David Finkle

Another way of describing the Clooney-Heslov Good Night, and Good Luck strategy is its use as a metaphor for the Trump era. Perhaps 40 minutes into the work, the audience is aware of which American event is being relived but also fully aware of what’s being implied about the troubled present. Auditorium-wide guffaws and grateful applause accumulate. (The only current reference missing are the words ‘fake news.’)

As they bound along, the five performers have ingrained their work so well they could amusingly pass for figures on a Swiss clock. Their ensemble presentation is like nothing—or very few things—seen on a local stage before. It’s a major reason, though hardly the only of abundant reasons, to make Operation Mincemeat gleeful obligatory viewing.

The results afflict everyone, many if not most of them beginning or ending with Solomon’s iron grip over the family, with Aziza dragged into the fray. The patriarch resents both his sons: Naz turned his back on becoming the celebrated next-generation preacher; Junior went bad and is deemed unworthy of redemption. On it goes, for a while making sense of the family’s accumulating dysfunctions and crescendoing toward a delicately plotted finale. But Jacobs-Jenkins doesn’t know when to stop. He continues piling on nasty disturbances and ugly revelations so that he haphazardly risks audience resistance.

Margolin is lucky in keen-eyed director Jaki Bradley and cast, each of whom is thoughtfully and appropriately attired... The playwright having provided each actor with plenty to draw attention to themselves, Frøseth, Liu, Scott, Gallagher, and Lester respond admirably, easily filling Wilson Chin’s perhaps more spacious than necessary luxurious set with their activities.

In all, Mindell is to be congratulated and thanked for a fervent screed on behalf of continuing trans presence, even though his energetic fervor often obscures his theatrical vision.

At some moment in this last segment, Emma declares she’s waiting for something to happen (thereby speaking for the audience, too). Playwright Shepard—who’s already called for a live sheep (the attentive Lois) as well as nudity—provides such an outburst (special thanks to sound designer Leah Gelpe, lighting designer Jeff Croiter), but it feels too busily contrived, as does a stretched-out closing parable.

Director Teddy Bergman has complete control of his forces. Choreographer Mayte Natalio especially keeps the ensemble on the nifty move. Encores! music director Mary-Mitchell Cambell derives cheer and grit from the band, beginning with the Brecht-Weill-esque overture (Bruce Coughlin, the orchestrator). Producing Creative Director Clint Ramos designed the bursting-with-color set, featuring fancy toilet doors anybody would be pleased to enter.

At the end of the 90-minute day, this River does keep rollin’ without saying much more than nothin’.

Trying to pay as close attention as I could muster for All In: Comedy About Love by Simon Rich as its four-member cast jollied along (more of those hearties later), I started thinking about the differences between the adjectives “humorous,” “amusing,” and “funny.” I was also thinking about the beloved noun “comedy.” I contend that though the words may be considered synonyms for each other, there are meaningful disparities. But first you need to know that All In: Comedy About Love by Simon Rich is exactly that, no more, no less. Purveyor Rich deals in the comic and is known as a Thurber Prize-winning humorist, an accomplished Saturday Night Live writer, and a New Yorker contributor. His books, collections of humorous pieces, include Ant Farm, New Teeth, and Glory Days.

The program states that Kwemera means “to last, endure, withstand.” The choice of site is Hall’s way of outlining what she hopes, even expects, sisters to do—and the play as well. The good word is that she has succeeded at writing a drama that will last, that will endure.

Where Death Becomes Her never goes wrong is where Broadway musicals rarely falter: the design departments. It’s these contributions that so frequently allow mediocre works to look like the millions of dollars the producers put up and hope to get back. Here, it’s Tazewell buoying the vehicle along with set designer Derek McLane, lighting designer Justin Townsend, sound designer Peter Hylenski, Tim Clothier’s illusions, and, definitely, hair and wig designer Charles LaPointe. They’re worth their weight in gold—or these days, cryptocurrency. OK, this is a musical, and when wishful-thinking folks decide to chase big moolah musical-wise, they usually understand the pursuit requires songs. This Death Becomes Her has ’em. Unfortunately, the Mattison-Carey score it boasts (?) resembles too many of the scores audiences presumably favor these days.

Readers who may not be entirely polite might wonder which of the three strong singers has the strongest voice. The answer: each of them. All the more reason to catch their non-stop, often uproarious act.

Of course, Armstrong’s “Hello, Dolly!” is reprised, as a singalong, no less. It likely still holds the position as the last song from a Broadway music to reach number one on the Top 100. The title song, more properly known as “What a Wonderful World,” is kept for last as an Armstrong-in-heaven finale. It’s a bit too-too, but so what? The man’s music is reverenced throughout, and that’s what really matters.

