David Cote

Christine Jones's set is undeniably forceful -- a back wall covered with a vertiginous vortex that lights up, the 'converted farmhouse' specified in Pinter's stage directions rendered as an island of high-gloss black surfaces upon which chic modern furniture floats (close observers will note a turntable moving very slowly). Combined with incidental music by Radiohead's Thom Yorke (industrial and menacing, as you'd expect), the mood is abstract, ghostly, interior. Problem is, the play already does all that: The designers are overdoing it...Owen and Reilly are quite good: He's coiled, boastful and sexy, with an edge of sleaze; she languorously transfers herself from divan to chair as if wafted by a draft, her sloe-eyed, sleepwalker presence belying a savage final attack. As the third wheel, Best, normally a steely presence, seems stranded between her costars' choices: too bland and self-contained when she should be spiky and aggressive...Despite overdetermined design and asymmetrical performances, Pinter's precise, lyrical language comes through with crystalized, cutting force.

I love Hamilton. I love it like I love New York, or Broadway when it gets it right. And this is so right. A sublime conjunction of radio-ready hip-hop (as well as R&B, Britpop and trad showstoppers), under-dramatized American history and Miranda's uniquely personal focus as a son of immigrants and as an inexhaustible wordsmith, Hamilton hits multilevel culture buttons, hard...Miranda may be composer-lyricist and star, but the world he creates is vibrantly democratic. Hamilton is the center, but Burr is his equally weighted Judas and Javert-and more complexly drawn than either...Phillipa Soo, playing the betrayed but finally forgiving wife, Eliza, has some of the show's most heartbreaking music...As French ally Lafayette in the first act and a foppish, trash-talking Thomas Jefferson in the second, Daveed Diggs blazes with raffish charisma. Jonathan Groff has inherited the role of King George from Brian d'Arcy James, and finds new levels of comic brilliance in his short but convulsively funny appearances...And the lovely, pure-voiced Renée Elise Goldsberry's Angelica Schuyler will make you demand a spinoff musical all her own. Part of the genius of Miranda's writing is this polyphonic, block-party quality, where everyone gets their say.

Sadly, a complete showbiz neophyte decided to turn it into a Les Miz-style melodrama, and the crude result has been buffed to a high sheen by a talented cast and crew with $16 million at their disposal. If only some of that filthy lucre had gone to script doctors and ghostwriters instead...As Newton, Josh Young has a sterling, ringing tenor, but his character is annoyingly passive and shrill. The majestic Chuck Cooper brings every ounce of humor and dignity to bear on his invented role, the servant Thomas, steering it a hairsbreadth away from Magical Negro territory. Amazing Grace may be based on historical persons and events, but but in this case, truth is more compelling than fiction...Personally, I expect poetic license in the theater, but I expect it to serve a strong artistic or political vision. Amazing Grace has neither.

The version now on Broadway is the same I caught last summer at Williamstown Theatre Festival, and it remains fascinating and alluring, if finally repetitive and frustrating...studded with Kander & Ebb's Weill-and-vamp song stylings (however sleek and insinuating), it becomes a musical where the numbers retard the forward motion, which is, anyway, linear and predicable: Claire will have her revenge, and corruptible society will help her. Great acting wouldn't turn the mismatch into a great musical, but it also wouldn't hurt: Rivera, of course, is naturally commanding and regal, but a better dramatic actor would squeeze more mileage from Claire's mix of sadism and self-pity. Rees does well playing Schell as a husk of a man, but his Rex Harrison school of speak-singing drains power from the songs.

...Something Rotten! has established itself as Broadway's funniest, splashiest, slap-happiest musical comedy in at least 400 years...tremendous care and showbiz savvy have gone into making a sophisticatedly silly rom-com that has it all: laugh-out-loud lyrics, catchy music, jaw-dropping sight gags and a powerhouse cast selling Bard-laced punch lines to the ecstatic balcony...the songs...are perfectly placed and deliver an escalating level of zaniness. Director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw...keeps it all spinning dizzily, imbuing the self-referential theatricality with sass and smarts. And what a cast. If you didn't already know what a smashing actor and singer Brian D'Arcy James is...here is a chance to see him carry a show with wit, fire and some impressive tap moves.

