David Finkle — Theater Critic

Director Rachel Chavkin (Tony for Hadestown) has the able four working like Energizer bunnies. As Finneran always does, she wrings as much humor as there is to wring; in the circumstances, maybe even more. So do the other in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound players.

In short, these Camelot revisers do not metaphorically pluck magic sword Excaliber from its stone. They leave it there. There’s simply not a more congenial spot for happily ever-aftering than here in Camelot; it’s just that this particular Camelot spot isn’t that Camelot spot.

Being exposed to Horn’s masterful pun demonstration comes close to equaling the price of Shucked admission, but what about the rest of it? Slightly less of a recommendation – with a caveat: Jack O’Brien’s direction. For this production, which prides itself in being as corny as Cob County, O’Brien imbues the production with rat-a-tat style that not only knocks your socks off but blows your mind. The knocking and blowing are enhanced by Scott Pask’s set of a large, slatted barn with occasional corn rows sliding on. Japhy Weideman’s lighting and John Shivers’ sound help a bushel, too.

Well, musical lovers, here’s the tuner again, now as Vanities–The Musical. It’s surely pleasant enough but not so much a revival as, according to advance word, a revisal. Again, as in 2009, it extends the years – originally 1963-74 – that a trio of small-town Texas vanity owners, Kathy, Mary, and Joanne, promise eternal friendship only to strain that promise and in 1990 acknowledge the error of their ways. (Writing in 1976, Heifner understandably had a grasp on 1974 but hadn’t bothered to imagine the future.)

Anyone attending Bob Fosse’s Dancin’ hoping to get a fresh gander at adored numbers like “Steam Heat” or “Rich Man’s Frug“ or “All That Jazz” or you-name-it – that’s to say, anyone waiting with bated breath for this supposed salute to eight-time Tony-winning choreographer Bob Fosse – is best advised to have second thoughts. Nothing like those kinds of re-creations is coming your way.

What can I say? Misty may not pay off when viewed from one angle but viewed from another – Omar Elerian directing and with contributions from Godwin and Lee as music coordinators and non-stop sound designer Elena Peña – Misty pays off like a bright orange Happy Birthday balloon.

Not too long after Pictures From Home gets underway, it turns boring and then abusive to the patrons. Then, if this is the California answer to Arthur Miller’s classic drama, it becomes a piece to which much attention need not be paid. The modicum of attention that might be paid is due to venerable actors Lane, Burstein and Wanamaker. (Lane is top-billed, but Burstein gets the last and therefore most prominent of the separate curtain bows.) Dominating as each can be, they’re hampered by Sharr’s script and Sher’s acquiescing direction.

Who else involved with Between Riverside and Crazy deserves those greatly earned kudos? How about Henderson, one of Broadway’s and off Broadway’s longtime reliable character actors? Guirgis has handed him a role that makes his abilities undeniable. As Walter, Henderson has a part that gives him wide opportunities to keep his gifts on non-stop display. There’s a persistent quality in the player, something at his core that always confirms the quiet but unquestionable truth in whomever he’s playing. And what of director Austin Pendleton, arguably the habitually busiest member of the New York City theater community? Last on Broadway stealing scenes in Tracy Letts’ The Minutes, he blithely and boldly returns as the Between Riverside and Crazy director. (Besides acting and directing, Pendleton is a playwright and acting teacher. Does he ever have any spare time? If he does, he probably spends it seeing a play.) Because Guirgis packs so much to be unpacked in his scripts—the drama, the humor, much of it intricately simultaneous—Pendleton must unleash and restrain the actors not just from minute to minute but from second to second. He doesn’t miss a beat. He doesn’t miss any of the potential nuances within a beat. Neither under his firm hand do any of the supporting actors. Perhaps Pendleton’s directorial request once he’s chosen his ensemble and has complete trust in them is to tell them to do what they do and feel confident doing it. Most likely, he says more, but knows how, as they interact, to shift focus nimbly. His is masterful directing.

