David Cote — Theater Critic

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).

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.

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.

If our culture were fearless and thriving, we’d have more plays like Manahatta—which is to say, ones better written than it. We’d also have more big-budget movies like Killers of the Flower Moon (but made by Native filmmakers) and more series like Reservation Dogs. Not to mention more Native theater critics. The play disappoints because it could have dug deeper, told us something research materials don’t or can’t. May it inspire other, beginning writers. Anyone can scribble a moral; mapping a journey to the revelation is hard.

In contrast to its intimate domestic scale and relatively subdued dramatic stakes, Hell’s Kitchen is slick and aggressively commercial; Keys, also the producer, has made no secret of her desire to transfer uptown. Ending with the earwormy urban jingle “Empire State of Mind” more out of fan service than anything story related, this feel-good empowerment fable hungers for a home on Broadway. And why not? Tourists are not going to nitpick about where a neighborhood begins or ends. They probably won’t even visit.

Shamblin’ Shannon and Blazing Sparks: the powerhouse duo we’ve waited decades to see sharing the spotlight as Beckett’s tramps, threadbare in trousers and spirit. In what might be a post-apocalyptic neverwhere, they dawdle and quarrel and peevishly await one Godot (O’God?), who will never arrive. Estragon wrestles with his painful boot, trying to free it from his smelly foot; Vladimir periodically races offstage to urinate (bad kidneys). Sound designer Palmer Hefferan creates thin piddling in a shallow metal receptacle. I saw a hubcap, since director Arin Arbus and scenic designer Riccardo Hernández translate the “country road” stage direction into a U.S. highway; the two men stalk up and down asphalt and across yellow median stripes looking for all the world like Depression-era hobos who lost their bindles at dice.

For its first half, the 80-minute play keeps your attention with its dated but energetic battle of the sexes, but the longer we spend with these folks the less authentic they become. The scope is intimate to the point of claustrophobia; it contracts rather than expands. There’s only so many times you can watch these two take one step towards joy, and two steps back in shame or fear. By the hushed, tentatively hopeful end, the actors are crumpled on Lucille Lortel stage—practically below the sightlines of my row. What began as two rabid animals tearing each other apart ends as a whimper as they agree to share a cage.

To be honest, I slightly dreaded this one, after suffering through A Beautiful Noise a year ago. But although Manilow and Neil Diamond share similarities—Jewish soft-rockers big in the ’70s with kitschy afterlives—Harmony aims higher than jukebox navel-gazing. A story this compelling could have made a good musical—with less narration, more character development, and a finale that milked the nostalgia less. Needless to say, a tale of innocent people caught in a nauseating wave of antisemitism hits harder in our present moment. Director and choreographer Warren Carlyle skillfully weaves the elements together and gets the Harmonists—a handsome six-pack of triple threats—on their feet and dancing. Lovable tummler Zien gives his all to a self-recriminatory 11th-hour number about failing to save the group—call it “Rabbi’s Turn.” You might leave humming the title tune, but also unsatisfied. Well, he wrote the song.

DeVito gets more mileage out of Sam than you’d expect from the page, performing with a loose, raffish panache. When Foster tells Sam he’s planning to move to Ohio to be with his son’s family, Sam reacts with visceral incredulity. “Cleveland?!” he repeats, elongating the first syllable with a gargling glottal stop slathered in phlegm and contempt. Funny pronunciation. Silly faces. Kooky obsessives behaving irrationally. It’s been the stuff of sitcoms for decades and popular for a reason. Still, when you put TV-level product on the Broadway stage, don’t be surprised if the audience talks back.

Without exception the cast is appealing and utterly cohesive, directed by Daniel Aukin with his usual preternatural gift for tonal control. Like his jukebox heroes, Adjmi has worked on this play for a long time (almost a decade), and his devotion and insane attention to detail has yielded a dense and novelistic weave with the uncanny heft of observed life. I’ll be honest: I don’t remember every scene of this long, luxurious fly-on-the-wall beauty.

What music there is, is playful and joyous. You wish there were more of it, especially a finale. But Ives and Mantello do heroic work endowing it with coherence and force. Sondheim always insisted on giving equal credit to his book writers, those who fed him and goaded him. It’s fitting that his last collaborator finished the epitaph. Viewed in the context of Sondheim’s monumental career—quirkiest since Anyone Can Whistle, most political since Assassins—Here We Are is a tenderly whispered coda. It shocks, how much he achieved: writing the lyrics to West Side Story and Gypsy before he was thirty; noodling at the piano in his nineties. Here he was. Yet he’s still here.

Scenic designer Scott Pask simulates a disorganized backstage area with tables, technical gear and touches that suggest a Nutley yard sale (I see he bought the Star Wars bedsheets from my childhood on eBay) and costume designer Emily Rebholz gives the boys the perfect level of dweeby élan, down to Rannells’ tucked-in sweater. I don’t know if the bazillion trucker hats are sets, costumes, props or what, but give someone a Tony. Having staged much costlier and busier spectacles, it’s a treat to see Timbers work his signature blend of irony and ecstasy on a smaller scale with a tighter focus, while reserving a juicy reveal for the end. Gutenberg! is not designed to be anyone’s gateway musical or inspire a career in that impossible, flop-filled field, but it’s firmly imprinted on my heart, sans serif.

Scenic designer Scott Pask simulates a disorganized backstage area with tables, technical gear and touches that suggest a Nutley yard sale (I see he bought the Star Wars bedsheets from my childhood on eBay) and costume designer Emily Rebholz gives the boys the perfect level of dweeby élan, down to Rannells’ tucked-in sweater. I don’t know if the bazillion trucker hats are sets, costumes, props or what, but give someone a Tony. Having staged much costlier and busier spectacles, it’s a treat to see Timbers work his signature blend of irony and ecstasy on a smaller scale with a tighter focus, while reserving a juicy reveal for the end. Gutenberg! is not designed to be anyone’s gateway musical or inspire a career in that impossible, flop-filled field, but it’s firmly imprinted on my heart, sans serif.