Zhivago, based on Boris Pasternak's 1957 doorstop (which also inspired the great David Lean film) is a dauntingly interior novel to distill into a musical. Its stakes are more nuanced than in Hugo's moral fable, and there's not much drama watching our hero (Tam Mutu) sit down to write a poem after finally sleeping with longtime obsession Lara (Kelli Barrett)...No amount of Lucy Simon's syrupy, portentous music -- swamping Michael Korie and Amy Powers's workmanlike lyrics -- can make us care for the synthetic, drably colored pageant. Des McAnuff's staging looks expensive but ugly, with cheesy video close-ups of actors, giant Soviet propaganda posters, eruptions of fire and the occasional explosion or gunshot to wake us up. To Siberia with it.

...in a year of bland nostalgic revivals, this grand and glorious production gives you hope in the nonprofit stewardship of our theatrical heritage...let's be frank: Although Hammerstein's characterization of the King has pain and pathos in addition to comic bluster, he speaks a pidgin English that few actors can pull off today. Luckily, the Japanese Watanabe shows a man struggling with a foreign tongue. (His accent can be thick, but that adds authenticity.) The 55-year-old Watanabe also cuts an older figure than Lou Diamond Phillips did in the 1996 revival, which adds gravitas as well as humor to his outbursts and temper tantrums. O'Hara sounds angelic as ever...her silky, shimmering soprano a treasure -- and the role plays to her strengths: wryness, warmth and quiet dignity. Sher directs her and the rest of an exceptionally good cast...with palpable respect for the material and a care to avoid orientalist humbug.

Manic, childish applause might cure the poisoned fairy Tinker Bell, but it's not medicine enough for Finding Neverland, the awkward, garish and manipulative musical...Show-doctored into a state of shrill mediocrity, the patient can barely walk, let alone fly...This being a family musical competing with the superior Wicked, Matilda and others, nonexistent drama has been drummed up (along with the volume, in Jonathan Deans's oppressive sound design) to justify two acts about a successful writer's new project and his crush on a sickly widow. Some of the cartoonish overacting and second-act plucking of heartstrings might be forgiven if the score were enchanting, but Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy's tunes (a mix of Britpop and pseudo-music-hall) are generic and burdened by cheap, trite lyrics. When the brightest element in Diane Paulus's tacky staging is Kelsey Grammer as a curmudgeonly producer, you know it's time to get the hook.

The arrival of two big musicals derived from classic 1950s movies located in the City of Light (see Gigi) indicates either a resurgent interest in the early film oeuvre of Leslie Caron or a lack of producer imagination. Or maybe it's just random, unintentionally reflected in the patchwork-if also lavish and classy-quality of An American in Paris. There's much gorgeous ballet to admire in director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's Broadway debut, set against attractive, painterly backdrops by Bob Crowley, but the overall effect is of a dance concert with a semiserious musical squeezed into the cracks.

As cunningly played by Ben Miles...Cromwell is at once cipher, savior and demon over nearly six hours of wrangling between pope and crown, and then within the vipers' nest that was the court of King Henry VIII (Nathaniel Parker)...Given the long shadow of English history plays, there are faint but unmistakable textual echoes of Shakespeare two great tetralogies...But the comparison is double-edged; as much as the fact-crammed pageantry of Wolf Hall maintains admirable clarity and pacing, it often lacks the sudden burst of lyricism or philosophical depth you find in the Bard. In other words, I'd have taken more poetry over plot. Still, as a fast-paced political thriller, it is fiendishly engaging, and director Jeremy Herrin's 23-member corps skillfully distinguishes multiple roles.

Society looms large in the Stephen Daldry's charged revival of David Hare's Skylight­...Bob Crowley's set...never lets you forget the wider world beyond Kyra's drab, barely heated flat. No matter how bitterly personal -- or airily abstract -- things get between these ex-lovers, you cannot ignore the unseen lives going on behind so many strangers' panes...Not to mislead: The piece is very much a nuanced relationship drama...the material is red meat to actors as fearless and deep-diving as Mulligan and Nighy. He's a haughty whirl of sharp elbow and legs scissoring out like a praying mantis; she balances his edgy antics with a convincingly warm, centered performance -- but one that hides great pain. There's an age difference between the characters, and a power imbalance, but the acting is beautifully matched (Matthew Beard is puckishly charming as Tom's concerned son). To invert a truism, strange bedfellows make politics -- and very interesting ones.

