David Rooney

It was nine years ago when Jeff Daniels first appeared in Joe Mantello's taut production of Scottish playwright David Harrower's volatile two-hander, Blackbird. Revisiting the play with the same director on Broadway opposite a sensational Michelle Williams, the actor now brings a noticeably deepened middle-aged gravitas that adds fascinating layers to his character -- of bitter defensiveness, corrosive dishonesty, subjugated desire, and ultimately, ice-cold fear. Unyielding in its needling focus, this riveting drama is a stark examination of love, pain and loss that's both compassionate and unforgiving, all of which helps it navigate the move to a bigger stage with a corresponding amplification of its emotional power.

In Disaster!, Jennifer Simard plays Sister Mary, a nun who entered the convent to escape her gambling addiction. Midway through the first act, she tries and fails to tear herself and the quarter burning a hole in her habit away from a gleaming new Hawaii Five-O slot machine as she belts out the Gloria Gaynor disco hit, 'Never Can Say Goodbye.' Because it's a great song and because the sublimely funny Simard goes from deadpan dourness to libidinous delirium as the fever overtakes her, the number is a riot. However, despite a game cast of Broadway pros, this campy spoof of 1970s screen schlockbusters too seldom matches those heights.

Eugene O'Neill's 1942 play, Hughie, is a moody character study about the comforts of self-deception as a buffer against bleak reality...In Hughie, the central character's purgatorial imprisonment in empty boasts and fragile illusions is ongoing, generating more muted drama...Whitaker conveys the tireless braggadocio but also the pathos and creeping desperation in this unquiet character, a classic O'Neill type who plasters over the void in his life with exaggerations and lies. With his sleepy eyes, soulful voice and fluttering hands, Whitaker is a superb actor who can wear sorrow like a baggy overcoat. However, as watchable as he is, the real star of Michael Grandage's production is the design team.

It takes some doing to stifle the prickly humor of Linda Lavin, but Our Mother's Brief Affair makes her character both an unreliable narrator and one who's astringent to the point of unpleasantness...A madly overworked but underdeveloped little piece, it mistakes narration for dramatization, and verbiage for genuine feeling...Greenberg has reached for the elusive links between past, present and future before, in richer and more compelling ways. And while Meadow's actors are all quite accomplished, they struggle to find any heart in characters so unrelentingly 'written' that it sucks the life out of them, giving us no reason to care.

In 2016, it's inarguably a little late to be celebrating the stereotype of the dumb blonde. But the stiff walk and posture that Megan Hilty has created for her clueless character, a stunningly untalented British stage actress cast for her generous curves, are the gift that keeps on giving in Roundabout's delicious Broadway revival of Noises Off. Whether she's galumphing around backstage or sashaying through a performance with priceless self-consciousness -- delivering every line straight to the audience with a blissful inability to take direction or interact with her fellow cast -- Hilty's Brooke Ashton is a sparkling comic caricature that never gets tired. She's well matched in director Jeremy Herrin's production by a first-rate troupe of New York theater pros, even if this notoriously tricky backstage farce hasn't quite found its ideal precision-tooled groove.

Burstein's performance admittedly is more measured than the familiar and still appealing Topol model of burly physicality and bear-like masculinity. (I can't compare with the original Tevye, Zero Mostel.) But Burstein does larger-than-life by subtler means, which is nowhere more evident than in his full command of the character in 'If I Were a Rich Man.' The faintest trace of the Borscht Belt in his humor and his wryly self-dramatizing dialogues with God also provides a further bridge in the director's vision of the story as one that still has relevance to contemporary American life.

Wow, what a difference a more-focused production makes. When the musical adaptation of Alice Walker's searing story of abuse and deliverance, The Color Purple, premiered on Broadway in 2005, its rewards were compromised by the messy and emphatic qualities of the overblown production. Ten years later, director John Doyle and an electric cast assembled around transcendent British newcomer Cynthia Erivo as Celie have given the show a deep -- and deeply satisfying -- rethink. This revelatory overhaul is characterized by its grace, restraint and soaring spirituality, peeling back the clutter to expose the life-affirming material's molten emotional core. It remakes a patchy musical as a thrilling one.

