David Cote

Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson steers a powerhouse cast through the dense alleyways and along the majestic avenues of Wilson's language. We live in a time of clever dramatists working wonders with intertextuality and frames, but so few have an ear like Wilson (Fences) had: a voracious organ absorbing the rhythms and poetry of his working-class characters.

Chekhov never wrote a play called The Present; that's what Australian adapter Andrew Upton calls his remodeled Platonov. Then again, Chekhov never wrote a play called Platonov; that's one of the titles historians have applied to the Russian dramatist's untitled, unwieldy, unfinished work, found in a safe-deposit box 16 years after his death. I've never read or seen the piece: An uncut staging would run about five hours. Young Chekhov wrote it while in medical school, and by all accounts, it's a dramaturgical train wreck (ending with suicide on actual train tracks-eat your heart out, Martin McDonagh!).

This Broadway iteration, sprucely directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall and with a charming ensemble, better showcases the book and score (by writers and vocal arrangers who have worked on Frozen and the Pitch Perfectmovies). But the central problem remains: harmonic overload. If you listen to Pentatonix on repeat and own the box set of Glee, you might spend 100 minutes in bliss. The rest of us will grow tired of numbers that sound like '70s sitcom theme songs or advertising jingles. This is where I get off.

This ghostly and sensuous revival of Christopher Hampton's hit play (based on the 1782 epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos) arrives on Broadway via the Donmar Warehouse with a mostly British cast. The ferocious Janet McTeer has come over, too, as the scheming Marquise de Merteuil, more than a match for Valmont as they trade the hearts of naive men and women like playing cards. Schreiber's impassive libertine pairs nicely with McTeer's vengeful, wicked widow. Director Josie Rourke opts for a languid pace as these two dance a minuet of wasted love and cruelty, a game in which death is the prize and the winner feels cheated.

Look, we're all depressed this election year. We're sick of seeing know-nothing politicians; of hearing obscene language insulting women and minorities; and we're disgusted by the media's bottomless appetite for sensationalism. The only antidote I can suggest for this national malaise is a visit to the Broadhurst Theatre to see the 5,000-volt revival of The Front Page. What's it about? Oh, all that stuff I just mentioned-but whipped into a hellacious comic frenzy by one of the best acting ensembles you and I may ever see. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1928 evisceration of the newspaper racket is a summit of American screwball comedy, and Nathan Lane, John Slattery and two dozen other actors climb it and plant their flag. It's strange to feel so invigorated and refreshed by a spectacle of rampant cynicism in which love, truth and loyalty are systematically demolished. But see this brutally brilliant masterpiece, and you'll be inoculated against the viciousness of the world.

I'm all for director's theater when it comes to classics; the only question is whether a new frame or filter works on its own terms. And with this thoughtful but often schematic and disjointed Cherry Orchard, the answer is: only in spurts.

Taking on the Astaire role as cocky hoofer Ted Hanover, Corbin Bleu (High School Musical) has a winning muscularity and grace in various tap and ballroom sequences. Pinkham generates some chemistry with Lora Lee Gayer as a lonely schoolteacher whose family used to own the house. They duet sweetly on 'White Christmas,' one of the two dozen-odd Irving Berlin ditties jukeboxed into a jazzy-elegant score. And let's hear it for the chorus-an adorable, charmingly diverse bunch. Sure, there's more corn and cheese served in this earnest, sweater-vested affair than any nutritionist would approve, but what harm in a cup of early eggnog?

In this primal, lysergic movie for the brain, McBurney covers a dazzling array of topics: the nature of time, technology's deadening of mental powers, and the spiritual cost of civilized life. Part mystic thriller, part tricksy aural illusion, The Encounter offers a meeting of ear, mind and soul you will never forget.

Today, Cats feels experimental only in the sense of writing a show as if Oklahoma! and Company never happened. Lloyd Webber's ability to craft a coherent book musical has always been shaky (School of Rock being a late-career exception to the rule). Cats is an attenuated high-concept revue that grows tedious by its second act. A bunch of cats slink out one night, introduce themselves and, by the end, two of them go to kitty heaven. Now and then you may catch a word not normally heard on Broadway: 'ineffable' or 'perpendicular.'

I could say that the return engagement of An Act of God, now with Sean Hayes, is a revelation, a miraculous epiphany or similar 'religious' experience. Truth to tell, I was already a believer. I thoroughly enjoyed David Javerbaum's theological satire last summer when it starred Jim Parsons, and I could watch Hayes's bratty-campy shtick all night. So what if Hayes and his helpful angels Gabriel and Michael (James Gleason, David Josefsberg) are preaching to the choir? Preach out, Sean!

