David Rooney — Theater Critic

Trading up from Wes Bentley, her original co-star in the two-character piece, Arianda now has an accomplice/adversary who is every bit her equal. Dancy arguably has never been better. Even if the cat-and-mouse games of Ives' comedy with teeth become too attenuated, the players remain transfixing in Walter Bobbie's mostly vigorous production.

Prepare ye the way for disappointment. Goldstein approaches it all like a Children's Television Workshop special. Maybe it's appropriate for a show so widely performed in schools, but this feels indeed like a high school production staged by the wacky new drama teacher. (Think Mr. G. on HBO's under-appreciated Summer Heights High.) Christopher Gattelli's choreography also throws a million ideas at the stage in the hope that something sticks. The strength of some of the second-act songs such as 'On the Willows' ensures that a depth of feeling does eventually coalesce. And the crucifixion is arrestingly staged, albeit with cheesy simulated slo-mo from the disciples during the finale's wailing guitar breaks. But my chief takeaway from this was the tarnishing of a treasured theater memory. Now, let's see how Jesus Christ Superstar holds up in the spring.

When it premiered in January, Jon Robin Baitz's first new play in six years, Other Desert Cities, was smart and entertaining. But in its move to Broadway, this domestic dustup has ripened significantly...The cast could not be better. Under Mantello's firm hand, the actors never strike a false note. In their speech rhythms and body language with one another -- their relaxed intimacy or wary distance, their camaraderie or distrust, their easy banter or silent, hostile regard - they are unmistakably a family.

David Korins’ ingenious set for Chinglish is a marvel of constant reinvention. Its twin turntables spin as panels glide into place and pieces lock seamlessly together to create a series of distinct spaces that have the sterility of business hotels, conference rooms and executive eateries the world over but enough Sino-specific detail to be clear about where we are. The problem is that not everything in David Henry Hwang’s mildly entertaining comedy is as fluid or dynamic as the scene changes.

Turturro is particularly out of his depth in this entry. Farce needs buoyancy, breathlessness and physical momentum to achieve liftoff. The director merely ushers the ten-member cast onto Santo Loquasto’s crowded set and then doesn’t know what to do with them beyond stand and deliver...Bottom Line: This comedy ménage àtrois is not without laughs, but overall, it’s thin and tired.

While it begins as a deceptively simple fictionalized account of Martin Luther King Jr.’s final night on Earth, Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop literally explodes into metaphysical magic realism, ruminating on race and politics, life and death in ways that connect King’s legacy to every person in the audience. Bottom line: Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett ignite this provocative play, which is slow to reveal itself but ultimately packs a punch.

Having directed a generally well-received West End revival of this play in 2005 with David Suchet as Antonescu, Aitken is perhaps too trusting of the material, which has been shorn here of roughly a half-hour. She pulls together a physically sharp production on a detailed set by Derek McLane that evokes bohemian, pre-gentrified Village living, right down to the rust-stained ceilings. But for a play that ends with one character condemned and another presumably scarred for life, it’s a curiously bloodless affair that leaves little aftertaste.

40 years after its Broadway premiere, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s show still dazzles with its structural complexity and brilliant score...It’s unlikely any staging will ever equal the extravagant showmanship of the original, co-directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett. But just having Follies back on Broadway, played by a full orchestra and performed by a gifted cast, is reward enough.

It should be no surprise that someone with six Emmys and a Tony is an accomplished actor, but Tyne Daly is doing something extraordinary in Master Class...Bottom Line: Tyne Daly's mercurial performance gives equal exposure to her character's formidable outer shell and to the corrosive solitude within.

In terms of narrative clarity and character definition, the show is sharper. But while the emergency surgical team has injected fanboy humor and self-conscious acknowledgments of the production's rocky gestation, they have not located a heart in this bloated monster.

The story might have been better served as a four-hanky screen tearjerker, but Murphy elevates the hackneyed material. Her Raisel is a difficult woman whose warmth toward her granddaughter contrasts with her needling criticism of her daughter...Bottom Line: Donna Murphy's customary poise and humor bring some unifying force to a tonally discordant show heavy on clichés.

A Tony winner for The Drowsy Chaperone, Leavel is a fine singer and gifted musical-comedy performer who deserves better than this stereotypical cutout. For a show about a woman who carved her career on having a great ear for a crisp, catchy hit, it grates that the songs are so carelessly handled...Through his American Pop Anthology production banner, Mutrux is developing other jukebox shows. But on the basis of Baby It's You, artists who care about the way their back-catalogs are represented might want to run and hide.

A Tony winner for The Drowsy Chaperone, Leavel is a fine singer and gifted musical-comedy performer who deserves better than this stereotypical cutout. For a show about a woman who carved her career on having a great ear for a crisp, catchy hit, it grates that the songs are so carelessly handled...Through his American Pop Anthology production banner, Mutrux is developing other jukebox shows. But on the basis of Baby It's You, artists who care about the way their back-catalogs are represented might want to run and hide.

