David Cote — Theater Critic

Roundabout Theatre Company's lean, suspenseful and entertaining revival of Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play, while it unfolds during World War II, feels quite relevant. Fuller's murder mystery won the Pulitzer in 1982, was turned into a successful film in 1984, and now makes a belated but momentous Broadway debut thanks to an appealing cast and Kenny Leon's firm directing hand. Why such staying power? Easy: American racism is evergreen.

This being a holiday show for all ages, there's a broadly acted, crowd-pleasing vibe and frequent bits of audience interaction, especially after Scrooge's conversion. Carolers warble from every corner of the balconies; long sheets are unfurled to the stage to sluice apples, oranges and other treats into baskets for the Christmas feast; and stage snow drifts onto the audience. The kids at the matinee I attended squealed at the low-tech but delightful stage effects.

About 35 minutes into Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, I began to feel very protective toward the title subject. I battled the urge to jump onto the Lunt-Fontanne stage and angrily defend Tina from all the torture and humiliation going on. Call it patriarchal, call it white saviorism, but I found the great singer's treatment despicable. And I don't mean the years of physical and emotional abuse Tina suffered at the hands of husband and bandmate Ike Turner. No, the comeback queen of rock and the phenomenal actress playing her-Adrienne Warren-were trapped in a needlessly shoddy, demoralizing dud.

I must admit I found the mix of ecstatic music-making and aesthetic constraint similarly joyful and puzzling. Is this coolly mechanized realm the utopia referred to by the title, a place we want to be, a monochromatic escape from the overstimulating particularities of life? Or are we witnessing what it's like inside the prison of being David Byrne? Of being ourselves? You know the etymology of utopia, right? Fittingly, Byrne chooses Little Creatures' nihilist frontier anthem, 'Road to Nowhere,' for the encore. If the road ends here, I'm totally OK with that.

Unimpressed viewers could say that The Sound Inside is a gnomic short story pretending to be theater, but it's too liquid and rhetorical, too performative, to deserve that designation. (I've used it with other plays before.) Our presence in the room is essential to puzzling out of the facts presented to us, and Cromer's hushed, perfectly modulated staging unfolds with terrifying clarity, yet forces no conclusions on us. Hochman's Christopher, ardent but still the blank page of youth, brings off his swaggering lines with grace and humor. I didn't think I could revere Mary-Louise Parker more than I did, but arch, awkward Bella is one of her sharpest, funniest, most lived-in performances ever. Acerbic, detached, and monumentally sad, her Bella reminds any writer or lover of books why literature is the consolation of a lifetime, and sometimes a prison. The Sound Inside is a brilliant and unsettling portrait of a person who may escape death, but never the compulsion to transcribe that sentence that won't quit your head.

Jonathan Kent's handsomely designed and solidly acted production can't overcome the inherent banality and inertia of Zeller's pallid script, which ultimately resolves into widower porn. André finds a card of condolence that came with flowers introduced in the first scene and, finally, his sad situation becomes clear to him (and us, assuming we're still awake). His love lost but still sitting spookily beside him, our writer frets in his tasteful kitchen (picturesquely designed by Anthony Ward).

That world is on delicate display in Sea Wall/A Life, two monologues that were originally paired at the Public Theater this past winter. Now it has opened on Broadway at the handsome Hudson Theatre, with its moody design and appealing leading men intact. I reviewed Carrie Cracknell's mostly satisfying production downtown, and a second viewing only slightly budged my positive conclusion.

Director Arin Arbus skillfully moves her performers around the stage (grungily built by Riccardo Hernandez and adroitly lit by Natasha Katz) and into and out of their convincingly un-stylish clothing (designed by Emily Rebholz), with no attempt to glam up the crummy Hell's Kitchen studio locale. This is the sort of piece where direction ought to be invisible, just clearing space for the actors to breathe and fill the air, and Arbus does fine work. McDonald's Frankie is perhaps more vulnerable and jittery than the script calls for at times but shows inner strength and fire when needed. It's a pleasure to see Shannon luxuriate in a role that plays to his goofy, boyish side. Together, they forge a bond that's deeply moving, a prickly, organic tapestry of comic fluster, flashes of raw hurt, and pulsing erotic heat.

