David Cote — Theater Critic

Chemistry is what you look for in the title pairing, and that's noticeably lacking here. Rashad is always lovely and effortlessly charming, but she's been encouraged to play up the textual fact that Juliet is a mere 13. Thus she's all dewy innocence and saucer eyes, line readings stuck too high in a girlish register. Bloom conveys a slightly older hipster (which gives the romance a provocative, asymmetrical twist), while embracing Romeo's foppish, self-loving side. We don't get many revivals of the classic on professional stages, so it's safe to say that Bloom's swaggering, matinee-idol Romeo will be the most engaging you'll see in years. But this is also the least erotically charged or sexually frank Romeo and Juliet I've ever attended.

Chemistry is what you look for in the title pairing, and that's noticeably lacking here. Rashad is always lovely and effortlessly charming, but she's been encouraged to play up the textual fact that Juliet is a mere 13. Thus she's all dewy innocence and saucer eyes, line readings stuck too high in a girlish register. Bloom conveys a slightly older hipster (which gives the romance a provocative, asymmetrical twist), while embracing Romeo's foppish, self-loving side. We don't get many revivals of the classic on professional stages, so it's safe to say that Bloom's swaggering, matinee-idol Romeo will be the most engaging you'll see in years. But this is also the least erotically charged or sexually frank Romeo and Juliet I've ever attended.

Despite a little overeagerness, First Date isn't a bad night out (provided you don't expect deep engagement). If ever there were the platonic ideal of a Broadway summer engagement, this is it: no serious competition, low expectations, emerging talent. There is skill on display in Austin Winsberg's anything-for-a-laugh book and the inoffensive light-rock score by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner...Bill Berry's jaunty staging keeps the laughs coming, and both leads have charm and vocal chops. Not every hookup has to be forever; First Date aims its love arrow for the middle and hits it with aplomb.

This robotically bland megacover of Fab Four hits continues the long and sorry tradition of Beatles impersonation, going back to Beatlemania on Broadway in 1977 continuing through 2010's equally dreadful Rain. The current manifestation uses archival video and '60s TV ads between sets in which we see musicians dressed and coiffed as Paul, John, George and Ringo on The Ed Sullivan Show, at Shea Stadium, in their Sgt. Pepper's phase and in their final hippie apotheosis. The performers play their instruments and sing the songs convincingly enough, with George Martin studio effects piped in by an onstage keyboardist. But you could get more authenticity and insight from iTunes and surfing the Web-or playing The Beatles: Rock Band. Let It Be is not bad so much as dead, and symptomatic of a broader cultural deadness.

Cicely Tyson may be small of frame and advanced in years, but she can still bust clear through a wall. The fourth wall, I mean: the one that separates the audience from Horton Foote's wistful, beautifully wrought diorama, The Trip to Bountiful...Rashad is understated and touching as Carrie's temporary traveling companion...Gooding and Williams flesh out their roles with acute sensitivity and humor...Tyson, returning to Broadway after 30 years, looks perfectly at home...This soul-stirring and flawless staging performs the same rejuvenation: Bountiful seems as fresh and vibrant as the day Foote finished it.

Shaw's performance is keen and staggering in its total effect, and slightly self-indulgent in its particulars (I felt a similar dichotomy a decade ago with her Medea). She has a tendency, especially early in the show, to show you how. bloody. hard. she's acting! And director Deborah Warner allows too much neurotic prop-moving business and italicized bits of mugging. (It's probably intentional, as the character is still processing the trauma and avoiding the admission of her fundamental lack of faith.) Still, this is a potent piece of writing, and Shaw winds up to a shattering finale.

While this Macbeth has spooky atmosphere and the verse raises gooseflesh, it falls between camps. Veterans of recontextualized Bard may yawn; people who don't know the text may be frightened, but more likely confused.

Director Daniel Sullivan makes the fatal mistake of trusting a play that is just an excuse for actors to fling themselves around a squalid set and out-emote each other. The airy, far-too-clean space only shows up Orphans' contrivances. Foster and Sturridge are both commendable-physically robust, emotionally raw yet assured-but in the service of what? Baldwin coasts on his natural charisma and comic timing, assuming a weirdly stilted delivery, a mix of Edward G. Robinson and Clark Gable. It's a dull, mechanical night.