Exuding perfect regal frostiness while letting us glimpse the lonely person underneath, Mirren transforms brilliantly (helped by lightning-fast costume changes) from the grandmotherly 69-year-old comforting an insecure John Major (Dylan Baker) to the 25-year-old heir apparent nervously schooled by Winston Churchill (Dakin Matthews). Richard McCabe's sly-boots Labour PM Harold Wilson teases her with obvious affection, and she nimbly defends herself against the fire-breathing Margaret Thatcher (Judith Ivey).

Fish In the Dark may be new, but its comic ingredients are classically aged: horny, old ladies, greedy relatives, philandering dads, luscious blonds and preposterous deceptions...David's contribution is mainly to be himself, the Everyputz he played on Curb Your Enthusiasm: cheerfully cynical, blithely petty and amazed that anyone should be offended by his honesty...Anna D. Shapiro stages the hybrid sitcom-farce for maximum shine, and the mix of seasoned actors with David's breezy script (about three TV episodes' worth of plot windup) results in a night of huge, rolling laughs. Many of them come from David's idiosyncratic presence. He may lack subtlety or wit but makes up for it in indignant bluster and humor that sidles slyly to the edge of bad taste...David is broad and hammy amid stage pros, but that's part of his gruff, goofy charm.

Honeymoon in Vegas is too damn fun to keep secret. Jason Robert Brown's big and brassy score borrows gleefully from the obvious sources -- Sinatra, Mancini and Liberace -- and splices that swingin' lounge vibe with his own bouncy, wryly neurotic voice...it's a thrill to see his musical craft and depth in the service of so much splendid silliness. Because let's face it: Andrew Bergman's book, which hews closely to the bones of his 1992 screenplay, is goofy stuff...But it's very funny...The cast is superb, and what Danza lacks in strong vocal chops he makes up for in charm and characterful crooning. Gary Griffin's frisky staging abounds in sight gags and gorgeous chorus girls. In terms of sheer bubbly fun, Honeymoon ranks up there with some of my favorite new musical comedies on the job The Full Monty, Hairspray or In the Heights, and recent ones The Book of Mormon and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. Broadway may be a crapshoot, but Honeymoon hits the jackpot.

In interviews, Cooper has spoken warmly of his longtime dream of playing Merrick (the 1980 movie version drew him to acting), and he certainly rises to the physical and vocal challenges. Employing the tradition of using neither prosthetics nor makeup, Cooper adopts Merrick's painfully askew physique, right arm a swollen club, left one strikingly delicate. His breathing is labored and full of gurgles and gasps, yet when Merrick speaks, it is a thoughtful, refined tenor. This collision of monstrousness and grace-of the animal and human-attracts the professional attention of Dr. Frederick Treves (Nivola), who rescues Merrick after he's been abandoned by the abusive circus impresario Ross (Anthony Heald).

...if you don't let in this desolating, resonant piece (via brain or heart), it might indeed seem little else than two talky hours...A stony stare at varieties of moral vacancy, the play itself is full to bursting...I never saw the 1996 Lincoln Center revival, which reportedly struck a more realistic tone. But Pam MacKinnon directs this solid revival with a keen ear for the curling, teasing rhythms of Albee's ornate lines, and the performances are top-notch, including the perfectly deadpan Balaban and a sinister Higgins as the unwelcome guests. Martha Plimpton finds sympathetic notes in the difficult, shrill role of Julia, and Close and Lithgow handle their tricky speeches with grace and nuance. If Close is a touch too frosty, she's thawed by Lithgow's warmth.

For those turned on to Butterworth by 2011's Jerusalem, the new work clearly continues his fascination with self-destructive outsiders in pastoral isolation. The River may lack the Rabelaisian exuberance of Jerusalem but offers more intimacy and outright strangeness. Those attending simply to ogle Jackman (buff and charismatic as always) get an extra treat, if they can appreciate it: a movie star facing an acting challenge in an exceptional piece of stage writing.

True to form, The Real Thing (1982) is exceedingly well made, a keen and touching study of fidelity, fiction and marital love among theater folk. Its craftsmanship is so solid, in fact, it resists director Sam Gold's well-meaning attempts to improve it...With Stoppard, though, you don't need to tinker much; it's all on the page. Gold's work with the actors is perfectly sound; McGregor and Gyllenhaal are naturally charismatic, intelligent performers who deliver Stoppard's brainy badinage with nervy aplomb. It's just the sing-alongs that got on my nerves...But Gold's excavation of this element doesn't add anything, just directorial static...It's a strong ensemble, featuring a brief but memorable turn by Ronan Raftery as one of Annie's ardent admirers. McGregor makes his Broadway debut with assurance, charm and sparkle. And those juicy encomiums he delivers on intimacy and literature? He hits them, and how they fly.

