Elizabeth Vincentelli

Stories about people trying to distract children in dreadful times are very tricky — it’s hard not to think of such films as Roberto Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful” (1997) or the cult fascination for Jerry Lewis’s unreleased “The Day the Clown Cried” — because they have to broker the uneasy coexistence of entertainment, pathos and sentiment. It’s a problem “Marcel on the Train” does not solve, maybe because Marcel himself is an enigma here, and his drives remain opaque.

Parts of the show are absolutely thrilling and parts are flat at best, aggressively dumb at worst. At least Mayer’s production, starring Nicholas Christopher, Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit, is not a bland bore. Thinking back to Michele’s big, then bigger, then biggest ‘Nobody’s Side’ or Christopher’s red-hot, neck-vein-bursting ‘Anthem,’ I can feel the needle move toward the positive side of the dial.

This musical is as charming as this summary might suggest, along with a somber undercurrent. Some of the village’s men have antiquated views of women, including their wives. Technically, DeBose acquits herself well — she can certainly navigate the twists and turns of “Meadowlark.” But while she can sing it, I did not feel Geneviève’s hesitation, the way she progressively talks herself into betting on Dominique, the wide range of emotions she experiences in a fairly short amount of time. It didn’t help that DeBose, perched on a balcony, kept defaulting to her megawatt smile, as if looking for the safety of charm.

Lucas's transition from hunter to hunted is among the shifting perspectives visualized by the ingenious set devised by Es Devlin (currently the subject of a retrospective exhibition at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum). The stage is dominated by what looks like an avant-garde Nordic tiny home placed on a rotating turntable, with walls that switch, as if by magic, from transparent to opaque and back. Intimate conversations take place in the house, but Goold can also cram a whole bunch of people in it, like the members of the lodge or the faithful at the midnight Mass. This structure is both public and private; it protects secrets and reveals them; it can offer shelter and harbor violence. It is the production’s single most fascinating element, and it is used devilishly well in conjunction with Neil Austin’s lighting and Adam Cork’s sound design and composition.

The new show’s rah-rah tone eventually becomes numbing. This is all the more frustrating because ambivalence is baked into the title song, which alludes to the city’s mercurial temperament. “If I can make it there/I’d make it anywhere” - we’re in a tough town — is followed by “It’s up to you/New York, New York,” which deprives the singer of agency. But the show follows the triumphant template set by Frank Sinatra rather than the more ambiguous one imparted by Minnelli. In this rose-colored vision, trials are temporary, everybody gets along, and nobody runs up against New York’s bad side.