Led by the hilarious Alex Brightman in a star-making performance that genuflects to Jack Black in the movie while putting his own anarchic stamp on the role of Dewey Finn, the show knows full well that its prime asset is the cast of ridiculously talented kids, ranging in age from nine to 13. They supply a joyous blast of defiant analog vitality in a manufactured digital world... It might sound lame to suggest that School of Rock works in large part because of the charms of a bunch of adorable kids.

If the expiration date on Donald Trump's turn in the political arena should arrive any time soon, and he wants to try his hand at another kind of acting, there's a vehicle tailor-made for his blustery shtick in David Mamet's new play, China Doll. In fact, during the boring parts -- and yes, there's no shortage of them in this windy anecdote about the clash between one-percent arrogance and political opportunism -- it's mildly entertaining to imagine Trump vomiting indignation as besieged moneybags Mickey Ross. In the meantime, Al Pacino, for whom the role was written, huffs and puffs his way through a performance that remains oddly tentative despite all the showboating mannerisms.

Thanks largely to the wacko humor infused throughout Metcalf's diabolically folksy performance, and to the ingeniousness of David Korins' revolving set - which invites us to follow the action from room to room exactly like a camera - this Misery is an enjoyable enough rerun that recaptures some of its predecessor's B-movie pleasures. But there's a strong whiff of cynicism about the enterprise. The suspicion takes root virtually from the start that the only reason it exists is because Warner Bros. and screenwriter William Goldman - who has adapted the work as a stage play with minimal invention - figured there were still a few more bucks to be milked out of a popular commercial property.

The knowledge that the story was inspired by Takei's childhood hardships in the Japanese-American 'relocation centers' of World War II adds significantly to the emotional impact. But the powerful sentiments involved are too often flattened by the pedestrian lyrics and unmemorable melodies of Jay Kuo's score, making an unconvincing case for this material's suitability to be a musical...Nonetheless, writers Marc Acito, Kuo and Lorenzo Thomas have woven together a plot that's admirable in its bid to shine a light on the injustices committed against 120,000 West Coast Americans of Japanese descent, by focusing on the festering discord within one such family.

As for the star, her seeming effortlessness is also a distinguishing quality of the perfectly cast Villafane. She's a natural, not only bearing a more-than-passing resemblance to the young Gloria Estefan, but also producing a fine facsimile of the original's vocal power. Balancing softness with a feisty side, she provides a captivating human center to this enjoyable show, helping to elevate it above the more workmanlike aspects of its assembly.

While there are interludes of pageantry that mark key turning points, what's most notable about Goold's direction here is its restraint. Unlike his hyperkinetic productions of Macbeth, with Patrick Stewart, or Enron, which tanked on Broadway after much London success, the focus is not on spectacle or tricks, but on the writing. Despite the entertaining theatricality of its language, the play is ultimately more notable for its depth of character and moral complexity, especially as concerns the key figures of Charles, William, Kate and Harry.

No disrespect to Keira Knightley, whose bristling performance in the title role of Therese Raquin ranges compellingly from suffocated imprisonment through ecstatic liberation to haunted hysteria, but the real star of director Evan Cabnet's Broadway production is the design team. Beginning with an austere canvas of deadening gray that engulfs the play's antiheroine, Beowulf Boritt's imaginative sets -- daubed in lighting designer Keith Parham's painterly shadings -- boldly evoke the loveless marriage at the center of Emile Zola's novel. But British playwright Helen Edmundson's adaptation is a mixed bag, falling into traps that may be unavoidable in any literal treatment of this material for contemporary audiences.

