David Rooney

Talk about a match made in heaven. Kevin Kline was born to do Noel Coward, and his casting as Garry Essendine, the 1930s stage star and aging playboy at the center of his own eternal melodrama in Present Laughter, yields a performance of unimpeachable skill, made all the more delectable by its lightness of touch. Matching witty verbal jousts with florid gesticulation, and head-to-toe body language that constitutes its own uniquely refined brand of physical comedy, Kline etches a character pulled between conceited selfishness and encroaching melancholy, a coddled man-child helpless without a captive audience.

A dubious quote plastered outside the Walter Kerr Theatre declares, 'It's impossible not to be charmed' by Amelie, A New Musical. While reviewers spend their working lives arguing that all critical opinion is by its very nature subjective, I'd call that fake news. Just as Jean-Pierre Jeunet's popular 2001 French film presented an elaborate fantasist's version of modern-day Paris, bursting with quaint eccentrics, this grating stage musical takes the slenderest of romances and drowns it in cartoonish quirks in place of genuine warmth or feeling. And while Phillipa Soo is a creditable stand-in for the movie's uber-gamine Audrey Tautou, as a musical comedy heroine, Amelie Poulain is a dud, a bundle of cutesy affectations in search of a human core.

Director Kate Whoriskey's fluid and propulsive staging benefits from an excellent cast led by the fearless triad of JohAnna Day, Michelle Wilson and Alison Wright, who play plant drones and tight friends destabilized when one of them moves into management. James Colby adds sensible notes as a kindhearted but ineffectual bartender, and the vibrant Khris Davis and Will Pullen are young buddies whose hope curdles into anger and violence. Sweat communicates its points with minimal fuss and maximum grit. Along with the rage, despair and violence, there's humor and abundant humanity.

Call it the guilty pleasure of '80s nostalgia if you must, but revisiting the show at almost three decades' distance, I was unprepared to be so consistently entertained for the two-and-a-half-hour duration. Sure, it's a brash, broad-strokes saga with questionable racial and gender representation and a taste for salacious vulgarity. But although director Laurence Connor has adhered to the basic contours of the original, his grittier approach exposes teeth in the material that I don't recall previously being so sharp. That's most notable in the show's unflattering depiction of American foreign policy, viewed through the prism of a misguided war and the messy atonement efforts that followed.

Continuing Roundabout's long history with Miller's work, this is a very solid, sensitively directed production of a flawed but rewarding play. It's no Death of a Salesman, but it still has much to say about capitalism and its costs to the striving American family.

'I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion,' says Tom Wingfield, the thinly veiled stand-in for playwright Tennessee Williams in the opening monologue of his semi-autobiographical memory play, The Glass Menagerie. In a bold experiment that's often riveting but seldom wholly satisfying, director Sam Gold rips away illusion like a bandage off a wound - along with other signatures of the playwright such as poetry, magic, artifice - in a forensic examination that fights against the text just as Tom clashes in his love-hate relationship with his domineering mother, Amanda. Despite some fine work from the actors, you end up being moved more by the sheer resilience of the writing than by the intrusive presentation.

Under playwright Joshua Harmon's compassionate gaze, that potentially mopey, extended sitcom scenario becomes by turns hilarious and poignant, delivering a relatable contemporary take on the old-fashioned theme of waiting with increasing impatience for Mr. Right. In addition to the sharp, insightful writing, a big part of what prevents this delightful play from turning either trite or maudlin is the wonderful performance of Gideon Glick as Jordan, who is late-twenties, geeky-cute, comfortable in his sexuality, gainfully employed in advertising and desirably located in an Upper West Side Manhattan apartment. But somehow, despite his gnawing hunger for a fulfilling relationship, he remains hopelessly single. He and his similarly solo closest friend Laura (Lindsay Mendez) make a pact to be each other's fallback option should the romantic horizon remain empty.

The creation of harmony out of disharmony and coherence out of chaos are among the themes of Sunday in the Park With George. However, in fortifying for Broadway what was already a probing interpretation of this complex 1984 musical diptych by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, first seen in a New York City Center concert staging last fall, the production has elevated an affecting work into something quite rare and exquisite. Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford bring richer shadings and startling emotional candor to their dual roles, supported by a gifted ensemble that embodies the notion of great art being born out of multiple influences nourishing a unique vision.

Is there a more accomplished living interpreter of the plays of August Wilson than Ruben Santiago-Hudson? As both actor and director, his deep connection to the dramatist's work has gone from strength to strength in recent years, consolidated further in this gorgeous production for Manhattan Theatre Club of Jitney, the last of Wilson's 10-part chronicle of African-American experience in the 20th century to be staged on Broadway. With the broader exposure to the late playwright's unique voice currently being garnered by Denzel Washington's film of Fences, the timing feels ideal to revisit his inimitably pulsating world - simultaneously mythic and grounded in everyday grit, sorrow and joy - with a peerless company of actors.

