David Rooney

The deluxe revival is directed with unflagging energy and an assured grasp of the play's shifting rhythms by comedy pro Scott Ellis. This is a work that champions the individualist, and the director follows suit by marshaling his impeccable cast to create loopy characterizations. This is a well-oiled ensemble full of delightful character turns from actors as adept with the witticisms as they are with the physical comedy.

A table, two chairs and a pair of actors reading from scripts on an otherwise bare stage sounds like one notch up from a radio play. But A.R. Gurney's deceptively simple 1988 epistolary two-hander, Love Letters, is that rare work whose emotional richness requires no embellishment in order to become a full-bodied theatrical experience. All that's needed are gifted actors capable of tracing the poignant thread of longing and regret that binds half a century of correspondence between characters whose relationship is thwarted by hesitation. And as the first couple in this production's all-star rotating cast, Brian Dennehy and Mia Farrow deliver with impeccable restraint.

John Singleton can relax. Any danger of his long-in-development Tupac Shakurbiopic being beaten to the punch by Holler If Ya Hear Me is quickly dispelled by the deflating experience of this well-intentioned but toothless Broadway rap musical. The show is not a biographical drama but a story of friendship and family, gun violence, racism and redemption in an inner-city black neighborhood, inspired by Shakur's lyrics and poetry. However, therein lies the problem. The music is often powerful and the performers uniformly capable, but the songs are a poor fit for narrative presentation, at least in writer Todd Kreidler's cut-and-paste of cliched situations and stock characters.

...there's simply no wrong time to revisit Sam Mendes' and Rob Marshall's thrilling production, which is even sharper this time around, with Alan Cumming reprising his louche Emcee alongside Michelle Williams' shattering Sally Bowles...Even for those of us who experienced it the first time around, this atmospheric revival is a bracing ride...Cumming is now 20 years older than when he first played the pansexual Master of Ceremonies, and his seductive performance in this career-defining role remains a knockout...he can be saucy and insinuating, cruel and menacing, downright debauched or dead-eyed and cold, often all at once...There's a riveting hard-soft dichotomy in Williams' performance. On one hand, she's the coke-snorting, armor-plated Sally who uses her frivolous disinterest in politics as an excuse to ignore the encroaching horror. On the other, she's the fragile creature who dreams of love and fulfillment while never quite convincing herself that those things are within reach...Mendes and Marshall have precision-tooled the production so that its hard, diamond edges glisten with sweat and sparkle.

Joe Mantello's impeccable production and a cast of outstanding actors make this an engrossing portrait of a marginalized group, but the strong set-up isn't matched by focused follow-through...A beloved Broadway fixture as well as a vocal LGBT rights activist, Fierstein is so perennially busy that it's surprising to realize how long it's been since his last new play...But just as out-of-town tryouts tend to be crucial in fine-tuning a musical, plays need thorough development too, and this one seems a workshop or two away from being fully realized. Which is disappointing, because there's no shortage of snappy comedy, tenderness, highly individualized character studies and thematic ambition here...Under Mantello's sensitive direction, the actors keep us invested in their characters, and there's certainly an inherent fascination in watching this unobserved pre-Stonewall subculture. But the play ends by freezing on a melodramatic gesture. Like a soap opera, it suggests that the story continues, without actually resolving anything.

The big question from the start was could Neil Patrick Harris sing the hard-driving glam rock-meets-punk score of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And would the former Doogie Howser go as far out there as the title role of the embittered East German singer with the botched sex-reassignment surgery demands? The swift answer on both counts is that Harris is beyond fabulous, holds nothing back and plays it any way but safe in Michael Mayer's exhilarating production...Harris smoothly marries Borscht Belt shtick with a self-serious songspiel style reminiscent of Ute Lemper, spicing his performance with improvisational touches and audience exchanges ranging from flirty asides to a lap-dance. Snugly encased in the character, he recounts the lurid specifics of Hedwig's life, exposing the scars of her painful past.