Still, too much of Ink wants to dazzle and seduce; it strenuously avoids passing judgement on what Murdoch's revolution would bring about 50 years later, keeping its prime villain almost in shadow. The cover grabs you with buzz words, grisly photos, and 72-point screaming headlines. But turn the page, and you find yourself wanting more news, less flash.

And here we come to the downside of Hnath's slippery technique. He crafts an adult, intelligent play about Hillary and Bill's private and public trials, but he's far too nice about it. Over the course of 90 minutes, Hill and Bill argue, make up, discuss the campaign, but the end is never in doubt, and there's a curiously defeated quality not only to Hillary's hopes, but to the arc of the drama itself. In the end, Hillary and Clinton is the wistful, Thornton Wilder-tinged mediation on HRC that no one asked for. There are rants, jokes and confessions, but it doesn't add up to much more than clever, lightly postmodern fanfic. (The same was ultimately true of A Doll's House, Part 2.) If you expect ideological shocks or absurdist flourishes, you'd be better off watching Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.

Silver fox André De Shields lends his funky-grandpa vibe to the narration-heavy role of Hermes. Big-voiced Eva Noblezada is pluck personified as a waifish Eurydice. Fitting for the god of the underworld, Patrick Page's basso profundo seems to issue from the lower basement. And, as Persephone, Amber Grey dials her devil-may-care hootchie-mama routine to 11, ensuring her eventual transfiguration as Eartha Kitt on Broadway one day. Less fruitful is Reeve Carney's Orpheus, conceived as a socially awkward art savant. Laying on the Dear Evan Hansen too thick, Carney's neurodiverse Orpheus (lots of gaping, arms hanging limply, fingers twitching) is a misfire. The survivor of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark remains a bit generic, despite sweet looks and a pretty pop falsetto. Hadestown needs a stronger injection of sexually charged romance.

Can a piece of theater (or any art) make you better? After seeing this show for the second time (after last year's run at New York Theatre Workshop), I believe so. Sure, there have been works of art that caused riots, or won 'obscenity' cases, even some-like 2002's The Exonerated-that spurred politicians to address wrongful conviction and the death penalty. Art can make a difference, it can improve you. But what does it take? Brutal honesty and plenty of facts. Schreck provides both in abundance-along with natural charisma and loads of humor.

Above all, it's acted and staged with consummate style and grace. O'Hara's angelic soprano navigates the quasi-bel-canto passages Cole Porter wrote for Lilli, not to mention salty comic numbers such as 'I Hate Men.' Chase exudes the perfect oily charm and exasperated panic as the actor-producer who finds his show coming apart at the seams, as well as decency under the bluster and swagger. Charming Corbin Bleu returns to Studio 54 (after his scene-stealing turn in the otherwise bland Holiday Inn) as hoofer and inveterate gambler Bill Calhoun, and his tap routines are sensational. Overall, choreographer Warren Carlyle's routines are spectacular, performed by a winning ensemble under veteran music-maker Paul Gemignani's flawless baton. I had to check my program twice to confirm that Styles is making her Broadway debut; the petite comic powerhouse is poised to join the lineage of Peters, Chenoweth and Ashford.

Now the Roundabout Theatre Company takes a whack at this testosterone- and booze-soaked brotherly beatdown, and the results are disappointingly wan. First, credit where it's due: British director James Macdonald treats the script as if it were a well-built drama, and not the scrappy excuse for histrionics and set bashing that it basically is. Macdonald's intelligent, detailed work reveals the play's symmetries, its nicely orchestrated musical qualities that alternate crashing violence and noise with hushed moments of melancholy. In other words, this is the most well-behaved True West I've ever seen.

Had The Prom's creative team-book writers Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin and composer Matthew Sklar-limited the frame to this story of intolerance and resistance, it would be spinachly worthy and Trumpily relevant. But they wrap an outrageous showbiz satire around the earnest center, and the result is the perfect blend of salt and sweet. The tag line: Broadway Boomers try to save prom for a millennial lesbian who is totally embarrassed by them. A good premise executed well is the formula that wins here.

I do wish Rebeck had taken her protagonist's utterances to heart in this energetic but scattershot period homage, Bernhardt/Hamlet. Brimming with ideas and saucy banter, it's lively but exhausting, manic and overstuffed, too much-possibly like the Divine Sarah was in life.

