Elisabeth Vincentelli — Theater Critic

Gattelli excels at big ensemble numbers like “Corn Puddin’” (which won an Emmy Award for outstanding original music and lyrics in 2022) or “Cross That Bridge.” But even more satisfying is his ability to showcase triple-threat performers who can segue from acting to singing to dancing and back again. It’s exciting to watch McCalla further explore the versatility she had revealed as a closeted high schooler in “The Prom.” As for Melissa and Danny’s duet “Enjoy the Ride,” it is a giddy pleasure. That it includes a random “boink boink” that might be a wink to Bob Fosse (“Steam Heat,” maybe?) is the elective cherry on an already delicious sundae.

Fortunately the romantic couple does a lot of cleanup work. Barrera, whose extensive screen credits include Vanessa in the movie version of “In the Heights,” makes an assured Broadway debut, filling with ease the difficult niche this Rose occupies: the funny ingénue. She has terrific scene partners in John Riddle as Rose’s smarmy fiancé, Cal, and in Rousouli, whose goofball Jack is mostly defined by wide-eyed enthusiasm and form-fitting pants. If anybody thought this kind of fare wasn’t ready for Broadway, well, “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” is playing across the street and “Oh, Mary!” is a couple of blocks away. “Titaníque” may be uneven, but at least it fits right in.

The production is most effective when it is simply trying to suggest a tormented, mystical mind in small impressionistic touches, helped as well by Christopher Akerlind’s lighting design. Clarke, who has been creating unclassifiable dance-theater works since the 1980s with such pieces as “Garden of Earthly Delights” and “Vienna: Lusthaus,” remains one of the most visually driven directors in activity — a compliment, to be clear.

The York Theater production that just opened, however, didn’t get that memo. Imagine a stage version of “Gone With the Wind” in which Scarlett and Rhett run off together, or a “Casablanca” with Rick boarding the plane to stay with Ilsa. That is the equivalent of what Peter Kellogg, the “Monte Cristo” book writer and lyricist, presents, in a departure from Dumas’s original (published in serial form from 1844-46). Generally, he seems to lean on Charles Fechter’s 19th-century play variation, which is not a good idea.

This doesn’t sound like a barrel-o-laughs, but Yee’s play, which opened Monday at Signature Theater, is as funny as it is smart. This is a comedy with a lot on its mind, like Talene Monahon’s recent “Meet the Cartozians,” in which issues about Armenian identity brushed up against modern American pop culture.

Musically, the production is at its most rewarding. The score and arrangements have the unmistakable mix of warmth and drive — those bongos! — of Broadway’s golden age, and the orchestra, under Mary-Mitchell Campbell’s direction, smoothly segues between lush finesse and brassy energy. If Lenk does not bring enough finger-snapping verve to “You’d Better Love Me,” she is more at ease in the slinky “Home Sweet Heaven” and in her duet with Pasquale “I Know Your Heart.” How can one resist being swayed by the line, “I’m drawn to you but I’m on to you”? Of such pleasures Encores! is made.

A more traditional production might have switched the actors playing the two men, considering Broderick’s and Cross’s styles, but the counterintuitive casting keeps the show on its toes. In fact, casting in general is the ace in the director Sarah Benson’s sleeve as the company ably navigates Lucas Hnath’s fluid, if sometimes unnecessarily profane, verse adaptation of this classic 17th-century French comedy. (Admittedly, I did shudder hearing Hnath rhyme “Tartuffe” with words like “goof” since it should be pronounced with a hard “u” sound.)

CRITIC'S PICK. Harrison has a dream collaborator in Kauffman, who is a master at creating emotion without hitting an audience over the head. Her approach looks as if it is detached, almost clinical, but that only means she does not overplay her hand when navigating emotional stakes. This was obvious in her last Broadway outing, the quietly devastating “Mary Jane” (2024), and so it is here, with all four actors marvelously economical — an approach that does not necessarily win awards but that lingers in audience members’ hearts and minds.

Sheinkin’s uproarious book (based on a concept by Rebecca Feldman, additional material by Jay Reiss) and Finn’s beautiful songs deftly dispense information about the kids’ personalities and home lives — the integration of script and score in this show could be taught in drama schools as a model of graceful exposition.

It’s also frustrating because the show doesn’t stand a chance to work on its own, especially since the journeyman score by the married team of Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay, does nothing to spark things up. (Admittedly, the orchestra is hampered by a teeny, muddled sound reminiscent of an old Nintendo game; this pushes the vintage vibe too far.)

Indeed, therein may lie the secret to the durability of “Bat Boy,” a show that has overcome its appearance of novelty: The story may be nutty, but it proceeds with a straight face and a firm commitment to feeling, laughter and craftsmanship. Now that’s a hybrid that’s hard to breed.

