David Rooney

Commissioned by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where it premiered under Joe Mantello‘s exacting direction, the production brings the reliably brilliant Laurie Metcalf back to Broadway in a role that dovetails neatly with her strengths. Playing Sarah, a flinty nurse involuntarily nearing retirement and living in Northern Idaho as far from other people as she can get, Metcalf exercises her usual peerless comic timing, tossing off line readings in a blunt deadpan that never misses. Only gradually does she allow reluctant glimpses of the fragility forced on her by the betrayal of her body.

Perhaps many Broadway theatergoers paying up to $500 a ticket to see beloved screen stars up close in a uniquely intimate play may come away feeling satisfied. Reeves and Winter certainly throw themselves into crowd-pleasing moments like a frenetic hat-swapping routine. But New Yorkers who have seen more seasoned stage actors in the roles in more penetrating productions — Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin in 2009; Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in 2013 — might be forgiven for feeling that Lloyd has given insufficient thought to any concept beyond the novelty casting of an iconic screen comedy duo.

Irrespective of the strengths and weaknesses of Good Night, and Good Luck as theater, the personal commitment of Clooney, whose father is a former anchorman, seems heartfelt and impassioned. There’s no doubting the sincerity of his belief that this dark chapter of American history has something vital to impart to us in 2025.

Culkin makes Roma a tightly wound ball of energy, puffed up with dick-swinging over-confidence; Odenkirk finds pathos in Shelly’s increasingly futile attempts to keep up a front while his career crumbles beneath him; and Burr bristles with resentment, making uproarious music out of Moss’ strings of expletives. It’s no surprise that the seasoned comic has flawless timing.

When you come out of Othello mostly thinking how impressive the actors playing Cassio and Emilia were, something’s askew in the balance. Those secondary roles acquire vitality and depth of feeling thanks to very fine work by Andrew Burnap and Kimber Elayne Sprawl, respectively. But the insidious scheming by Iago to discredit newly promoted Cassio by poisoning Othello’s thoughts with jealousy too seldom makes sparks fly.

I could pick faults with the production. Camille A. Brown’s choreography is more often busy than effective, notably in Gypsy Rose Lee’s Ziegfeld-esque “Garden of Eden” number, in which the chorus in sheer body stockings and strategic fig leaves look like they’ve stepped out of Showgirls. And Louise’s transformation from a shy kid just wanting her mother to notice her into a resplendent glamazon feels too abrupt. But rising star Woods looks so sensational in a Marcel wave and a shimmering red gown that she makes it work, a lifetime’s dejection melting away as Louise seizes her liberation from the shadows. In any case, no minor flaw can diminish the impact of this masterful show in such a beautifully acted production — all of it orbiting around the blazing force that is McDonald.

But Shakespeare’s greatest plays are timeless, lending themselves to endless relocations both historical and contemporary. As wild as it is, aggressively courting the TikTok generation, Gold’s revival fully commits to its concept and sustains it surprisingly well. Traditionalists might shudder at the way some of the verse is delivered, but if you’re willing to take it on its own terms, this R+J is an infectious emotional rollercoaster. And a hot shirtless Apothecary is something you don’t find at CVS.

Scherzinger’s roof-raising vocal power, especially on the musical’s signature songs, “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” is astonishing, literally stopping the show with her soaring money notes and dramatic key changes. She’s the rare Norma who has the supple dance moves, too. Her command is never in doubt, and Lloyd provides unimpeded access to her every emotion by frequently giving Norma what she craves most — a camera and a closeup.

In its original extended run at the Lortel Theatre earlier this year, Oh, Mary! drew packed houses that one night included Steven Spielberg, Sally Field and Tony Kushner, respectively the director, co-star and screenwriter of Lincoln. The widely circulated backstage photo of the group with Escola in Mary drag no doubt helped spread the word that this was no ordinary lark. The playwright might describe it as stupid, but any comedy that liberates audiences from the despair of the current political climate with 80 minutes of almost uninterrupted laughter is a work of genius.

Without a word of spoken dialogue, the show pulls us into late adolescence, a time when love, anguish and everything in between are felt perhaps with the greatest intensity. The book co-written by director-choreographer Peck and Drury (who won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with her brilliant meta-theatrical race inquiry, Fairview) is skillfully shaped yet invisible in the best sense of undiluted physical, sensorial and elemental storytelling.

Funny, raw and poignant in equal measure, this expertly sculpted play has the feel of both a behind-the-music docudrama and a lost Robert Altman film, with its astute microcosmic focus, its frequent wash of overlapping dialogue and its sly nudges toward satire. In fact, while the music — fabulous original songs written by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire — is pop-rock rather than country, Stereophonic could almost be an expanded vignette lifted right out of Nashville.

While Gold’s revivals of the classics have tended to be less consistent than his incisive work on new plays — the ensembles of his King Lear and Hamlet both seemed at times to be all acting in different productions — his uniformly excellent cast here is very much on the same page, many of them doubling as singers and musicians in the scene transitions.

In this case, that puts us closer to a never-better Jonathan Groff as Seymour Krelborn, the Skid Row florist shop worker who makes a Faustian pact with the carnivorous succulent. With his preppy, all-American handsomeness hidden beneath greasy hair, nerdy glasses and baggy costumes - a droll running joke has agents, photographers and TV producers recoiling when they see the eyes beneath the specs once the 'strange and unusual plant' brings Seymour success and fame - Groff disappears into a role he was born to play. He's entirely credible as a klutzy nebbish, an orphan so hopelessly besotted with his co-worker Audrey that he names his weird botanical discovery after her.