When Ashford enters the elegant Manhattan apartment of Broderick's Greg and his English teacher wife Kate (a miscast Julie White), it's impossible not to be charmed by the anthropomorphized pooch. She bounds around and over furniture, gamboling with uncontainable delight in her new home, sniffing every inch of the place and dragging her butt across the carpet while panting with the urgency of finding adequate ways to express her unquestioning adoration. The writing, direction and performance could only have come from years of doggy devotion...But once the rambunctious dog impersonation has worked its initial magic, it soon becomes apparent that the play is a very shallow bowl of kibble.

Whether there's an audience for this effusive salute to a kitschy, corny genre that most Broadway theatergoers have either forgotten or never knew remains an open question...The musical is right in the wheelhouse of director-choreographer Randy Skinner, who never met a nostalgic dance interlude he didn't like...The central role of the cute ingenue might have benefited from a more captivating presence -- the fresh-faced Kropp is no Peters, her dance ability outweighing her tentative acting -- and Tedder and Gardner are perhaps too interchangeable. But Skinner has assembled a likeable cast that fits the material, both in terms of the stock types they're playing and the kind of screen stars associated with them...The show's over-the-top scene-stealer...is Margherita...Her Mona is classic Brooklyn trash reinvented as a grand thespian, turning on a dime from high melodrama to an ingratiating megawatt smile.

Foglia leans heavily on the humor in The Gin Game, perhaps dimming some of the more emotionally affecting notes and making the shift into sobering home truths and self-recriminations somewhat abrupt...What keeps the slender piece engaging is the delicate dance between Jones and Tyson, as she gets repeatedly scared off by his bluster and then is coaxed back, following an apology, for a couple more hands of gin. Despite being a little hunched with age, Weller remains a fearsome bear of a man in Jones' well-honed characterization, using his thunderous basso voice to stifle any uncomfortable small talk or implied criticism...Tyson is tiny and birdlike, affecting a butter-wouldn't-melt innocence and a vise-like handbag grip...But this sweet, shuffling figure turns out to be quite passive-aggressive, revealing her barely disguised glee each time she humiliates Weller by piercing his masculine pride.

...while there's no denying their combustible chemistry, I couldn't get past the impression that only Rockwell seems a natural inhabitant of Shepard country...The actor's loose physicality, his slyly ingratiating quality, his off-kilter swagger and insouciant humor all add flavor to a guy who has proved a fatal attraction for May since high school. He knows she's bad for him and vice versa, but he can't keep away...As May...[Arianda] works her blonde mane and long legs to bewitching effect, proving no less physical a performer than Rockwell. But the volatile characterization seems more studied than lived-in. May clings like a vine to Eddie one minute and then breaks their passionate kiss with a knee to the groin the next, but the desperation behind her push-pull instability in this production is unpersuasive.

Clive Owen makes a riveting Broadway debut in Harold Pinter's Old Times, playing a man whose cocky suavity slowly unravels as he negotiates his hold on two elusive women, who may be different sides of the same person...But director Douglas Hodge doesn't make the mistake of imposing explanations where none were intended as he charts a transfixing course from gamesmanship to the consuming loss of a fantasy that was perhaps never attainable to begin with. Audience response will depend largely on the appetite for Pinter at his most opaque -- or some might even say attenuated. This is not a play with the biting menace of earlier landmark works like The Birthday Party...Its fascination is quieter and more cryptic, to the point where some will find it bloodless. Hodge, a seasoned Pinter interpreter as both actor and director, proclaims rather loudly from the outset that the drama is unfolding in a disorienting void adjacent to reality.

It's an admirable undertaking and I wish I could get behind it. But arriving on Broadway so soon after Michael Mayer's viscerally impactful premiere production won the 2007 Tony Award for best musical, this underpowered, unexceptionally sung post-Glee version seems more of a special presentation than a wholesale reinvention.

