Boomer-versus-Millennial jousting to a rather contrived Big Twist, left unresolved by an ambivalent shrug of an ending. The rickety whole rests on a couple of prolonged teases. First: is Jane reliable or crazy? Can we trust anything she says; do periodic bursts of noise and light (designed by Cody Spencer and Mextly Couzin) suggest a mind fracturing under trauma? The second big mystery: does Loyd lead a horrific double life? Neither scenario is adequately deepened or resolved. She might be nuts; he might be a criminal. Unlike superior two-handers—like Oleanna or Blackbird—in which men and women square off over meaty dramatic issues, Friedlich coasts on withholding information and padding out back story (Jane’s sad childhood, sadder romantic life). As with many writers who grew up in the golden age of TV, his dialogue is slick, the humor glibly dark. Still, a content moderator deranged by work has been explored more deftly elsewhere, such as Anna Moench’s 2021 Sin Eaters, livestreamed by Theatre Exile during the pandemic.

Escola’s splendidly nasty queer romp has hiked up its petticoats and staggered uptown from a sold-out run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, goosing a sleepy Broadway summer. I’m happy to report that although director Sam Pinkleton leveled up the production values (particularly in the musical finale), Oh, Mary! remains the same vicious, dirty-minded, bad-taste farce that delighted camp aficionados last winter. In a theater scene squeezed between the Scylla of nonprofit precarity and Charybdis of commercial desperation, Escola and their team offer audacity, flair, and a homing instinct for the audience funny bone.

Kirkwood takes big, violent, not fully satisfying swings, but one must bow before her women. Even though this ensemble can’t “save” the play, I was grateful to witness both. Will it take another 75 years for such a cluster of talent to burn across the heavens? Keep looking up.

As he did with the superbly energetic and irreverent revival of Purlie Victorious last year, director Kenny Leon maintains a galloping pace. Home is such a verbal dynamo it could be performed on a bare stage, yet Leon has assembled a valuable design team: Arnulfo Maldonado’s homely yet mythic sets of porch, tobacco field, and a cutaway silhouette of a house; earth-toned and soft-textured costumes by Dede Ayite; and sunny daytimes and jazzy night shades conjured by Allen Lee Hughes. The acting trio makes gorgeous music. Kittles ages up from hellraising teen to weathered old man by graceful degrees, and Inge and Ayers do magnificent character work with dozens of supporting parts—preachers, drug dealers, prison guards, bus drivers. We should mourn the fact that Williams never got to see this luminous production, but it seems he had plans to join that fellow in Miami.

Jo Bonney’s flat, face-value staging only underscores the glibness of the script (the overarching it-was-only-a-death-dream conceit apparently gives Scheer the freedom to indulge in clunkers and cliches). The Second Stage Theatre production design is crisp and mostly effective, with Cho’s prim deconstruction of a grassy lawn and appalling detonations simulated by Jeff Croiter’s harsh lighting and Darron L. West concussing sound effects. The overqualified cast does what it can with a flimsy dramaturgical conceit. You feel for them. When a show squanders Halston, Carr, Ashe, and the magnetic Siff in such pseudo-topical trifle, it’s a criminal misuse of great women—even if it doesn’t rise to a war crime.

Malloy (juggling book, music, lyrics, and orchestrations) produces lovely passages, but dramatic tension and character development is where Three Houses starts to wobble on its foundations and devolves into an allegorical anthology with diminishing returns. Narration and description take up so much text, the action stalls in passive self-regard. Alternating speaking and singing might have been a wiser tactic or tightening each episode by ten minutes. For a writer inspired by loneliness, Molloy should seek out creative company: a book writer, for example, who could help shape his prodigious musical imagination, and push back when he blows too hard.

For a historian or student of World War II, such details will not be surprising—or new. Audiences who prefer a dramatic treatment of similar material can stream Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, which fixes an unnervingly calm eye on the home life of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz. (The movie’s loosely based on a Martin Amis novel but overlaps with the Höcker album.) Even though at times Here There Are Blueberries seems less a play than a live PBS documentary (and, at worst, an infomercial for the Holocaust Museum), it’s still a compelling 90 minutes. That’s down to strong cast, anchored by the luminous Stahlmann, a grimly determined angel bringing light and a sword into darkness. Derek McLane’s spare but effective scenic design—work desks and screen—neatly cradles David Bengali’s elegant projection design, integral to the impact. In the end, the piece asks what the camera caught and what it excluded. We have seen the carnage of the death camps. That ultimate horror is the result of countless steps from everyday civility to desensitized inhumanity.

Don’t misunderstand me: The Great Gatsby is not a smart, tasteful musical that can’t compete with tackier ones. It simply fails to be tacky enough. The jazz-based score by composer Jason Howland and lyricist Nathan Tysen (Paradise Square) ventures into funk, Disney princess ballad, and a touch of Britpop. Despite the eclecticism of the musical palette, none of the songs stick in the ear, despite strenuous vocalizing by Jeremy Jordan (Newsies) and Eva Noblezada (Hadestown).

It isn’t hard to see what Staff Meal is about (among other topics, questioning the value of weird theater), but the way it articulates the dance of service and fancy is what lingers on the palate. Koogler stokes our affection for the comforts of civilization but also underscores how fragile they are. I’m no food critic but take my advice: book a table before word gets out.

It’s Chekhov 101 to say his characters inhabit separate worlds that rarely converge. All those rueful doctors, vain landowners, stoic laborers, and pretentious artists jabber across the samovar without really connecting or changing. Sure, they level pistols at each other (and themselves) or profess undying love, but such flashes of passion smack of solipsistic play-acting. Therein lies the comedy dusted with melancholy. Still, if Chekhov’s people are not in the same play, you hope the actors inhabiting them will be. Such is not really the case in Lincoln Center Theater’s starry but arid Uncle Vanya, staged with noncommittal chill by Lila Neugebauer.

