David Finkle — Theater Critic

That alone is worth the price of admission. Okay, the entire production is worth more than the price of admission. If there’s any drawback to what’s on view, it may be that the early clowning somewhat delays McCraney’s up-close-and-personal view of brothers unsuccessfully trying to align. (Inevitably, men in the audience who have a brother will focus, even if fleetingly, on their sibling.)

The area where this Mamma Mia! is far from deficient is in the cast. While there’s not a single Broadway marquee name among them, not a one isn’t giving an outstanding performance, not a one undeserving of marquee status. They prominently include Christine Sherrill as single mom Donna Sheridan; Amy Weaver as bride-to-be Sophie Sheridan; Jalynn Steele and Carly Sakolove as Donna BFFs Tanya and Rosie; and Rob Marnell, Jim Newman, and Victor Wallace as possible fathers Harry Bright, Bill Austin, and Sam Carmichael.

What Gardner is shorn of in McGovern’s piece are too many of the quotes that might have come up in a straightforward interview. That’s way too unfortunate. Here for the record is only one lively remark: ‘I do owe Mickey one thing: he taught me how much I enjoyed sex.’

Zak has nudged them to yell every line at the top of their lungs so trippingly on the tongue that any number of his jokes(?) are lost in the gibble-gabble-gargle.

The effect of these sequences is an audience-gripping silence... a silence that threatens to halt breathing, a silence during which not even a single cough breaks through, a silence worth the admission price.

Anyway, the myriad reasons to see (and hear!) Heathers are small in number, whereas the myriad reasons not to see (and hear!) it—unless you’re a Corn Nut—are much larger.

What Max has written—the outcome of which won’t be divulged—is a study of a woman, perhaps like millions of other women, in a society where their resources, other than as efficient homemakers, are regularly and sometimes cruelly repressed. The playwright appears convinced that the feminist movement (possibly as a feminist himself, in a happy marriage) has had an effect but so far a limited one.

They all deserve to be singled out, Linn-Baker foremost as buffoonish Argan. He’s especially pleased with Argan’s enemas and regular posterior massaging events. Burton, playing his three parts and as the action proceeds having to make quick and then quicker changes, has the showiest assignment(s). His seen-it-all attitude as Dr. Purgon is particularly amusing. Daniels—dressed by costumer Tilly Grimes as what resembles Humpty Dumpty going to a birthday party for six-year-olds—gets giggles simply by standing still. Stiles’ knowing looks are attention-getters. Okay, safe to say they’re all outstanding.

Are there any other mitigating attractions? There are Hill’s vocals. He sings several of Cole’s signature chart-toppers, delivering entirely his 1949 winner, “Nature Boy.” (A better play might have followed how Cole came to record the mystic Eden Ahbez song.) Sadly, he doesn’t get through the entire “Mona Lisa” (Ray Evans and Jay Livingston), which won the 1950 best song Oscar but might not have if Cole hadn’t sung it to Top 40 acclaim.

Whatever of this makes sense might keep ticket-buyers interested, if not wholly involved, thanks to the proliferating special effects.

Very notably, Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. is mounted as a vaudeville evening with velvet curtain and vaudeville lights circling the proscenium. Set designer Miriam Buether’s sumptuous curtain and Isabella Bryd’s flashy lights are augmented between the first and second one-acts by Junru Wang, who pulls off an impressive balancing act; and later by Maddox Morfit-Tighe, an ultimately five-pins juggler. Highly adept at what they do, they’re also obviously employed to imply how the production is to be regarded. This is only vaudeville. Got it? So what if the production isn’t start-to-finish thoroughly effective? Like a vaudeville bill, there’s still enough to muse on satisfactorily.

What’s on display is unmitigatedly glorious. In other words, Sondheim as nonpareil influencer may be repeatedly remembered with a breathless retrospective, but as the new extravaganza also demonstrates, his belief in the potential of the musical to break new ground will persist.

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.