There's no questioning the sincerity of Amazing Grace... Heartfelt sentiments relating to the nation's shameful history of slavery and racism no doubt contribute to get audience members standing at the conclusion of this musical, as the full ensemble's voices unite in an uplifting rendition of the title song. But that emotional release is a long time coming in a 2½-hour show in which the stories of the secondary black characters are invariably more involving than those of the blandly drawn, white central figures...Young and Mackey both give committed performances, but their singing has no emotional range - he's all one-note intensity while her light soprano is pretty and period-appropriate but short on passion - and their romance is the stuff of trite melodrama...The most affecting moments come from Cooper's Thomas and Michelle's Nanna, both of them figures of great dignity and contained sorrow; and oddly enough, from Hewitt's Captain Newton...

In her terrific 2010 play, Detroit, Lisa D'Amour showed gimlet-eyed observation, a spiky sense of humor and a vivid feel for a place and people being left behind by the American Dream...But despite being given a dynamic production with a highly capable cast, this rambling character-driven piece lacks the earlier work's drive and clarity of purpose. While it's a vividly populated canvas, the playwright doesn't do anything much of interest with it...as soulful, alive and frequently funny as D'Amour's characters are, there's also a soggy veil of nostalgia over this gallery of beautiful losers -- hookers, strippers, bartenders, bouncers, drug addicts, dealers, poets and street philosophers. The depiction of these outsiders, with their gritty nobility and purity of heart that remain unseen beyond their community, seems simplistic almost to the point of quaintness.

It's an arresting vehicle for the indomitable Chita Rivera...she remains a uniquely steely stage presence at 82 -- graceful, dignified and commanding...The dramatic weak point is Anton. While Rees is a fine, sensitive actor, there's something unsatisfying about the way his role is drawn...Doyle and company access the mordant absurdist humor of Durrenmatt's work, but the chilling social and political critique...is diluted in the streamlined show...The big issue is one of repetitiveness, as McNally treads similar ground from character to character, without much complexity...Even Kander's score, with its lethargic but insistent Kurt Weill-style oom-pah circus rhythms, has a sameness at times...One of the production's rewards is the thrilling choral singing and exquisitely textured harmonies. But unquestionably, the reason to see The Visit, even with its flaws, is the star, whose brittle vocals cut like ice.

This is a big, brash meta-musical studiously fashioned in the mold of Monty Python's Spamalot, The Producers and The Book of Mormon, loaded with crowd-pleasing showstoppers, deliciously puerile gags and an infectious love of the form it so playfully skewers...If the songs themselves are standard-issue show-tunes, they are elevated by dynamic staging and performances. Nicholaw can spin froth into a full-bodied confection, even if this one cries out for something more substantial at the finish. But while Something Rotten! might have benefited from a more robust second act and a punchier closing number, the show is clever enough in its impish desecration of highfalutin history to make it a very agreeable lark...Channeling Tim Curry, Borle is an uproarious scene-stealer who delivers big time in the flashiest part. But it's the enormously appealing James' prickly humor and natural charisma that anchor this highly entertaining show.

...there's nothing contemporary and too little that's consistently funny about playwright Joe DiPietro's refried serving of Peccadillo...the new version does have a thoroughbred casting coup in its favor, which is the sporting turn of celebrated lyric soprano Renée Fleming as fading opera diva Raquel De Angelis. But when Raquel is not onstage trilling with vainglorious self-adulation and encroaching terror of her professional decline, the fizz quickly evaporates...while DiPietro and director Kathleen Marshall...treat the material like farce, it lacks accelerating mayhem...Anyone who has seen Chlumsky's fine work on Veep knows how skillfully she can underplay comedy. But her role here is written with too little dimension or consistency...And there's minimal chemistry between the actress and O'Connell, who is hopelessly miscast...O'Connell has a way of sucking the comic energy out of the room...Sills is a wily old pro who sails through the proceedings with brio in a one-note role...[Fleming's] performance is broad and campy, as the material dictates, but there's also a delightful airiness to it.