At 86, Estelle Parsons is almost too sprightly and vigorous to fully convey the indignities of aging in The Velocity of Autumn, Eric Coble's two-hander play now receiving its Broadway premiere after a previous engagement at Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage. Playing Alexandra, a 79-year-old woman armed with dozens of homemade Molotov cocktails who has barricaded herself in her well-appointed Brooklyn brownstone rather than accede to her children's desire for her to move into a nursing home, the Oscar-winning actress delivers a memorable turn in an otherwise forgettable, schematic play.

Broad strokes and big effects often appear to be the default setting for Broadway musicals, so it's always refreshing to see a modestly scaled show in which the cast and creative team trust in the value of emotional intimacy. Driven by a performance of incandescent yearning fromSutton Foster that's all the more moving for its restraint, Violet is a delicate wildflower, craning toward the sun...While the story could be treacly sentiment in less skilled hands, Violet brings a quiet spiritual undertow to its characters' search for fortifying connections. It's emotionally satisfying without being manipulative. Even the heroine's inevitably deflating encounter with the televangelist is handled with a delicate touch, becoming less about religious hucksterism than faith of a more human nature.

With typically spry wit and irreverent ethnographic insight,Martin McDonagh's grubby jewel of a play uses the shooting of Flaherty's seminal non-fiction film as the spark for a pitch-black comedy about Irishness. The triptych portrait of Daniel Radcliffe on the Playbill cover makes no mistake about the marquee draw, and the former Harry Potter star has never been better, more than measuring up in this flawless ensemble. But to quote Hamlet, 'the play's the thing' in Michael Grandage's cracking production, which makes an entertainingly boozy brew of humor both sweet and savage, melancholy sentimentality, lacerating sorrow and wicked cruelty.

...it's problematic in a work fundamentally about the magic of the theater that all the magic is confined to the design department. Condensing into play form Moss Hart's 1959 autobiography -- a peach among American theater memoirs -- was probably an impossible task. However, that doesn't soften the arduousness of sitting through writer-director James Lapine's botched attempt at it...Fontana...as always, has an appealing stage presence, but his characterization is entirely generic -- a driven, likable young man whose commitment to succeed strengthens with each acrid taste of failure. While the multitasking Shalhoub is given little to do as the older Moss and his father, he mines welcome humor out of his portrayal of the fastidious, soft-spoken George, even if too much of the performance is about the celebrated playwright's OCD neuroses. The closest Lapine comes to finding some heart in the material is in the gradual bonding of these two -- the wide-eyed novice and the world-weary Broadway eminence.

The headline news in this stirring Broadway remount is the stage debut of peripatetic artistic adventurer James Franco, starring opposite the wonderful Chris O'Dowd as itinerant ranch workers George and Lennie. But the real satisfaction comes from those unforgettable characters, their joy and wrenching sorrow, and the enduring power of their story of friendship sustained by illusory dreams in a world of solitude...If he's not quite a natural onstage, registering as an actor more accustomed to transmitting nuances of feeling to a camera, [Franco] brings warmth and understated manliness to George in a performance that grows more assured as the play progresses. Most crucially, Franco has beautiful chemistry with O'Dowd...Irish actor O'Dowd is tremendous in a part that could easily stray into mawkish territory. His Lennie is a trusting innocent, clinging to the rituals of his life with George.

Along with salty humor, joy, bitterness and plummeting despair, that sense of suffering as a constant companion permeates and elevates Lanie Robertson's slender yet affecting bio-play with music, crafted as a woozy late-night concert in the South Philly locale of the title, a few months before the singer's death...Watching such a consummate performer lose herself in the character and her music, it's clear there's not just diligent research here but also a profound empathy with the tragic struggle of Holiday's tempestuous life...There's an inevitable artificiality about so much biographical data being stuffed into a 'concert' performance, and Price adds to that informational aspect by beaming superfluous photographs and other visual aids onto the rear wall. But compared to the clunky Garland or Joplin shows mentioned earlier, Robertson's play incorporates his subject's background with sufficient economy to maintain the illusion of a spontaneous performance.

There's a ton of talent onstage in Bullets Over Broadway, evident in the leggy chorines who ignite into explosive dance routines, the gifted cast, the sparkling design elements and the wraparound razzle-dazzle of director-choreographer Susan Stroman's lavish production. So why does this musical, adapted by Woody Allen from his irresistible 1994 screen comedy about the tortured path of the artist, wind up shooting blanks? Flat where it should be frothy, the show is a watered-down champagne cocktail that too seldom gets beyond its recycled jokes and second-hand characterizations to assert an exciting new identity.