Mays keeps it in his way, doing so with co-adapters Susan Lyons and Michael Arden, production conceivers Arden and scenic designer Dane Laffrey, director Arden, lighting designer Ben Stanton, sound designer Joshua D. Reid, projection designer Lucy Mackinnon, and hair, wig, and makeup designer Cookie Jordan. What the endlessly imaginative group has created is a Christmas present so big it wouldn't even fit under the storys-tall tree in Rockefeller Center. It requires much more capitalization than something like famous Christmas Carol-presenting Simon Callow standing at a lectern. Which is an observation meant to emphasize that the must-see package may not show up everywhere (or anywhere?) other than large houses where pounds and shillings flow.

It needs to be said that as the established songs of tunesmithing brilliance and others moderately serviceable emerge, they're sung by a cast of first-rate rock belters, led by the likes of Likes, Pfeiffer, and Wood. Patrons are advised not to leave before the curtain-call finale, when each of the gifted ensemble barrels forward to show his or her sizzling stuff. 'Penny Lane' is not delivered entirely or partially. So, McCartney's memorable lyric isn't heard about the Penny Lane nurse who 'though she feels as if she's in a play, she is anyway.' Crowe's Penny Lane is in a play, a musical -and not an especially powerful one, at that.

Director Patrick Marber - a reliable Stoppard collaborator these years - works wonders with his 30-plus cast members (some original London cast players, some new to the piece) as he does with costumer Brigitte Reiffenstuel, lighting designer Neal Austin, sound and clever original music designer Adam Cork, projection designer Isaac Madge, and certainly the Campbell Young Associates wig, hair and makeup designers.

This Into the Woods revival is eminently worth seeing, for perhaps an unusual additional reason. When I attended, the audience cheered every first-act song long and loud. Why such jubilation? Perhaps because the fave-rave musical is one of the most popular high schools attractions going. Could be the packed St. James auditorium is chockablock with former Into the Woods schooldays players who know the score backwards and forwards and are cheering it for old time's sake. There are worse recommendations for joining them.

Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga assumed the roles of, respectively, the title figure and Lady Macbeth. Intermittently, they appeared to be trying out some of the more tense emotions they would display in a finished production-Negga more so than Craig. Twelve actors completed the ensemble, several of them emoting somewhat-Paul Lazar as Duncan and the Porter, Grantham Coleman as MacDuff, Amber Gray as Banquo (addressed with the use of she-her-hers pronouns). The rest delivered Shakespeare's dialog as if still learning their assigned lines. Some seemed amused to be mouthing Shakespeare's words. More than one of the male performers spoke Shakespeare's grave iambic pentameters with their hands in their trouser pockets.

To underline Crystal's powers the colorful Brown and Green have written 'Any Man But Me.' Though more than vocally acceptable throughout. the show's star (no understudy listed) brings this eleven o'clock number off with expanding fortitude. He delivers it as if this final quarter of the musical is the one he's truly pleased to be headlining. Is it going too far to suggest Crystal might someday make a terrific Uncle Vanya? It would be unfair to suggest that Mr. Saturday Night is any less than amiable start to finish, not only for a focal figure who has the audience eating out of his hand but for the other seven-and for Ellenore Scott's jaunty choreography. Paymer has Stan well in hand. Graff, always marvelous, is present much of the time as a likable foil but shows her strength in the 'Until Now' duet with Crystal and in the mock-sultry 'Tahiti.' Though Bean is given ditties as if she's there and so ought to have a song or two, she makes them count. Harmon shows off in the Buddy Young Jr.-taunting 'What If I Said?'

What has indisputably been established throughout both acts is that the seven cast members are each worth whatever salary they're getting and more. Each, as cleverly dressed by Linda Cho, deserves a separate order-of-appearance rave: White for her unmitigated fury, Nakamura for her dignified uppityness, Dratch for her vague otherworldliness (especially when calling attention to her covered nipples), Williams for her dignified but no-nonsense great lady, Cooper for her sneakiness, Hough for her unabashed cheer, DeLaria for her never-abating brazenness. Susan Stroman, apparently on leave from musicals, directs. She's so creative at this song-and-dance-less assignment that the leave is likely to be extended. She never falters at keeping the stage lively. That goes for the stretches where the Fillinger script stalls. Yes, Stroman lovers, she does slip in a brief dance routine or two.