It's a typical Jerry Mitchell joint: all bright, sliding surfaces (L.A.-tacky sets by David Rockwell) and colorful chorus folk in constant motion. The highly likable Andy Karl, lately of Groundhog Day, plays Edward, yet another damaged male in need of healing, preferably from the fairer sex. As damsel-savior Vivian, Samantha Barks dutifully pours herself into a series of attractive dresses (by Gregg Barnes) modeled after the ones in the movie, and plies her strong pop soprano. Orfeh makes what meal she can from her leftover of a role, Vivian's co-sex worker Kit.

Having sat through the sweaty, janky garbage fire Gettin' the Band Back Together, I strongly suspect that producer and book writer Ken Davenport has a chest tattoo that reads (in Gothic script), 'No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.' Davenport, who is also responsible for My First Time (about losing your virginity), The Awesome '80s Prom and That Bachelorette Show, seems to never hesitate in grabbing, shall we say, the fruit that hangs low.

Head Over Heels does go retro, but waaay retro, to achieve something rarer and wonderfully strange. They've found the Venn overlap among 'We Got the Beat,' LGBTQ awakening, and Elizabethan allegory on humane statecraft.

So the play works both as a political satire/PC PSA and also as a philosophical study of human limitations. It does both brilliantly because Lee is, in fact, one of our boldest living playwrights, one I rank with Wallace Shawn, Suzan-Lori Parks and Tony Kushner. She's superficially goofier and perhaps less lofty than those canonized worthies, but the thinking drills deep and the writing is superbly executed. For a hard, clinical look at mediocrity, Straight White Men is thrillingly great.

The resonant original musical Bandstand dances a delicate line between nostalgia and disillusion. What it seems to promise, and often delivers, is Broadway escapism: a tale of soldiers returning from World War II into a lively world of big-band music, boogie-woogie dancing and a booming American economy. Donny (the very engaging Corey Cott) assembles a music combo composed entirely of fellow veterans, hoping to win a competition in New York and earn a shot at Hollywood. Sounds like a happy old movie, right? But these soldiers, we soon learn, have trouble getting into the swing of things. Try though they may-through work, repression, copious drinking-they can't shake off the horror of war.

Yes, John Guare's 1990 hit feels dated. Two Upper East Side culture vultures are swindled by an African-American youth pretending to be Sidney Poitier's son and their child's Harvard classmate: In 2017, such a plot would quickly unravel with a few Google clicks and a text to the kids. And yet, while technology nails this period as pre-World Wide Web, it swings both ways. Guare's elegant and elegiac social dramedy actually seems startlingly prophetic in the age of data mining, catfishing and avatars.

Where did such promising material-gut-renovated after its 2013 London debut-go wrong? Let's start at the top: Eccentric sweets manufacturer Willy Wonka (Christian Borle in fey bully mode) saunters on at the very beginning and tells us he's on a mission to find his replacement. Farewell, dramatic tension! In the movie, the Wonka legend is built up so that when Gene Wilder appears, it's a genuine thrill. Here Borle encourages us to loathe Wonka at our earliest convenience; and we know he's going to favor plucky poor-kid Charlie (Ryan Foust, alternating with two other boys).

Daniel Sullivan directs Hellman's Alabama tale with a crisp vigor that smooths over its melodramatic bumps. The prime mover is Regina, who plots with brothers Ben and Oscar (malevolently perfect Michael McKean and Darren Goldstein) to close a deal on a cotton mill in order to make them all filthy rich. The cast is uniformly strong, and outstanding work comes from the leading ladies. Linney is fire and ice: regal yet ready to spit venom. And Nixon, in the configuration I saw, is delicately touching as the meek, damaged Birdie. The Little Foxes may not command as high a prospect in the pantheon of American drama as more poetic work by Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill, but it's cunningly built and packs a punch; it's the August: Osage County of the interwar years.

The meta way to review Groundhog Day would be to repeat the same sarcastic, nit-picking paragraph three or four times before softening up and saying aw, heckfire, it's great!-thus breaking the spell of grouchy repetition. And while there are likeable, inspired elements in this musical adaptation of the great Bill Murray movie, time crawls as you wait for boorish weatherman Phil Connors to surrender to human kindness and true romance.