Ensemble-wise, it’s a deep bench, with polished turns from Seth Numrich as an oily James Murdoch and Dylan Baker as a flinty lawyer, both doing the banality-of-evil soft shoe quite nimbly. But the hero of the day—in character and out—is Toby Stephens, who seems to be having fun as he carries this long and busy chronicle on his shoulders. Naturally charming and energetic, with inexhaustible Everylad comic appeal, Stephens uses considerable technique and charisma (he’s a London stage fixture) to fine effect, tossing off Rogers’s overstuffed dialogue and stilted diatribes with style, finding the humor and heart at every turn. Even if Corruption is a mixed bag, the real-life Watson must be pleased that after years of getting slagged off in the press, an admiring playwright prints the last word.

Also unexpected, from Shanley: Doubt is not an urban love story or whimsical mediation on the courtship rituals of men and women. Let me qualify that last point. Doubt is very much about female agency in a male-dominated institution, and how, while trying to fight an injustice you know is real, you may perpetuate evil. It would be absurd if it weren’t so tragic.

I can see how The Ally could have gone in an Ibsen-ish direction with more eventful plotting and a big, tragic finish. Or it might have veered into Molière country, with Asaf’s eagerness to both be right and righteous leading to farcical complications and hypocrisy. Given the weight of his topic, and the current bloodshed in Gaza, Moses keeps it earnest. He couldn’t afford to be morally irresponsible and viciously irreverent. Which is a shame, because, in my opinion, that makes good theater.

Science fiction may be a natural fit for movies and TV, where budgets allow CGI world-building and eye-popping F/X, but the genre flourishes in humbler forms of storytelling. Caryl Churchill probed the existential horror behind cloning in A Number and Jordan Harrison walked the uncanny valley with aide-mémoire androids in Marjorie Prime. Where does The Apiary rank among futuristic stage work? In Kate Douglas’s dark farce set a persnickety 22 years from now, bee populations are shrinking (even more) due to climate change. A pair of technicians who run a synthetic apiary think they’ve found a solution. But it’s going to take a lot of human corpses. The scientific stakes are fairly high—Earth is, um, dying—but after 75 minutes of tonal wobble, you may flit from Second Stage Theatre with little to buzz about.

Following a book that lurches from satire to workplace drama, Brown’s score surfs various idioms, none of which really stick. There are stretches of ’90s power pop (reminiscent of Jonathan Larson), bossa nova, Hamilton–style hip hop, and an overblown sequence set in Israel (or which Ethan claims happens in Israel) where klezmer rock gives way to a Bo Diddley beat. Brown is too strong a composer not to produce intriguing melodies and colorful orchestration and arrangements, but few songs emerge from dimensional people with conflicts we can care about; it’s mostly abstract notions of language, truth, or sexist power structures. Having contributed major works such as Parade and The Bridges of Madison County, plus the beloved two-hander The Last Five Years, Brown deserves a better foundation for his talents.

After suffering through Once Upon a One More Time last summer, I concluded that musicals about princesses had become a royal bore; no more singing and dancing tiaras for me, please. And yet Sutton Foster’s full-body comic onslaught as Winnifred the Woebegone in Once Upon a Mattress has restored my fealty to throne. Playing her first stage princess since the ogre-besotted Fiona in 2008’s Shrek, Foster musters every talented inch of her limber frame, rubber face, and iron lungs to generate waves of zany ecstasy in this delightful concert version for City Center Encores!

Off Broadway, Patrick was played by the canny and empathetic actor Richard Topol. Currently, the part belongs to Anthony Edwards (of TV’s E.R.), who has a wry, befuddled quality that works in group scenes, but leaves him unfocused in monologues directed to the audience. Still, if Prayer’s frame has grown wobbly, the central story remains vibrant and confidently driven by three outstanding women from the original cast: the fierce-willed Aidem; Francis Benhamou as Marcelle’s brilliant but bipolar daughter, Elodie; and Molly Ranson as college-age Molly, an American cousin many times removed who’s spending a gap year France—while getting drawn into Benhamou drama.

Clearly relishing their juicy roles, the dream cast has been impeccably directed by Lila Neugebauer, who burnishes the comedy and cruelty to a bright sheen. Her production would not cohere and hurtle as it does without its superbly unified design. The collective dots creates the perfect spacious, seen-better-days living room with genteel touches from the past. A pastoral mock-fresco adorns one wall, a vintage chandelier dangles from above and allows lighting designer Jane Cox the chance to cast its spidery shadow by the staircase. Cox lights nighttime scenes with intricate, textured dimness, pierced by the occasional smartphone or candle. The extraordinary soundscape by Bray Poor and Will Pickens amplifies and distorts a cacophony of cicadas between scenes, like voices of the dead clamoring for justice, punctuated by Cox’s brutal, horror-movie blackouts.

Generically staged by Sammi Cannold, How to Dance in Ohio was clearly made with love and will touch some hearts—on the spectrum or not—but feels synthetic and patchy when not outright tacky. Even the triumphant final fête, in which our heroes get to strut their stuff, is overshadowed by a head-scratching design choice (sets by Robert Brill). Drew, tasked with organizing the “Second Chance Dance” in a day (!) unveils and hangs a jumbo disco ball which he somehow had time to decorate. The giant orb is festooned with mauve flowers and shiny heart-shaped balloons—and it bears an unfortunate resemblance to the CDC illustration of the novel coronavirus. I cringed, but maybe I’m looking at it all wrong. One person’s deadly pathogen is another’s fascinating pattern.