In this shattering revival of Larry Kramer's polemical howl of anger and despair, The Normal Heart, the 30 years since the first whispers of what became known as AIDS were heard and ignored evaporate in an instant...marquee value is not the point here; this is a spectacularly well-cast production in which every role has found its ideal interpreter. This is tough, unflinching drama staged and performed by people with a fierce emotional investment in telling this story and keeping this painful history alive for generations inclined to forget.

It's impossible to ignore the nagging evidence that this is not a great match of director and material...The production frequently sings, particularly in some brilliant monologues, yet it cries out overall for a lighter touch. Bottom Line - David Cromer's production overplays the melancholy and under-serves the humor, but the enduring originality of John Guare's breakthrough play prevails.

Director Doug Hughes (Doubt) doesn't try to goose the 1946 comedy with contemporary perspective. (Anyone who sat through the egregious 1993 screen remake with Melanie Griffith knows that updating this plot doesn't work.) Instead, he lets the play stand on its own idealistic, mid-century terms in its certainty that honesty and Constitutional integrity will always win out over big-money muscle and corporate and political self-interest. Even if many in the audience are likely to roll their eyes and think, 'Yeah, good luck with that,' it's pleasurable to escape into the fantasy of less cynical times.

It seems significant that the program for Jerusalem lists no understudy for Mark Rylance, because watching his astonishing performance as Johnny 'Rooster' Byron makes it impossible to imagine anyone else ever inhabiting the role. That takes nothing away, however, from the rude beauty of Jez Butterworth's sprawling, shattering play. To borrow a phrase from Rooster, it might be described as an 'alcoholic, bucolic frolic,' except that it's so much more.

But despite some missteps, Sister Act comes together to provide payoff in laughs, emotional uplift and spectacle. Who doesn't want to see nuns in silver-sequined habits boogie down while a giant Virgin Mary statue subs for a disco ball, and a wall of stained-glass church windows pulses like a multicolored dance floor?

Turner's trenchant performance, and that of gifted newcomer Evan Jonigkeit, elevate Matthew Lombardo's three-character drama, High, above the level of its tritely sensational movie-of-the-week plotting and boilerplate construction...Turner exposes the character's deep well of compassion and the festering wounds of her self-reproach. Too bad the writing isn't sufficiently nuanced to make her calvary more affecting.

His lumbering period pieces have notched up some of the most consistently scalding reviews of any seasoned Broadway composer, but Frank Wildhorn keeps coming back, like indigestion. It would be gratifying to report that his latest musical, Wonderland, deserves a warmer welcome, but this clumsy Lewis Carroll update shuffles bland ‘80s pop imitations and third-rate show tunes to minimal effect.

It's hard to imagine how the screen version, due in December, can improve upon the thrilling experience of this stage adaptation, which is as emotionally stirring, visually arresting and compellingly told as anything on the filmmaker's resumé...overall, the presentation and writing are sentimental in the noblest possible way. It's impossible to overstate the effectiveness of Rae Smith's gorgeous design work. Its most evocative element is the torn page of a sketchbook overhead, which maps the shifting action and changing atmosphere with a mix of pencil drawings and projections.

Playing a big-hearted lug, Cannavale's performance is what holds the play together as Jackie struggles to stay off booze and keep hold of his moral compass. As its title suggests, Motherf**ker comes on with a lot of tough-talking bravado and wild profanity. Underneath that, however, it's a wistful story of a couple who have loved each other almost all their lives, but can't keep it together. Cannavale's Jackie bounces from goofy exhibitions of romantic ardor to volatile explosions to wounded-puppy vulnerability to genuine pain, always putting his own unique spin on Guirgis' virtuoso dialogue.

Playing a big-hearted lug, Cannavale's performance is what holds the play together as Jackie struggles to stay off booze and keep hold of his moral compass. As its title suggests, Motherf**ker comes on with a lot of tough-talking bravado and wild profanity. Underneath that, however, it's a wistful story of a couple who have loved each other almost all their lives, but can't keep it together. Cannavale's Jackie bounces from goofy exhibitions of romantic ardor to volatile explosions to wounded-puppy vulnerability to genuine pain, always putting his own unique spin on Guirgis' virtuoso dialogue.

There's nonetheless much to savor in a production polished to a high sheen. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman again prove themselves an ace songwriting team. Their score evokes cocktail lounges, glitzy floorshows, Rat Pack suaveness, mellow jazz and energized go-go, all wrapped up in Shaiman and Larry Blank's silky-smooth ‘60s-styled orchestrations. And Mitchell's choreography puts a vigorous period-appropriate spin on every number. As Hanratty, Butz (a Tony winner for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) does nuanced work balancing the jaded, paunchy slob with the wisecracking professional, driven in his quest to catch Frank yet plagued by the melancholy awareness that his job is his life. The boyishly handsome Tveit, who turned heads in Next to Normal, graduates to a lead role with sparkling self-assurance, strong pipes and natural charm. He makes it easy to like Frank, even if the show makes it hard to love him.

Foster has a unique comic presence. It's not intended as a slight to say there's nothing especially ladylike about her. With her loping gait and manly stance, she's no delicate flower, but her leggy physique and chameleon-like features allow her to vamp, camp and clown with equal conviction. She also has the rare distinction of striking up real chemistry with every co-star...The girl's definitely got it and this gorgeously sung, buoyantly staged show is bliss.