The Big Knife's first Broadway revival is muscular, moody and stylish, with a mostly solid cast under Doug Hughes's shrewd direction. Cannavale has an air of whiskey-soaked Bogart about him and his line readings capture the snap and brassy bawl of Odetsian banter. (What a year it's been for the sinewy lug-first Ricky Roma, now this.) As Castle's estranged wife, Marion, Marin Ireland seems overly recessive and wan, but she has fiery moments. Fleshly and venomous Richard Kind devours his grandiloquent speeches as a thuggish, sanctimonious movie mogul...In general, the production strikes the right fevered, grisly tone.

The season isn't over yet, but The Nance may turn out to be its dramatic high point...Beane is in top form, tossing off glittering epigrams, but also crafting rich, flowing dialogue and giving even minor roles strokes of shading. Jack O'Brien stages the comedy skits and regular scenes with equal gusto. Lane shows his enormous range, expertly landing punch lines before punching us in the gut. Perhaps it's heteronormative of me to say, but The Nance can attract man or woman, gay or straight-even the undecided.

Happily, Matilda follows its diminutive hero's lead: It maintains a high level of cheeky mischief while hitting the requisite sentimental notes and a refreshing antiauthoritarian message...Minchin's score is a deft blend of Britpop, show tunes and Danny Elfman with clever (sometimes overly winking) lyrics that balance subversion with simple truths...Public-school sadism, horrid parents, men in drag: Needless to say, this material presses a lot of buttons in the English psyche, hence its runaway success across the pond. And while the show has been expertly assembled to balance sweet, sour, acidic and salty on the music-theater palate, one wonders if it's too English for Broadway audiences.

Wolfe stages the play-propelled by direct-address narration from McAlary's fellow journos (forming a kind of f-bomb-dropping Greek chorus)-at a furious clip. Split scenes, video projection and rapid cuts bridge the stylistic gap between the movie this material started as and the scrappy, vibrant urban drama it became. The hero of this latter-day Front Pagedied at the cusp of a new age, one of news aggregators, blogs and camera phones-not to mention plummeting ad dollars and circulation numbers. He and his fellow media dinosaurs didn't live to see what a bloodless hash the Internet would make of city news. Maybe they are the lucky ones.

Hardbody is not fresh enough to defend on the grounds of innovation. Ex-Phish rocker Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green’s ballad-heavy country & western score is far too repetitive, generic and poorly integrated into Doug Wright’s spunky but sketchy book. Cut a few of the 16 songs, trim the show to 90 minutes, and you might have a sweet, folksy chamber tuner about faith, hope and materialism in America. But it still wouldn’t fill a Broadway house.

We get too few comedies on Broadway, much less ones with the breezy wit and satirical bite of 'Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike'. Like the play’s lonely, bitter characters, I’m so happy that I can stop complaining.

The night may be unsatisfying, but it's not a total loss. Ciarán Hinds's Big Daddy offers some goatish fun; Debra Monk's Big Mama bustles and blubbers amusingly. And Emily Bergl's Mae (Maggie's sister-in-law and rival for Big Daddy's inheritance) is deliciously bitchy. Johansson could take a few pointers from Bergl on the fine art of purring

Pacino and Cannavale are fierce and hilarious, rattling through the Mametspeak. But the entire cast blazes in Daniel Sullivan's tight, anger-unmanaged staging: David Harbour's humiliated office prick, Williamson; John C. McGinley's bilious Moss; Richard Schiff's schlemiel Aaronow; Jeremy Shamos's spineless Lingk; and Murphy Guyer's cop, Baylen. They may be weak, craven shells of men, but they close on one of the biggest deals of the season.

That line—like everything in Lincoln Center Theater’s powerhouse revival—comes through with brightly burnished force; the jazz rhythms and escapist pang are pure Odets, In a fall already steeped in excellent revivals—Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Heiress and Glengarry Glen Ross—Golden Boy is the champion. Director Bartlett Sher, a superb 19-member ensemble and an ace design crew lift a neglected American classic and send it roaring back into the ring.