The absurdist intellectual humor of playwright Will Eno is very much an acquired taste, provoking as much discomfort as laughs, and placing him somewhere between Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee. But theatergoers willing to dive into the sea of ellipses in this mordant, melancholy existential sitcom will find the waters bracing...Is The Realistic Joneses an ideal fit for Broadway? Not if the uncomfortable audience behavior at a press performance a few nights prior to opening was any indication. The anxious smattering of applause during scene changes seems a symptom of a crowd unsure how to react but conditioned to believe that star talent demands some noise. While the play is stuffed with droll wordplay and wry comic observations that hit the mark, you can also feel much of its humor and poetry not quite landing - getting lost in the airy space of a large auditorium. A work in which the awkwardness of intimacy is a key theme might seem more at home someplace cozier.

Denzel Washington is the star attraction, but it's the harmonious balance of an impeccably matched ensemble that makes Kenny Leon's lovingly staged revival of A Raisin in the Sun so alive with authentic feeling. The warmth as well as the frictions and frustrations of a real family ripple through this lived-in production, with an accomplished cast that nestles deep into every moment of humor, hope and sadness. Even in its more dated passages, Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking 1959 play remains a work of stirring compassion and humanity.

At a time when the majority of Broadway musicals are repackaged movies, processed jukebox assemblies or time-tested revivals, any original contemporary adult work deserves to be applauded for its ambition. But If/Then earns applause primarily for Idina Menzel...The disappointing news, however, is that while it's sweet and sincere, this is also a banal show about uninteresting people that strings together weary platitudes in place of a plot. Or make that two demi-plots...But the musical is really all about the blazing supernova at its center, Menzel, who may not scream vulnerability, but she has the spirit and charisma to carry even weak material.

Tyne Daly is far too grounded and honest an actor to give an inauthentic performance, but she deserves a more satisfying play than Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons. There's no shortage of thematic breadth here concerning the changing dynamics for gay men and their families, in a work that considers the generational shift from AIDS victims to survivors, from incomprehension to increased acceptance, and from rights-deprived relationships to legitimate marriage and parenthood. But while it's absorbing and at times mildly affecting, this shapeless drama never probes deep enough, its air of artificiality making it appear to have been rushed to Broadway with insufficient development.

Despite that running time, this reboot feels faster, grittier, gloomier and, above all, more emphatic than ever, which is saying something for a show that was always an unrelenting assault on the tear ducts...Ramin Karimloo has been celebrated for his musical theater performances in London, but his Broadway debut has been a long time coming and he doesn't disappoint. His Jean Valjean has the brawn and the brooding demeanor of a man who has endured two decades of incarcerated hard labor on minor charges. But he also brings the requisite spiritual elevation of the transformed Valjean, without forcing the victimized character's saintliness...Sure, there's no disguising the Cliffs Notes feel of the adaptation. The storytelling is so compacted that plot points whiz by like blurred subway stops on an express train, making this less a narrative than a machine...But the inbuilt emotional sensations of the show are what matter. Judging by the vocal crowd response when favorite characters appear (even the plucky urchin Gavroche gets screaming entrance applause), or when the first bars of one of the endlessly refrained key musical motifs are heard, story is no longer the point. This critic-proof production will likely speak loudest to young audiences coming to it onstage relatively fresh - not those of us who have been anesthetized by 30 years of over-exposure. And maybe that's just as it should be.

Its exotic Middle Eastern setting and multiethnic cast aside, Aladdin offers less 'A Whole New World' - to quote its signature song - than a traditional Disney fairy-tale realm; it's perhaps the most old-school of the company's screen-to-stage adaptations since Beauty and the Beast. But that shouldn't deter audiences from making this splashy Arabian Nights wish-fulfillment fantasy into a family-friendly hit. Directed and choreographed by musical comedy specialist Casey Nicholaw with loads of retro showmanship, an unapologetic embrace of casbah kitsch and a heavy accent on shtick, this is sweet, silly fun. It's not the most sophisticated entertainment, but the target demographic won't mind at all.