The entire company of 13 has been with the production since it debuted in Sydney in 2015, and that commitment shows both in the depth of the individual characterizations and the sparks of their interactions. While there's not a weak link in the ensemble, I particularly enjoyed McKenzie's increasingly single-minded Sophia; Prior, bringing puppy-dog devotion to Sasha; Jacobs' wistful Alexei; Marshall Napier, amusing as the boozehound father of Sasha and Nikolai; and Ryan as Sergei, a meek, uninteresting man painfully aware of his own dullness. Weaving together these characters and their hollow lives in a context that connects them both to Chekhov's Russia and to our own uncertain world, Upton, Crowley and this accomplished company have elevated a problematic play into something unexpectedly satisfying.

The show was already impressive in its lauded off-Broadway premiere at Second Stage Theatre earlier this year, directed with as much vitality as sensitivity by Michael Greif. But the characterizations now seem even more fully lived-in and the connective tissue among the ensemble - whether playing biological or adoptive family, young lovers or high school acquaintances thrust into an uneasy friendship of convenience - has genuine sparks. The entire cast of that earlier production returns minus one, with Michael Park reprising the role he originated in 2015 at Arena Stage in D.C.

Writer-composer Dave Malloy and director Rachel Chavkin have been honing Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 in various iterations since this exhilarating electro-pop opera debuted in 2012. It arrives on Broadway in superlative shape, its humor, emotional content and rip-roaring storytelling every bit as vibrant as its madly infectious score.

'I always knew I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own,' the deliciously amoral Marquise de Merteuil tells her male interlocutor in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. As personified in a blazing performance by Janet McTeer - her voice like velvet and her physical bearing a cloak of studied artifice encasing a flesh and blood woman of ferocious cunning - there's never cause to doubt her claim. Her accomplice-turned-opponent in their games of cruel conquest is a different matter. But even if Liev Schreiber is ill-suited for the part of the 'conspicuously charming' Vicomte de Valmont, Josie Rourke's evocative staging provides a compelling portrait of a dissolute aristocracy on the brink of devouring itself.

In fact, pretty much everything about Lincoln Center Theater's ideally cast Broadway revival, again directed by Lapine with as much humor as sensitivity, makes it pure pleasure. The musical is firmly knotted to its era, unfolding first in 1979, as New Yorker Marvin (Christian Borle) bails on his wife Trina (Stephanie J. Block) and son Jason (Anthony Rosenthal) to move in with his gay lover, Whizzer (Andrew Rannells); it then jumps forward to 1981, the dawn of the AIDS crisis, chronicling how this nontraditional family unit has expanded and then how it gets clobbered by the devastating reality of the time. But the characters are so fresh, the writing so emotionally insightful and the situations played with such feeling that Falsettos hasn't aged a day.

The bulk of the blame should be apportioned to Simon Godwin's production, which is clumsily directed and unattractively designed. Its cast of accomplished actors scurries on and off the stage in a continuous blur of dramatic inertia and purposelessness, with very little sense of who they are and even less cohesion. What's missing, primarily, is the fundamental element of pathos. When Chekhov cast his gaze over turn of the 20th century Russia and its chilly winds of socio-economic change, he spread his sympathies with admirable even-handedness between the doomed aristocracy, clinging with stubborn blindness to its obsolete status, and the former servant class, grappling with its newfound prospects for wealth and elevation.

Given how thoroughly the audience is let in both on the technology and the artifice, as well as the research that went into creating The Encounter, it's remarkable how quickly and completely the piece becomes an immersive narrative. Throughout, McBurney shifts between his own voice - either as onstage narrator or back in his London home studio with frequent interruptions from his 5-year-old daughter, heard in recordings - and the deeper, American-accented voice of McIntyre. Yet despite the constant reminders that this is an act of storytelling, the lines separating our experience in the theater from McIntyre's in the rainforest and from McBurney's own thoughts all but vanish.

...the project's strengths far outweigh its flaws. The cast is magnificent. It goes without saying at this point that there's nothing the superhuman McDonald can't do onstage, but rarely do we get to see her cut loose in exuberant comedic mode to the extent she does here...Even beyond her numbers, McDonald kills it with her timing -- every word, look or gesture smacks its target...The four male leads are equally consummate stage artists who go a long way toward finding depth in their underdeveloped characters...even if the structural limitations of Wolfe's undertaking are unable to support the scope of his noble intentions, it's a genuine thrill to watch this outrageously talented cast herald the achievements of a team that brought innovative black artistry to mainstream American theater.