The first half is sensational; the second is difficult, in terms of our heroes' postsuccess fates and how engagingly their narratives play out. But with a cast this incandescent (I haven't even mentioned Audra McDonald's tender, guarded brilliance as diva Lottie Gee) and Wolfe staging a constant flow of miracles, there's an overflow of joy and style that smooths over stylistic rough edges and knotty stitching of history to myth...Above all, we can luxuriate in a breathtaking piece of showmanship, featuring more talent crowding a stage than pretty much any other Broadway show at present (and yes, that includes Hamilton)...Oh, and there's dance-miles and miles of ecstatic, syncopated genius courtesy of Savion Glover.

Natalie Babbitt's best-selling 1975 young-adult novel has been filmed twice, and now it returns as an earnest, somewhat attenuated musical. But if Andrew Keenan-Bolger and child actor Sarah Charles Lewis pull off their parts and still retain wide-eyed likability, that's a testament to something enduring...the show addresses deep topics: the nature of time, memory and the circle of life...Chris Miller's Celtic-flavored music and Nathan Tysen's searching lyrics deliver emotionally, if elsewhere they seem merely upbeat and serviceable. The larger problem lies in Claudia Shear and Tim Federle's lumpy book, which takes too long to establish tone and stakes in the first act...Director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw does his best with a prettily designed production.

Based on the 2007 indie film by the late writer-director Adrienne Shelly, Waitress has been whipped (I'll stop now) into an expertly constructed and emotionally satisfying tale of self-liberation in the face of limited options. Jessie Nelson's broadly comic yet brooding book meshes wonderfully with a frisky, bright score by pop star Sara Bareilles, a seasoned songwriter who lets the Beatles and other Britpop influences shine through. Bareilles's custom-built earworms address workplace pluck ('Opening Up'), first-date jitters ('When He Sees Me'), quirky, obsessive love ('Never Ever Getting Rid of Me') and an eleventh-hour ballad of loss and regret ('She Used to Be Mine'), which will rip your heart out.

There are two types of audience members attending Ivo van Hove's The Crucible: those who take their seats and, when the curtain rises, wonder, Why's it set in a classroom? and the other half (please let it be more than half) that nods and thinks, Of course it's in a classroom. Van Hove's electrifying and audacious staging achieves what more revivals should: It makes old work seem new, blows away the dust and exposes caulked cracks...Miller's masterpiece, still a model of post-Ibsenite drama, holds up: Society is forever torn between preserving its power structures and extending freedoms. Those caught in the middle pay the highest price...the cast is ridiculously stuffed with talent...The country beyond the walls of the Walter Kerr may be damned, but inside, Van Hove is wrestling with the angels.

...we all know that romantic comedies depend on chemistry-between leads. Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi have that in spades. As quarrelsome clerks in a Budapest perfume store in the heaven-sent She Loves Me, these two cuties irritate each other so much, they're obviously destined for cuddles and kisses...In a classic 'second couple' subplot, the luscious Jane Krakowski plays a shopgirl having an ill-advised workplace affair with Gavin Creel's dapper cad. The Roundabout gets so much right in a splendid, joy-stuffed production: casting, design and even the reduced orchestra (guided with tremendous grace by Paul Gemignani)...Benanti, besides looking as lovely as ever and earning her laughs, shows off an old-fashioned soprano with affecting vibrato. Levi slips into Georg's skin with ease, exuding sweet modesty and just a pinch of hauteur.

Shock ought to have a shelf life, the way horror movies lose their power after repeat viewings...Yet years later, there I was at the Belasco, craning forward, then recoiling, as Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams clawed at each other's psyches and bodies, playing ex-lovers or, to be precise, a pedophile and his victim...Blackbird is a comfortless 80-minute reckoning of arrested time and soiled innocence...Vocally, Williams is doing something interesting . She speaks in a halting, affected manner, as if Una has been rehearsing these speeches in her head for years, a girl trying to sound like an adult...As when he played Ray nine years ago, Daniels brilliantly rages, bargains, stonewalls and implodes...Time has been shattered for these walking ghosts, and we are transfixed watching them cut their hands, sifting through the shards.

Yes, the accomplished film star is listed in the program and speaks Erie's lines, but he misses the spirit of the character, leaving an unmistakable void not to be confused with the playwright's poetic nihilism...A lot goes well: Frank Wood provides able support as a new night clerk...Wood's role is tricky, requiring long stretches of deadpan stillness and barely active listening, but he fills it well. The physical production - sleekly directed by Michael Grandage - is grimly gorgeous to a fault...We get it: Erie is a damned soul in torment - but Whitaker portrays him as a low-status, apologetic schlemiel who's already given up. When he should be a big-talking con man and Runyonesque swell, Whitaker tries something possibly more realistic, but ends up blunting O'Neill's punchy lines...as we wait for Whitaker to gain confidence in his character, the night grows long and weary.

