David Rooney

Unlike the lavish 1997 National Theatre production starring Ian McKellen, this staging is on the minimal side, with an effective revolving turntable set and a relatively small cast in which the understudies also play the townspeople in the pivotal climactic town hall meeting scene.

Is the show destined for a place in the musical-theater pantheon? Unlikely. But it scores points by reinventing rather than replicating the source material, sampling from a tasty selection of pop-cultural favorites. And the sheer athleticism of the event numbers – with whirling cheerleaders catapulted into the air and then caught in gasp-inducing basket tosses – provides enough genuine thrills to compensate for the stop-start storytelling. When the girls are airborne, the show soars.

With fatigue from the Tony Awards and the glut of April openings still lingering, it’s a pleasure to report that Harvey, the first entry of the 2012-13 Broadway season is an unassuming charmer. Best known for the 1950 film adaptation that starred James Stewart, Mary Chase’s Pulitzer-winning 1944 comedy is a delectable mid-century chestnut with an idiosyncratic personality that still sparkles. And in Scott Ellis’ superbly cast revival for Roundabout Theatre Company, the gentle farce provides an ideal vehicle for the gifted Jim Parsons.

The stage musical improves on the original simply by settling on a point of view. But despite Raul Esparza’s hard-working lead performance and some rousing Gospel numbers from Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, the story remains stubbornly unappealing. Opening on Broadway the same week as the slavish screen-to-stage transplant of Ghost, the musical Leap of Faith earns points by at least rethinking its source for another medium, often in smart ways, too. Adapting her screenplay, Janus Cercone has collaborated with playwright Warren Leight (a Tony winner for Side Man, and showrunner on Law & Order: SVU) to clarify plot themes, redefining some characters while inventing or excising others. The resulting show has more heart than the movie, but still not enough.

While the recent Boeing-Boeing benefited from its clever, stylized staging, from the brilliant comedic instincts of director Matthew Warchus, and above all, from a ridiculously talented farceur in Mark Rylance, Don’t Dress is too old-fashioned to achieve the same heightened lunacy. It’s affable entertainment with many funny moments, but not enough to disguise the mechanical structure and whiff of moldiness of its infidelity-interruptus plot...Tillinger guides the action along at a steady trot, but the material loses steam in the second act, sputtering toward a laborious denouement. Instead of the chaos hinging on increasingly elaborate contretemps, it replays variations on the same theme to diminishing returns. There are laughs, for sure, but compared to the truly inventive farce of One Man, Two Guvnors, playing a couple of blocks away, there’s also a hint of fatigue.

Equipped with arrogance, fearsome intellect, vitriol and the punctilious armor of a man forced to live in denial, John Lithgow fully inhabits influential journalist Joseph Alsop in The Columnist. Director Daniel Sullivan brings his customary clarity and focus to a series of pithy scenes that place Alsop near the center of some important chapters in 20th century American political life. But while this is a potentially fascinating character study with no shortage of meaty material, playwright David Auburn hasn’t managed to shape it into a drama with a discernible through-line.

Broderick is winningly paired with the luminous Kelli O’Hara (South Pacific), and the leads are backed by a string of top-notch character turns. Throw in 21 tunes from two of the preeminent practitioners of the American musical and you have a cocktail that should go down easily with Broadway nostalgists. It might also draw audiences seduced by the magic and glamour of Jazz Age entertainment in this year’s Oscar-winner The Artist.

Full confession: The 1990 movie Ghost is on my top 10 list of that decade’s more shameless pleasures. Demi Moore with the Pierrot haircut and artfully applied teardrops; poor Patrick Swayze with his single expression of intense concentration; Whoopi Goldberg at her ghetto-fabulous funniest. What’s not to love? Turns out plenty in this leaden stage musicalization of the supernatural romantic thriller, a flavorless hash that is unrelentingly loud, vulgar and stunningly tone-deaf to the ways in which the world has changed since that era of sweet young yuppie innocence.

...thanks to the complexities of Lavin’s characterization, the penetrating insights of Silver’s writing, and the imperceptible calibrations of Mark Brokaw’s crisp production, Rita is no mere monster of insensitivity. The degree to which she accepts responsibility for her children being “sad and unforgiving,” and for her own entrapment in a 40-year marriage to a man she never loved is clear. That doesn’t mean, however, that she’s atoning. Silver’s play doesn’t go in for such banalities. But in addition to being a maestro of timing with her comic delivery, Lavin has a peerless ability to humanize her characters even while exposing their lacerating edges.

This is not a reinvention of the 1947 play, as the casting conceit might suggest. Nor is it a revelation in terms of startling new takes on familiar characters. It tends to under-serve the pathos while more assiduously exploring the humor and sensuality. But while it’s uneven, this is a muscular staging driven by four compelling, sexy lead performances and a sturdy ensemble.

A lot has been written about Bruce Norris’ 2011 Pulitzer winner – in its original Off Broadway run; its hit London production, where it won the Olivier Award for best play; and in its recent Los Angeles stop. So much, in fact, that it seems almost superfluous to weigh in so late on this meaty satirical swipe at ingrained prejudices and the way we address them – or fail to. But the fresh revelation is how well Clybourne Park plays on Broadway. In Pam MacKinnon’s expert staging, this is provocative entertainment that generates as much uneasiness as laughter.

Few theatergoing experiences are as joyously liberating as being part of a packed house roaring with laughter at low comedy. That shouldn’t imply any lack of genuine wit in the broad farce and bawdy humor of One Man, Two Guvnors, Richard Bean’s gut-busting update of the Carlo Goldoni commedia dell’arte nugget, The Servant of Two Masters. Striking an ingenious balance between meticulous planning and what plays like anarchic spontaneity, Nicholas Hytner’s production has been a deserved success in London. With virtuoso ringmaster James Corden on hand to juggle the demands of dual employment while wrapping the audience around his pudgy finger, the show now looks set to slay Broadway, too.