The true magnificence of this approach to a stage adaptation is its scrupulous inclusion of the full text. Standard stage adaptations eliminate most of an author’s descriptive prose. This one doesn’t, honoring Fitzgerald’s irresistible powers. For only one instance of innumerable heart-throbbing instances he writes: “Gatsby indicated a gorgeous orchid of a woman who sat in state under a white-palm tree.” Eternal thanks, ERS.

About this extraordinary Ragtime revival, there’s a larger observation to be made. It impresses as having been reinvigorated for this election week. Doubtless, it was intended as such. Unfortunately, Doctorow’s novel deals with American problems yet to be resolved—racism, division, disdain for immigrants(!), too many et ceteras. The reasons to see Ragtime right now couldn’t be more pressing.

As Another Shot tipples forward about the dangers and disasters of disproportionate tippling, many of its lines hang heavily in the air. There’s discussion about when and under what circumstances a first drink was taken. So much so that eventually Barb warns, “Forget the first drink, remember the last,” suggesting that a first drink may have been imbibed in pleasure, but a last drink was a bottoming episode. A wiser remark isn’t uttered during the 90 enlightening, threatening minutes.

As insightfully disturbing as We Live in Cairo reportedly was when first produced at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge in 2019, it might be even more painfully disturbing when considered as a preview of coming attractions were the United States to become an authoritarian country any time soon. Is this on the Lazours’ minds? It would be difficult to believe it isn’t, more’s the worry.

Oh, yes, this revival does everything it can to reflect the unfortunate time in which not only the Montagues and the Capulets but we, too, are living. Somehow, it’s sad to be confronted with the news that the violence so stealthily and widely afflicting our society today has infiltrated so far as to include treating Shakespeare’s text violently.

The result—which gloriously stars Nicole Scherzinger as fading silent-screen idol Norma Desmond—is unique. In my view, nothing quite like it has ever previously been seen on a Broadway stage or, recently, a West End stage. And whether that’s unadulterated praise remains a question. The immediate answer is weighted toward the positive, since this time waving his revival wand, Lloyd is not merely reducing the film and the musical to its basics but is after a larger point about making black-and-white films.

In Hold on to Me Darling Lonergan creates a protagonist at a loss as to who he is, spending nearly three hours remaining befuddled in a work that, as it motors along, doesn’t seem to know how to ease out of a repetitive plot dilemma. It’s an eight-scene drama, often peppered with genuine humor, that holds on to tense interest for maybe five of the scenes—and luckily the final one. For the remainder of its attenuated minutes, it merely tests audience goodwill.

At Kenny Leon’s very welcome Our Town, patrons are guaranteed to appreciate Thornton Wilder’s genius every, every minute.

Smiles and laughs it elicits, true enough, because Hwang writes it as an autobiographical comedy-drama. Wittily, he puts himself, DHH—as impersonated by square-jawed Daniel Dae Kim in a crackerjack performance—at its center. In large part, he insists that in many of the ensuing mishaps the joke’s on him. Smart fellow, this on-stage (and, of course, off-stage) Hwang. He recognizes that a man who can make fun of himself will in turn have audiences laughing simultaneously at and with him.

Of the large cast, it’s necessary to stress the quality performances of all concerned. First by length and commitment to her goal is Donnelly, who tackles the potent role with both hands clenched. (She also serves eerily in another crucial bit.) Those playing the 1976 and 1955 Webbs are unfailingly strong, Lovibond possessing maybe the best pipes. Other standouts among the full ensemble standouts are Ta-Rea Campbell as seen-it-all nurse Penny, Barnes as shrewd manager St. John, Richard Lumsden as in-house piano accompanist Joe Fogg, and Bryan Dick as both Dennis and wise-cracking Jack Larkin.

Staunton, on the other deft hand – as well as on director Dominic Cooke’s deft hand – for the most part takes an unmissably different approach. Her Dolly is understated. This Dolly’s major characteristic is smiling benevolence. It’s her matchmaker’s aggressive sincerity that earns this Dolly’s exclamation point. Only in the second act, when she determines to land moneybags Horace Vandergelder (Andy Nyman), he of the vast Yonkers geld, does she throw subtlety to the wings and make like a marauding golddigger.

But even as the Empire book might well be beneficially tightened, the strong-voiced, energetic actors jauntily go about the tuneful songs and occasional songlets, as tidily directed by Cady Huffman and choreographed by Lorna Ventura in this year’s hyper-athletic trend. Stand-out numbers are “Never Say Never,” a proto-feminist pledge for Wally and cohorts, and the spirited “Moxie” for Smith, Raskob, and Kinney, as well as “Lookahee,” with the steelworkers lustily shouting at female passersby. (From as high as floor 102?) These click as well as a ballad fittingly called “Castles in the Air.” Shortly before closing, Sylvie and Wally maintain “We Were Here,” an anthem celebrating the many-races workers. No one leaving Empire will forget them soon. In that appropriately soaring manner, Sherman and Hull rivet their strong dramatic point