For the length of this review, I'm plunking down in Feldstein's corner. She strides on stage with full confidence to sit at a dressing table where Brice is about to reflect on her life. In no time flat, she's back in Brooklyn as the young Great White Way wannabe. She's already convinced her name should be in lights, and in a tearing hurry it is-in the Ziegfeld Follies, no less. Feldstein remains in tight control-director Michael Mayer certainly helps greatly-as Brice is romanced by Nick Arnstein (Ramin Karimloo) and spends the rest of the several years this tuner covers (approximately 1910-1921) raising daughter Francis Arnstein and dealing with the on-again-mostly-off-again luck her businessman-gambler hubby faces.

Yes, but Shange's 90-minute collection of poems performed by seven women, each in a designated color (Shange undoubtedly means the pun) returns the adjective to its high-wattage definition. Director-choreographer Camille A. Brown's production stuns the daylights out of you.

Vogel and producers also know on what side of the acting and directing their bread is buttered. Twenty-five years later and on Rachel Hauck's attractively economical set, Parker remains the 17-year-old (and then some) she was then. Remarkable! Her version of innocence assailed and fighting back is acting at a zenith. Morse's driven Peck, woefully at odds with a man's instincts for civility, matches Parker. In their many appearances, Gold, Myers, and especially Day during her imbibing moments prove their worth.

All the same, if American Buffalo doesn’t pack the wallop it did then (there is at least one actual unpulled punch), the third Broadway revival of the play contains sufficient deliberately grubby thrills to qualify as a must-see.

The tuner (using the term loosely) has two elements going for it: 1) its realistic view of one bittersweet consequence that families may face when divorce intervenes; and 2) the always remarkable Rob McClure pulling out multitudinous stops as the title character.

Maybe not the first observation to make about Dana H., playwright Lucas Hnath's new piece, is that it contains an unforgettable feat. All the same, I'm going to observe it. Throughout, Deirdre O'Connell, a New York City actress not nearly as celebrated as she deserves to be, pulls off an unusually astounding accomplishment. (The awards she's already amassed during her career must be near to collapsing a home shelf.) For the overwhelming part of 80 minutes, O'Connell lip-syncs a testimony that playwright Hnath's mother gave some time ago about her life, a life marked dramatically by a terrifying episode from which she still hasn't recovered. For that matter, she isn't entirely convinced it happened.

Speaking, as I was above, of political correctness, I'm about to give the currently prevailing policy a tug of my own. I reiterate that Scott's Thought of a Colored Man is for all audiences, but I submit that there are really only two audiences and that both will profit deeply from it. The BiPOC audience members will recognize and appreciate Scott's understanding of who they are and what continuing indignities they experience daily. The white audience, realizing more in the last few BLM years than it historically has, will be taking in even newer revelations about a country so long and still too recalcitrantly the major societal and cultural influence. For his perspicacity and for his well-honed insistence on perceiving and respecting the life of the Other, playwright Scott is to be profoundly thanked.

On the one hand-perhaps the upper hand-Is This A House is effective in illuminating the process by which the sometimes reassuring, sometimes intimidating FBI agents elicited Winner's less-than-winning admissions. On the other hand, adhering strictly to the word-for-word declaration introduces several questions. Okay, it's word-for-word, but after a while, doesn't the actors so assiduously replicating every verbal hiccup begin to feel like a stunt? Doesn't this representation prompt a thought about what is the more efficacious manner of representing theatrical reality (no pun intended)?

We all know-don't we?-the phrase Goin' to Church, which means letting religious fervor flow no matter what the context. Dramatist Lyons has written a play about literally goin' to church. He's gotten the church bells reverberantly chiming. If theater lovers are smart, they'll heed the call and go straight to Chicken & Biscuits church.

Perhaps it's because I've just been reading Charles Dickens-The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit-that I took in Ruben Santiago-Hudson's current Lackawanna Blues revival as stunningly Dickensian. Dealing, as it does, with a young boy brought up in near poverty who encounters any number of memorable characters, Santiago-Hudson's early travels magically echo those of the prolific 19th-century author.