“Punch” comes up short in capturing the exchange between the victim’s family and the perpetrator because it always leans on Jacob’s perspective, down to an ending that shows him happily moving on in his life as if James’s death had been a positive in terms of his personal life’s arc. But are we meant to think that meeting Jacob was enough to give Joan and David closure?

Naturally, Corden makes a meal of that tirade, an increasingly frantic aria about negotiating his family’s demands on his imminent wedding. Corden also makes a meal of a meal in a scene in which he eats olives by hungrily nibbling them one by one, like an oversize squirrel trying to appear polite while devouring his loot in company. Harris and Cannavale don’t fare quite as well, making Ellis’s production feel a little underpowered — though that may change once the actors have more performances under their belts, as this show very much depends on tight chemistry.

Despite being slightly downscaled for the road — most notably in a set that feels a little flimsy — this is a fine iteration of “Mamma Mia!” It certainly is sprightlier than it was the last time I saw the show, dejectedly limping toward the end of the first Broadway run. The band, under Will Van Dyke’s direction, was percolating with precise energy at the performance I attended, and the cast members had a spring in their step moving through Phyllida Lloyd’s staging and Anthony Van Laast’s choreography.

Wolfe gives her all throughout and sells “A Better Way,” the de rigueur 11 o’clock empowerment anthem, as effectively the real Joy pitched her product. But what does it say about the show that a mop giveaway to some audience members provides one of the biggest flashes of excitement?

The play meanders with nary a sign of tension, sexual or otherwise, until the final minutes, when Rosebrock suddenly puts on the turbo — and promptly crashes into a wall. At least you leave the theater with a jolt.

While there are some fun jump scares, they, by nature, come and go quickly. For the most part, the show doesn’t mine the suspenseful, lingering dread that the series effectively deploys to keep you on the edge of your seat.

If anything, this production will hopefully encourage others to take a stab at “Love Life.” A better staging may be on the horizon — and perhaps that, too, is a metaphor for America.

But this latest iteration of the “Buena Vista Social Club” franchise makes its point by making music instead of spelling things out. The older Compay introduces Eliades Ochoa (Renesito Avich) by saying that he “plays the tres like a Cuban Jimi Hendrix,” referring to a kind of Cuban guitar. He does, too: Avich is onstage the entire time, and when he takes a solo, by God, he shreds.

Instead of capitalizing on that loaded context, though, the play gradually deflates, unable to maximize its own premise and hampered by possibly self-serving moves — a raised eyebrow is the only possible reaction to the improbable notion that Boubs could manipulate the worldlier, more experienced Dina into getting what he needs.

I was struck by the craftsmanship that holds “Urinetown” together. When the score does not nod toward the Hollywood of the 1930s, it winks at the Berlin of the 1920s musicalized by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, or glances at the Paris of the 1830s as immortalized by “Les Misérables.” And of course the title brings to mind Steeltown, the setting of Marc Blitzstein’s agitprop play with music “The Cradle Will Rock,” from 1937. Like that city, “Urinetown isn’t so much a place as it is a metaphysical place,” as Little Sally puts it.

You might assume that Simon Rich’s Broadway debut, “All In,” whose subtitle promises “Comedy About Love,” would join this honor roll. But this new production is a slight affair that’s as easy to forget as it is to watch. Theatergoers likely to get the most mileage out of the show’s 90 minutes at the Hudson Theater are those who bust a gut reading The New Yorker’s Shouts & Murmurs section — they must exist, right? — where some of this material has appeared.

But after that teasing introduction, Tammy Faye’s signature Kabuki facade barely figures in the disjointed, strangely bland musical that opened on Thursday at the newly renovated Palace Theater. It is laudable that the show’s composer, Elton John; lyricist, Jake Shears (of Scissor Sisters); book writer, James Graham; and director, Rupert Goold, tried to go behind the mask of this complicated, outsize woman, whose public persona was shaped by and for television. The problem is that they ended up making her smaller than life.

Design alone does not a musical make, and piddly details like book and score must be taken into account. There is no questioning the Lazours’ passion for the project, which has been in the works for a decade and premiered at American Repertory Theater, in Massachusetts, in 2019 — the album “Flap My Wings (Songs from We Live in Cairo)” was recorded remotely with various singers the following year. But the characters are never convincingly defined, except for Fadwa, who also benefits from Tarabzouni’s fiery performance.

The original score works by aggregating references to well-known musicals, like “The Gay B-C’s” spoofing “Do-Re-Mi” from “The Sound of Music.” A highlight is Rousouli’s dance solo inspired by the “Music and the Mirror” number from “A Chorus Line,” in which he nails a well-calibrated mix of reverence, satire and abandon. That moment, among the few harking back to the goofball spirit of “Titaníque,” only accentuates how calculated the rest of the show feels.