Noises Off is a precision-timed laugh machine, and director Jeremy Herrin's ensemble is peppered with some of New York's finest comic actors. So why did I chuckle so little-perhaps even less than at the weak 2001 mounting?...There's the culture gap: Good as our American troupers are, they don't quite get the jauntily sleazy vibe of English sex comedy...If nothing else, this should be a retro hoot and a chance for nine actors to show off their slapstick and goofing. How can anyone not cackle at master-of-squirm Jeremy Shamos slipping-for what seems an entire minute-in sardine juice? Okay, that one got me. So, fleetingly, did other elements: Megan Hilton's blond ditz, giving superbly wooden-chirpy line readings; Rob McClure's mousy, frantic understudy/stagehand; and Andrea Martin, going full zany and threatening a cheating lover with an ax. But these are only sparks, not a blaze.

A great Tevye, and Burstein is nothing short of a miracle, finding the modern mensch in Tevye, as well as the hard-nosed, belief-bound peasant. Rather than bluster or roar his way through the role, Burstein has a delicate, almost motherly touch, kibbitzing with God for laughs and tearing out our hearts by the end. No other actor could juggle the comedy and tragedy masks with such style, such a bittersweet dance with tradition.

It worked for the movie, and wow, does it work on Broadway, a double jolt of adrenaline and sugar to inspire the most helicoptered of tots to play hooky and go shred an ax. For those about to love School of Rock: We salute you. What a relief to see that an unlikely creative team-Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, veteran composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Glenn Slater (Leap of Faith)-successfully execute such a smart transfer of film to stage.

Willis's weirdly narcotized and passive Broadway debut goes above and beyond the drugged, physically diminished circumstances of his character. On a meta level, Misery is about Willis playing film star Willis being terrorized by Metcalf's superior acting talent. For any poor soul who shells outs $165 a ticket rather than, say, streams the flick while enjoying a nice cup of cocoa, there's partial compensation: a majestically loony turn by Metcalf as the deranged 'number-one fan' of Sheldon's Gothic romance series. Filling the vacuum left by a deadpanning Willis, Metcalf hoots, purrs, howls and tears around her kitsch-filled Colorado home, where Sheldon is imprisoned and forced to write her favorite character back to life.

Shatteringly tough revivals such as A View from the Bridge can inspire dueling emotions. First, obviously, there's immense satisfaction and gratitude that Belgian director Ivo van Hove digs down and grabs the pulsing, bloody heart of Arthur Miller's 1956 drama...But then comes anger that similarly audacious visions of the classics are so rare...The head that throbs the hardest is bullet-clean and belongs to Mark Strong, who gives a performance of harrowing intensity as doomed Eddie Carbone...Van Hove stages this elegant and lean tale with almost perverse understatement...Earlier I promised angry words about New York's 'classics problem'...Our directors need to study how [van Hove] strips away anything inessential to the text and lasers in on breathing, moving bodies in space.

Writing five acts mostly in iambic pentameter, Bartlett plugs directly into a tradition that uses scintillating metered poetry to connect the fortunes of a nation to the torments of a family. Had this speculative tale of Prince Charles ascending to the throne after Elizabeth II's death been executed in prose, it would have been a mere 'state of the nation' British drama with a bit of satirical cheek... Improbably, the twittish Prince of Wales approaches the introspective grandeur of Richard II, and we lean forward hungrily, gobbling up his cascading iambs.

Daniel Sullivan's spic-and-span production pretty well justifies the Broadway premiere of what is a modest and very Manhattan Theatre Club-type play...Broderick, perkier than he's been lately, gets crucial voltage from Ashford and White, both endlessly inventive comedians. Ashford has the showier role, of course, dashing about in fanciful doggy couture (costumes by Ann Roth) on David Rockwell's fairy-tale Central Park set and keeping up a sassy stream-of-consciousness. She sniffs strangers' crotches with impunity; she butt-scoots on the carpet; she swears viciously at cats. What a joy to see Ashford unleashed.­

...it's a welcome shock to see the actor stripped of all that allure in the opening tableau of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, in which Arianda plays bucking bronco to Sam Rockwell's dusty cowpoke. Slumped on a motel bed in unflattering, baggy clothes, head slung low, this is Arianda as a broken doll, as trashed as the grubby room around her. She may spring to life with a furious attack and eventually pour herself into a little red number, but Arianda's May is not the glamor fest one expects. Just as surprising is Rockwell's Eddie...here he seems to dig deep into painful places for Eddie, a tight-lipped fellow whose leathery exterior hides a frightened boy...Daniel Aukin's painterly diorama production benefits from key support from a fine Tom Pelphrey as May's bemused beau and Gordon Joseph Weiss as a spectral old-timer who may have fathered both fractious lovers (there's a whisper of Greek tragedy amidst the tumbleweeds). But it's Rockwell and Arianda who most strike the sparks, blow on the embers and get the fire raging.