I have seen worse shows than Scandalous (Good Vibrations and The Pirate Queen were more painful to sit through), but few as wild-eyed and zealously wrongheaded. Carolee Carmello’s strident, belt-first-ask-questions-later approach to McPherson leaves very little room for subtlety or growth. We follow the evangelist from a repressive childhood in Canada (she loves Shakespeare; Mom thumps the Bible) through early, failed attempts to preach on street corners to her evolution into the head of a media-savvy evangelism empire.

Director Moisés Kaufman confidently, sensitively steers his splendid cast around Derek McLane’s grand townhouse set with painterly aplomb. A tale of lost innocence and the wages of experience,The Heiress will probably make you cry. But even through tears, you cannot fail to discern its astonishing, forlorn beauty.

Charles Chaplin had an amazing first act—a rags-to-riches tale of artistic triumph—and a crummy second one—personal scandal, political exile, and after The Great Dictator, a string of mediocre talkies. Such extremes don’t apply to the spunky, hopeful biomusical Chaplin, but after we see the origin of those iconic silent comedies featuring a bowler-hatted, square-mustachioed clown, the material does shuffle downhill. However, when this generally well-executed and likable piece works (for its first hour), there’s a surprising rush of wonder, excitement and childlike delight.

Want to make a ton of money? Peddle God to fools. Want to lose a ton of money? Invest in a Broadway turkey. You can’t have it both ways. It’s perfectly fine—even desirable—if your religion is crude and nonsensical, but a show as bland and confused as Leap of Faith is not going to make rich men of its producers (among whom are actual church leaders). The fake cash distributed by actors to audience members—so we may place it in the offertory baskets at Jonas Nightingale’s revivalist hoedowns—is all the green this wanly tacky production is likely to see.

Was it really four years ago that Camoletti’s Boeing-Boeing brought the house down with howls of laughter, with Mark Rylance’s bizarre antics and the sight of color-coordinated stewardesses tumbling in and out of doors? Don’t Dress is technically a sequel, bringing back horny Bernard and comparatively guileless Robert for more girl trouble and elaborate deceptions. But this time, due to an uneven ensemble, uninspired direction and a too talky script, the farcical magic never materializes...You shouldn’t be aware of time passing during a farce. Although individual actors carve out genuinely funny moments—Daniels becomes amusingly flustered, Tilly is sexily brazen, and Kayden wields a dangerous deadpan—you mainly wait for this busy, bland meal to end, so you can get dessert someplace else.

John Lithgow is a natural for this kind of role, and he may be doing his best stage work. His Alsop is a vigorous, contradictory figure, brimming with intellectual fire and just a dash of camp. Lithgow has always combined great strength (physical or mental) with a touching vulnerability, an almost girlish embarrassment flickering somewhere behind the eyes. As self-righteously monstrous as Alsop grows, Lithgow never completely loses our sympathy. And yet Auburn never gets us inside his subject...The world doesn’t need more monologues, but you wish Auburn had told this story with a single voice. Let’s call this Auburn’s sophomore slump. And hope he makes his next deadline before another decade passes.

Hunger, like all urgent and uncontrollable bodily functions, is an eternal wellspring of humor. Think of Charlie Chaplin grimly carving up his boot in The Gold Rush, Mr. Creosote’s last supper and that old, reliable sight gag, the fellow desert-islander who morphs into a talking turkey leg. Tummy rumbles equal belly laughs, and both abound in the National Theatre’s gobsmackingly funny One Man, Two Guvnors. Driven in its first half by the peckish desperation of freelance flunky Francis Henshall (James Corden), this virtuoso banquet of slapstick farce and verbal jousting brings with it a shocking revelation: How starved we were for comedy.

Peter and the Starcatcher has indeed grown up: It’s on Broadway with a steeper ticket price than during its intimate maiden voyage at New York Theatre Workshop last year. And while the production is bigger and shinier, beneath the dazzling, tricked-out proscenium beats the exhilarated heart of a kid who wants to fly. And you can be sure: Peter soars—deliriously high and gloriously far.