Elisabeth Vincentelli

Christopher Walken has an eccentric charisma, his hangdog, sorrowful demeanor spiked with a twisted kind of charm. The mix is a perfect fit for Martin McDonagh's particular brand of macabre comedy. That Walken is the main attraction of the playwright's new 'A Behanding in Spokane' is obvious -- the other night, the audience erupted into guffaws every time the star opened his mouth... But the play is on cruise control, and not even Walken can save it.

Trevor Nunn's murky-looking production (did he and lighting designer Hartley T A Kemp take the 'night' in the title literally?) isn't particularly subtle or graceful. Lacking both nuance and energy, it struggles to match the sophistication and gamesmanship of Sondheim's score, which evokes the effervescence of love, the abject pain it can cause, and the melancholy of its aftermath -- sometimes all in the same song.

The most stunning thing about the David Mamet play that opened last night is how clunky it is. The man's written books about drama and filmmaking, so you'd think his missile against a hot-button issue would at least be well put together. But 'Race,' which Mamet also directed, is a bewildering muddle. Audiences might expect this type of awkwardly constructed, flailing acrimony from a 15-year-old with a Twitter account, not from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, the biography is at its most thrilling when it blurs the line between life and art, performers and viewers. A pedagogical deconstruction of Afrobeat's musical components turns into a party, and the show is so cocky that it doesn't even save a big audience-participation number for the finale: It comes half an hour in. It's a tough act to keep up, and 'Fela!' does struggle after intermission.

'Memphis' isn't out to revolutionize musical theater, but its embrace of old-fashioned pleasures is immensely gratifying. Nowhere is this approach more obvious than in the emotionally charged 'Colored Woman.' Alone in the spotlight, Glover simultaneously lifts up the show and stops it dead in its tracks. Of such thrills, Broadway is made.

The downside is that we never really experience the terrors lurking inside a tortured mind. Instead, the show focuses on the grief that played a central role in Diana's collapse and continues to haunt her. When the subject of her sorrow delivers the song 'I'm Alive,' the threat to her sanity is clear. This darkness is the show's most intriguing aspect, as if it were referencing Daphne du Maurier rather than the DSM. It's also the most underdeveloped and sentimentally resolved. For behind its surface grimness, 'Next to Normal' ends up relying on soothing conventions.

'Rock of Ages' is what it is: a jukebox musical stringing together songs so familiar, the program lists them in small print between the hosiery credits and the union logos. If you can't identify the first seconds of 'Sister Christian,' you shouldn't be at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre to begin with. It's not as if the material's been Broadway-ified, either. Backed by an onstage band, the cast rocks out over arrangements that remain pretty close to the originals. And guess what? Familiarity does breed content. Especially if you're the kind of person who gets misty hearing 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn.'

I have zero nostalgia for the 1960s, but I love this 'Hair.' Everything aligned per fectly when Diane Paulus resurrected the 1967 epoch- making show in Central Park last summer. Not only did the production throb with life, but having it play under the stars, for free, elevated it to a near-mythical level. Even the audience participation came across like an expression of community rather than cheeseball pandering. Transferring that spell to the crowded confines of the Al Hirschfeld Theatre (and charging Broadway admission prices) was risky, but 'Hair' has emerged triumphant.

As she did in 'Art,' Reza dissects upper-middle-class foils with precision and a welcome mean streak, but her plays don't amount to all that much once the smoke has cleared. 'God of Carnage' itself boils down to 'Good manners only hide bad problems.' We learn something old every day. Her dramatic devices aren't all that innovative, either puking is a cheap way to get a laugh. It's also a diabolically efficient one, especially in the hands of director Matthew Warchus and his expert cast.

Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book back in 1957 and directs this production, has snipped that 'the original was about dancing and singing.' Clearly he thought that not enough attention's been paid to his own contribution over the years. So he set out to boost the narrative 'Romeo and Juliet' transposed to New York gangs in the late 1950s in his revival. Because who wants to see 'West Side Story' for the dancing and singing, right?

For some reason, this “Godot” has been set in what looks like a crumbling theater instead of the usual desolate landscape. But the real reason the show’s less efficient than the other one is the imbalance between the leads — once again, McKellen’s dominance turns Stewart into a straight man.