In truth, this is a superior production to the one that opened at Lincoln Center in 2012, with a more charismatic cast and a better sense of the rising ideological stakes. In the lead role of proudly assimilated lawyer Amir Kapoor, Hari Dhillon cuts a handsome, graceful figure...He has an easy chemistry with his pretty wife, Emily (Gretchen Mol), an artist whose recent work is influenced by Islamic ornamentation. The plot is mainly a vehicle getting its characters to a place where they show the cracks within carefully constructed social attitudes of worldliness or multiculti tolerance...Akhtar may not have revolutionary things to say about poorly repressed animosities between East and West, but he says them eloquently and passionately. Now that the context has changed, maybe I'm listening more closely.

When the muscular ensemble is tearing into Sting's rueful ballads or jaunty barroom reels, you almost forget that the narrative stakes are exceedingly attenuated-unemployed shipwrights in a northern English town occupy a decommissioned factory to build one final vessel as an act of defiant solidarity. It's a nice gesture, a symbolic blow for the working man priced out of his profession, but book writers John Logan and Brian Yorkey don't quite establish what the lads hope to achieve-beyond a chance to drill their workplace shanty 'We've Got Now't Else' into our limbic system.

'Tonight, everyone's a critic,' says TV actor James Wicker (Lane), in town to celebrate the Broadway debut of his playwright friend Peter (Broderick)...Wicker's line is one of the few honest remarks in Terrence McNally's otherwise cliché-filled It's Only a Play. Mostly plotless and spun from the sketchiest of stereotypes and hoariest of showbiz prejudices, this insider trifle is too long, too shallow and not nearly funny enough...There are the customary paeans to the nobility of theater artists and their sacrifices for the wicked stage, but the evening's dominant mood is bitter, out-of-touch self-regard...If you're a show person of any sort...you may get a hearty laugh at the low-hanging fruit. If not, It's Only a Play may seem alien and awkward, a hybrid of 1980s sitcom schmaltz and 2014 Gawker trolling. Either way, it's a night of shameless, attenuated playwright navel-gazing.

That combination of intense emotionalism and visual dazzle is captured brilliantly in Marianne Elliott's production, awash in video projections and moving parts (the ingenious grid-lined set is by Bunny Christie). Simon Stephens's lean, fast-moving adaptation makes smart use of the ensemble to create a polyphony of voices for narrative heavy lifting, while his domestic scenes don't stint on grimness.

Masterful the blueprint may be, but a weak ensemble and tin-eared direction can screw it up. But this revival (the first in more than 30 years) is stuffed with the city's finest comic talents. Besides the aforementioned pros, marvelous Reg Rogers lopes around the periphery as a raffish Russian dance teacher, while Julie Halston stops the show as a dipsomaniacal stage hack Penny brings home. Scott Ellis conducts the escalating craziness with style and grace on David Rockwell's perfectly cluttered, eclectic living-room set. The Sycamores will welcome literally anyone into the family: It's hard to resist running away to join their circus.

Director Gregory Mosher keeps it sweet and simple: Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy sit at a comfy wooden desk, water glasses within reach, reciting from scripts. Both seasoned actors slide easily into their carefully shaded roles: She affects a pixieish impudence as free-thinking rich girl Melissa Gardner; he maintains a stiff sense of propriety as rules-bound Andrew Makepeace Ladd III...As usual with Gurney, the language is wry, witty and balanced by reflexive sadness, a mixed admiration and horror for Eastern WASP repression and snobbery. Although the piece may not push the envelope, it does leave a stamp.

...Cera has managed to appear both fetally unguarded and crushed by the weight of the world (a millennial Charlie Brown). That broken-naïf vibe makes him perfect for Warren Straub in Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth, in which Cera plays a jumpy and immature 19-year-old who already seems soured by the seedy banalities of 1982 New York....Anna D. Shapiro's clear-eyed and tight staging brings out earnest, honest performances from the young trio. Cera's facial deadpan and vocal drone have the curious effect of deepening, not lessening, our sympathy for Warren. Culkin gets to shine in the flashier role, and Gevinson toggles amusingly between prim ingenue and panicked urbanite. They're nice kids; I think they've got a bright future ahead of them.