'Nobody leaves the theater humming the scenery.' That old Broadway wisecrack, often attributed to Richard Rodgers, implies that no amount of eye-popping visuals in a show can overcome an unmemorable score. Rocky may be the exception. While the songs in this musicalization of the career-making 1976 Sylvester Stallone movie come and go without leaving much of an impression, the stage magic that director Alex Timbers and set designer Christopher Barrecawork with the finale fight is so visceral and exhilarating that it sends the audience out on a high. Of course, having an indestructible story with underdog characters worth rooting for doesn't hurt either...The ace up the show's sleeve, however, is...talented lead Andy Karl, who sticks close enough to the Stallone model in his characterization as Rocky Balboa while at the same time injecting fresh vitality and humor into the role...The delicate chemistry between Karl and Seibert breathes warmth into their outsider romance, and Adrian's solos, the melancholy 'Raining' and 'I'm Done,' in which she finally asserts herself and stands up to overbearing Paulie, are among the better numbers. But aside from the central couple, none of the other characters comes close to recapturing the colorful personality they had onscreen.

The Actor Formerly Known as Walter White takes a scintillating turn in his first major post-Breaking Bad role, grappling with the infinite contradictions of America's 36th President,Lyndon Baines Johnson. In a riveting Broadway debut, Bryan Cranston's ferociously human character study elevates and invigorates All the Way, Robert Schenkkan's dense political history lesson about the tumultuous year during which LBJ ascended from the VP spot in the wake of John F. Kennedy's assassination and successfully ran for re-election after pushing through the controversial Civil Rights Act.

One of the works that put Jason Robert Brown on the map is The Last Five Years, a 2001 two-character chamber musical that deconstructs in microscopic detail the entirety of a relationship, from first encounter through marriage to breakup. A variation on that theme, this time chronicling just four whirlwind days of intense passion, is trapped inside the composer-lyricist's cluttered stage retelling of The Bridges of Madison County. Fussy direction and design choices and cumbersome book scenes crowd the central couple, but the gorgeous voices and thoughtful characterizations of Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale in those roles help counter the weaknesses of this problematic romantic musical.

The third in a series of sports-themed Broadway productions that are as much promotional as dramatic-the Yankees and Major League Baseball are among the presenters--Bronx Bombers offers little for those who are not already ardent fans of the venerable sports franchise...The effective cast of last year's original off-Broadway production is largely intact, with the exception of Scolari, who's touching and funny as the ever-awkward Berra. And the moving final scene, set in the Yankees locker room on the day of the final game at the original stadium, will surely strike a chord with nostalgists. But Bronx Bombers is ultimately too lightweight to score a theatrical home run.

Hitting a sweet spot that recalls his Oscar-winning screenplay for Moonstruck, John Patrick Shanley's Outside Mullingar is a charmer of a play about a hesitant romance stalled by petty grievances and misunderstandings. Unapologetic sentimentality without too much treacle isn't easy to do, but the playwright pulls it off with confidence...While Messing's accent is not the most consistent, she's both feisty and funny here, not to mention the picture of a red-haired Irish country rose. She nails all the contradictions in depressed Rosemary's antagonistic approach to Anthony, while steadily opening a window to the longing that's been simmering inside her for years. O'Byrne is superb as a man imprisoned by his own nervousness and lack of self-worth.

Staged this time by British director Lyndsey Turner with uncompromising rigor, the play's nine 'episodes' unfold in a revolving rectangular box created by design magician Es Devlin. This functions like a gallery of grim dioramas...The striking visuals of Devlin's sets are deepened by Jane Cox's shadowy, cinematic lighting effects, by the subdued color palette of Michael Krass' costumes, and by a murky soundscape designed by Matt Tierney that incorporates composer Matthew Herbert's unsettling score. The combined effect is dour but often darkly beautiful...This is a tough play with an intensity that doesn't let up, and the actors all respond to it with full-force commitment...But it's Hall who rivets attention, holding nothing back in her tortured portrayal of this everywoman's dehumanizing downward spiral as she's failed by her own survival skills and by everyone around her.