The Bottom Line - This adaptation of the Peter Pan origin story is rich in antic humor and theatrical invention, but the stardust loses potency and becomes a tad precious on a larger stage.

The attention-grabbing opening – with much fanfare accompanying the presentation of the six-member cast wearing tracksuits, in the style of NBA game starters – indicates a degree of sports-minded theatrical imagination at work. But the insurmountable problem for Simonson is that listening to people talk about the excitement of a game – albeit with a few clips – is no match for experiencing it. ... Audiences looking for conflict, probing character development or dramatic tension are likely to be underwhelmed.

While Buenos Aires-born Roger is new to Broadway, this production made her a star in London, where it originated in 2006. At the risk of sounding harsh, the actress is physically unprepossessing – short and beaky – not to mention occasionally shrill in the vocal department. But she acts the hell out of the role. ... The other bit of headline casting is Ricky Martin as Che. Moving away from the original production’s clear allusions to Che Guevara, he appears here as an enigmatic peasant worker who serves as the bio-musical’s narrator and its voice of skepticism, seeing the beatified “Santa Evita” for the ravenous spotlight-seeker she really is. His dramatic presence could be more aggressive, but Martin’s Latin-pop vocals are a smooth fit for the role, and his relaxed charm and dreamboat looks will yield few complaints. Fans eager for him to bust some serious dance moves have to wait until midway through Act II, but he eventually turns on the trademark sizzle.

In a full-throttle performance that holds nothing back, Tracie Bennett channels an off-the-rails Judy Garland near the completion of her downward spiral, giving End of the Rainbow a fiercely dynamic center. But there’s a gulf between the vehicle and the vulnerable human being that the actress rarely traverses in this bio-drama with songs, thanks to writing by Peter Quilter that hits every obvious note except the pathos, and to Terry Johnson’s unrelentingly emphatic direction. ... A gutsy performance trapped in a one-note play that gives us the broad outline of the tragic star but lacks the insight to penetrate her heart.

It may not have the satirical sting it no doubt carried back in 1960, but Gore Vidal’s The Best Man still has plenty of bite even in our more jaded age, when chronic moral affront has so polluted the national political landscape that it’s seemingly beyond clean-up. An ideally timed antidote to a mercurial presidential primary race running low on levity, Michael Wilson’s Broadway revival is shrewdly cast, with a starry ensemble that lands every laugh while bringing sly shadings to their characters... The Bottom Line - A top-notch cast breathes fresh life into this entertaining round of political marksmanship by a keen-eyed observer whose experience in the D.C. swamp informs every line.

Rousing songs by Alan Menken and Jack Feldman, high-energy dance numbers, an appealing cast and an uplifting story make this reconceived version of the Christian Bale movie one of Disney Theatrical's most entertaining new properties in years...You can call the show brashly formulaic, sentimental or simplistic, but Newsies adheres to a time-honored Disney tradition of inspirational storytelling in the best possible sense. It woiks.

The hit of last summer’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where McAnuff is artistic director, the production’s key onstage asset is its Judas Iscariot, Josh Young. And given that this account of the final week in the life of Jesus of Nazareth is told from his betrayer’s point of view, it’s fitting that Young’s electrifying vocals and brooding presence dominate. ... The 1971 religious rock opera remains a psychologically lite relic of its time, but it gets propulsive treatment in this energized, vocally robust revival.

A Sundance discovery and a breakout hit for Fox Searchlight in 2007, the Irish indie movie has become a captivating Broadway musical, with a superb cast of actor-musicians led by Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti...Once is a small-scale but warmly affecting show, crafted with profound respect for the power of music. For anyone who feels that Broadway has become the domain of bloated spectacles and cynically overworked brands, this will be a refreshing artisanal tonic.

Impeccably cast down to the smallest roles, with an ensemble led by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Linda Emond and Andrew Garfield, this emotionally wrenching production evokes the unmistakable atmosphere and attitudes of mid-century America while also putting down trenchant roots in today’s world. ... I had never before experienced the overwhelming impact of the drama to this degree, nor appreciated the extent to which Miller’s observations are culturally specific while at the same time universal and prophetic.

A deserving winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Margaret Edson’s Wit is a work of delicately calibrated opposites. It pits detached clinical observation on one side against raw human emotion on the other, while somehow making dry humor and wrenching pathos travel hand in hand. In Lynne Meadow’s unerringly focused staging for Manhattan Theatre Club, and above all in Cynthia Nixon’s shattering performance, that balancing act is rendered with piercing accuracy.

Fugard writes impeccably honed dialogue; it’s just that there’s so much of it, and his reams of exposition are far from seamless. Without a director capable of accessing the lightness and delicacy in his dense thickets of words, his plays can veer into windy speechifying. There’s also a tendency here for the playwright to belabor his metaphors, making the 2½-hour drama repetitious, often dull and stylistically dated. This is at heart an intimate play that seems needlessly stretched, swimming in a too-large theater.

The Bottom Line. Boldly reinterpreted and performed with spectacular feeling, this revival brings an American masterwork back to blazing dramatic life.

When it premiered Off-Broadway early this summer in a site-specific production on a Greenwich Village gymnasium basketball court, Lysistrata Jones had a scrappy attitude and energy that were impossible to resist. Hustled uptown in a rushed transfer onto a traditional Broadway stage, this contemporary musical riff on the bawdy Aristophanes sex comedy from 411 B.C. shows signs of strain. That doesn’t mean the show’s entertainment value has been erased. But its more insubstantial qualities are magnified, demonstrating that commercial transfers are rarely an automatic slam-dunk.