Humility is not a requirement when playing the lead in Funny Girl, but to this critic, there seems a quiet undertone of contrition in Michele's riveting performance - of sincere gratitude to be back on Broadway for the first time in 14 years, and in her dream role no less. This part is not just the fulfillment of a longtime desire, it's also a career rehabilitation project. Though if the ecstatic squeals of fans that greet every big brassy belt and key change in her songs are any indication, those rumors of bad behavior have been forgiven and forgotten.

Chastain finds every note of cruel humor in Nora’s initial complacency — she’s hilarious vowing not to make it all about her while catching up with Kristine, then proceeding to do exactly that. She bravely keeps up the façade of breezy confidence even as anxiety begins to needle away at her. Watching her break — her rehearsal for a dance Torvald insists she perform for friends at a party is like a seizure — and slowly rebuild herself with steely resolve once the soul-deadening reality of her marriage is exposed is thrilling.

That said, there’s much to be grateful for here, not least a genuine feeling for the material that plumbs the emotional depths without wading into cheap sentiment. The three leads alone will be cause for rejoicing among the Sondheim faithful, while newcomers to this flawed but beautiful musical might be left scratching their heads over its commercial failure. With Richard Linklater’s film adaptation — starring Ben Platt, Blake Jenner and Beanie Feldstein, and shooting at regular intervals over the next decade — at least 10 years away from completion, it’s good to have the show back in what appears to be viable form to rewrite its Broadway history.

Meet your new favorite musical. When Kimberly Akimbo premiered at the Atlantic Theater Company last December, it was a breath of fresh air, an intimate show about teenage misfits and the unreliable adults in their world that balanced hilarious comedy with aching poignancy and quirks unfailingly grounded in emotional truth. Transferring intact to Broadway, this small-scale charmer has not only retained but enriched its distinctive qualities, sweeping in as a burst of invigorating originality in a sea of repurposed movies, jukebox compilations and revivals.

Did it need to become a stage musical? Debatable. But one thing the effusive show gets right, like the movie that spawned it, is the infectious energy of rock 'n' roll at a transitional moment - 1973 - when the raw, rebellious spirit of great rock was making way for the slicker, more commercialized sound of mass-consumption superstardom. For many epochal bands and solo artists, that year was an artistic peak they would never again match. That gives Crowe's quasi-memoir, in both incarnations, a bittersweet undertow of simultaneous discovery and loss.

Jackson savors every morsel of Wilson's glorious language, whether he's outlining a complicated grocery order; ruminating on the wonders of train travel and its dependability in an unreliable world; or ironing a shirt while singing an old railroad song. His characterization as Doaker - the chief living repository of memory for the fractured family, in whose home the play unfolds - is vibrantly inhabited, his every line delivered with a balance of weary experience and wry wisdom.

Into the Woods is arguably the most humorous of Sondheim's shows, and this ensemble of some of New York's finest musical-theater talents has a ball playing up the comedy. But the merriment is never at the expense of the characters' fragile humanity or the material's poignancy.

The revival's shortcomings by no means rest entirely on Feldstein's shoulders. Neither director Michael Mayer nor script doctor Harvey Fierstein has solved the problems of the creaky book, which can't build Fanny's longing for offstage romantic fulfillment to match her professional success - and her eventual showbiz survivor resilience - into a robust through line. The show feels patchy and episodic and it needs a knockout, roof-raising lead to paper over the cracks... Feldstein gives a spirited, highly enjoyable performance, and her freshness drew squeals of appreciation from what seemed like a large contingent of very vocal young female fans on a recent press night. But she never quite makes the material soar, and this is a rickety vehicle that needs a supernova to put gas in its tank.

The euphoria of discovery conveyed by Richard Greenberg through a gay outsider who becomes an impassioned baseball fan hasn't dimmed a bit in the two decades since Take Me Out was first produced. Other things, however, have changed in director Scott Ellis' finely tuned and superbly cast Broadway revival for Second Stage. Issues that once seemed too reflective of the playwright's hand at work now seem urgently keyed into a contemporary world in which masculine anxiety and its bilious consequences are being held up for scrutiny.

Alas, the stars' efforts, while certainly appealing, don't make the material any less obsolete, a throwback to the bougie boulevard comedies that were once a Broadway staple. The observations on marriage and relationships occasionally generate a chuckle, but more often seem stale and the sexual politics retrograde, something that John Benjamin Hickey's serviceable direction can't disguise. The laughs mostly spring from watching a real-life showbiz couple kick back and have fun bouncing off each other. Judging by the hearty response at a recent press night, for many that might be reward enough.

As talented as Lenk is, however, to this longtime fan of Company she seems jarringly wrong for Bobbie, regardless of the character's gender. A darkening touch of cynicism can work with this recessive protagonist, as Raul Esparza showed in the terrific 2006 Broadway revival. But Bobby/Bobbie's yearning has to be apparent, too, and Lenk makes her inaccessible. Without the sense of an ache inside for something more emotionally satisfying - a quality by all accounts not missing from London lead Rosalie Craig's performance - the internal conflict that drives the show has a fuel shortage. Lenk mostly seems aloof, casting a quizzical, sometimes bemused eye over her married friends while remaining too opaque about Bobbie's own needs.

Any work of art about the socioeconomic divide, particularly with regard to inequities rooted in race, class and power, is bound to land differently now than it did in, say, 2004. That seems entirely apposite for a musical with the word 'change' in its title and the tremors of personal, political and historical upheaval thematically embedded in its story. But it's not just shifts in the prism of American life in the 17 years since Caroline, or Change transferred from the Public Theater to Broadway that breathe urgency into this shattering revival. Everything about Michael Longhurst's production feels more emotionally charged, starting with Sharon D. Clarke's mighty performance in the title role.