One of the more surprising aspects of the latest Broadway revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night, a play defined by its malignant sorrow, is the nervous laughter that often ripples through the audience...Much of the acrid humor that keeps bubbling up comes from Michael Shannon's dangerously unpredictable Jamie Tyrone, the unrepentantly cynical eldest son, a failed actor turned dissolute Broadway loafer. But the heat-seeking center of the production is Lange's morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone...An edge-of-insanity electrical current runs through much of Lange's work...It's that attraction to madness that gives this performance such mesmerizing authority.

In Fully Committed, Jesse Tyler Ferguson plays Sam, the hapless staffer left to man the phone lines solo at the most in-demand high-end restaurant in Manhattan. Aided only by lightning-fast shifts of his voice and physical mannerisms, he also plays Sam's bosses and co-workers, as well as his family, friends and professional associates, and the constant stream of customers on the end of his phone line, lobbying vociferously for a table. The virtuoso performance is one that begs to be described as a comedic tour de force, and unquestionably, Ferguson's efforts command applause, as do those of director Jason Moore, who has provided almost non-stop business for the actor to juggle.

Echoing a weakness in the original screen source, director Diane Paulus and choreographer Lorin Latarro could be criticized for overplaying the whimsy - there's so much going on in scene transitions, with ensemble members gliding around delivering pies, aprons and baking ingredients, that it all becomes a tad cutesy and distracting. But the material is anchored at every step by Bareilles' melodious pop score and Mueller's supremely natural performance as Jenna. While the stock characters that surround her may be familiar, they're a winsome bunch played by sterling performers. As her fellow waitresses - feisty, sass-mouthed Becky and mousy, borderline-OCD Dawn - Keala Settle and Kimiko Glenn are treasures, the dynamic among the three of them revealing the material's debt to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

Director Rupert Goold, composer Duncan Sheik and book writer Roberta Aguirre-Sacasa crank up the satirical volume on Bret Easton Ellis' cult novel in a musical with design to die for and a cool, period-appropriate electro-pop score... the show is a very sharp, distinctly theatrical treatment of its source material, in many ways improving on Mary Harron's movie version from 2000...Goold and Aguirre-Sacasa have been prudent in toning down the book's perceived misogyny and sexual violence while honing its acerbic portrait of late capitalism in a milieu where surface is everything...Walker is charismatic and commanding, but it's the broken, corrosively conflicted aspects of his characterization that make the performance so hypnotic...Helene Yorke, hilarious as Patrick's aggressively superficial fiancée Evelyn...Alice Ripley...can't do much with the role of Patrick's medicated mother...But Jennifer Damiano finds poignancy in the good-girl part of Patrick's smitten secretary Jean...Still, even with its flaws the musical is a bloody good time.

In technical terms, this is an accomplished piece of writing, but there's little heart in it for a play that plumbs such despair, both for the afflicted central character and the family member closest to him. The work will no doubt resonate for audiences with direct experience of a loved one suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's. But a drama that explores such gnawing relatable fears shouldn't have to rely on personal associations for pathos. Zeller's enigmatic construction does skillfully place us inside the woolly head of Andre and make us share in his confusion. But unlike another British import, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which also gave us direct access to the mindset of a character grappling with perception issues, the stiffness of the writing here leaves relatively little room for empathy.

Almost operatic in their intensity, [Van Hove's] productions are designed to leave audiences agitated and uncomfortable, which is notably the case with this distressing 1953 drama, with its steadily amplified sense of horror and indignation...the mesmerizingly acted new production trades the play's specific period and milieu...for a pared-down look and non-naturalistic, indeterminate setting...the production presents a chilling account of the institutional arrogance and ignorance that are a threat to civil liberties in any age, particularly when the dividing lines separating politics, religion and the judiciary become blurred...The face of this production is Saoirse Ronan, icy and commanding in her first stage appearance...As strong as the ensemble is, the indispensable anchoring forces are Whishaw and Okonedo, both of them devastating.

A key inspiration for Bright Star was a real-life story from 1902, but the plot contrivances woven around that incident -- a lost infant, an encounter many years later between strangers unaware of their deep connection, a conveniently timed discovery and a rapturous happy ending, complete with matching betrothals -- are so fanciful that only Shakespeare could have gotten away with them. Still, there's a disarming sweetness and sincerity to this folksy Americana bluegrass musical, created by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, which makes the tuneful melodrama a pleasurable experience. It also helps that talented lead Carmen Cusack brings such integrity and warmth to her performance.

It's one month late for Valentine's Day, but Roundabout Theatre Company's enchanting staging of She Loves Me sends a message straight to the heart of romantic musical comedy lovers. Designed as a pastel-colored, art nouveau jewel box, the 1963 show has been directed by Scott Ellis with effortless buoyancy and sophistication. It's also ideally cast, with an ensemble led by Laura Benanti, whose silvery soprano was born to sing this role. Add in Zachary Levi, projecting throwback charm with winning confidence, and Jane Krakowski in top form and you have a revival that will delight admirers of this musical favorite while providing a perfect introduction to those encountering it for the first time.