Elisabeth Vincentelli — Theater Critic

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.

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.

When it comes to this particular couple, Urie and Foster make you believe in a happy future that may include all kinds of calisthenics.

“The Heart of Rock and Roll” is not going to be the subject of think pieces and graduate theses, but its easygoing good spirits are bolstered by solid craftsmanship, and it’d be silly to turn up our noses at that. “Have a good time,” Huey Lewis once sang, wisely quoting Curtis Mayfield. “’Cause it’s all right.”

The most exciting complement to the music is the choreography by Camille A. Brown, a Tony Award nominee for “Choir Boy” and “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” The movement pulses with life and is fully integrated into the show’s overall aesthetics, but it’s the attention to detail that’s memorable. As is standard for Broadway these days, the dancing is ensemble-based, but Brown and her troupe brilliantly find the individual in the group, and each one exists, like the dancer blowing gum bubbles in the middle of a number. There is, always, a sense of the person within a community, as with Ali growing up in a village known as Manhattan Plaza. That she’s back in the old neighborhood feels just right.

When the Shaina Taub musical “Suffs” premiered at the Public Theatre two years ago, covid plagued the company and even led to the cancellation of opening night. But those weren’t really the problem. Rather, the show, about the American suffragists’ fight to win the right to vote for women, suffered from self-inflicted wounds: It was a didactic, dull, overstuffed mess. That “Suffs” would come back, and on Broadway, too, wasn’t a thrilling prospect. And while it did not magically morph into a great show, Version 2.0 is tighter, more confident, often rousing and downright entertaining. We can only rejoice that the creative team, led by Taub, who wrote the book and score, and director Leigh Silverman, did not back down.

And therein lies the problem: The show overexplains everything, all the time. Hinton knew exactly how much to say and when — the paperback edition of “The Outsiders” is just 180 concise, evocative pages that let us discover things along with Ponyboy. Here, both the book and the songs tend to underestimate the audience’s intelligence. (This is surprising coming from Rapp, who is usually not afraid of ambiguity.)

Still, the songs, which are often bite-size, remain as distinctive as they’ve ever been (which is why “The Who’s Tommy” can also be effective in a semi-staged format, as evidenced by Josh Rhodes’s production at the Kennedy Center five years ago). The score was very theatrical for a chart-topping rock band in the late ’60s, but it’s also very rock by Broadway standards, even now. The company walks that line, at least vocally, better than the one from 1993, which was more Broadwayfied, and the orchestra, which is as loud as it needs to be, plays with a precision that does not forsake energy and the joys of riffage. What this “Tommy” is preaching might be a little murky, but when the entire cast lines up to face the audience and belts the “Listening to You” finale, by golly, you believe.

Not everything works in Jessica Stone’s production — there’s a reason the words “dream sequence” tend to set off alarm bells — but at least it summons a coherent theatrical universe. And more often than not, the show (whose world premiere was this past June in Atlanta) captures the unabashed mix of romance and pathos that made its source material, a bestseller by Sara Gruen, so wildly popular.

Eventually “Titanique” comes into its own as it revs up into increasing absurdity and the actors try to out-ham one another. Contrast that with Michael Kinnan’s one-man retelling of “Titanic,” “Never Let Go”: If that production captured the emotion running through both the movie and the feeling of watching it, this one doubles down on “Titanic” and Dion as modern camp icons.

Gabriel Barre’s production is fairly luxurious for an Off Broadway musical: Five leads and a 10-member ensemble is nothing to sniff at nowadays. But filling a stage does not automatically translate to filling a space. Even Petula Clark did not have a song about that conundrum.

Foster’s glee in taking possession of the stage creates an all-encompassing manic energy that both the audience and her scene partners feed off. Prime among them are the archly imperial Harriet Harris (Foster’s co-star in “Thoroughly Modern Millie”) as Queen Aggravain and Michael Urie as her son, the bumbling Prince Dauntless — not the sharpest halberd in the castle, but still smart enough to become endearingly smitten with a shaggy princess who goes by Fred.

Yes, Danny’s final turnaround stretches credibility close to its breaking point, and the way he finally pierces Roberta’s abscess of shame and fury is rather over the top — not to mention the idea that a physical remedy would shock a psychic wound into healing. But by then Abbott and Plaza have made us care enough for these two misfits that we are ready to believe that maybe, just maybe, they can get a break.

For the show to really work, it needs more moments like that one: simple, goofy and fast. That last quality is important in farce, but unfortunately, in this case, the second half of the evening drags a bit. Some scenes even slow down enough to suggest … emotions? In this context, that’s just like garlic to a vampire.

For the show to really work, it needs more moments like that one: simple, goofy and fast. That last quality is important in farce, but unfortunately, in this case, the second half of the evening drags a bit. Some scenes even slow down enough to suggest … emotions? In this context, that’s just like garlic to a vampire.

The songs are the highlights here. Bloom is especially good at puncturing emotion with surreal detail, as when she sings the tender “Lullaby for a Newborn,” then reminds us she had been cradling her bottle of water swathed in a towel. More than blunt language — a tool that loses its sharpness with use — this absurdist vein effectively draws laughs, but it also underscores the show’s real subject: the often cruel arbitrariness of life.

The songs are the highlights here. Bloom is especially good at puncturing emotion with surreal detail, as when she sings the tender “Lullaby for a Newborn,” then reminds us she had been cradling her bottle of water swathed in a towel. More than blunt language — a tool that loses its sharpness with use — this absurdist vein effectively draws laughs, but it also underscores the show’s real subject: the often cruel arbitrariness of life.