Erik Haagensen

Playwright David Auburn has pulled off a nifty trick in “The Columnist,” his new play about mid-20th-century political scribe Joseph Alsop. Faced with a fascinating protagonist but lacking a strong plot, Auburn has devised an ingenious structure of subtly accreting scenes that generates considerable forward motion, coalescing in both a complex character study and a surprisingly full portrait of an era of rapid change in American society. Under Daniel Sullivan’s unerring direction, John Lithgow delivers a riveting turn in the title role of this crackling entertainment.

Sometimes there's yuks so quickly. The latest production of Tennessee Williams' masterwork 'A Streetcar Named Desire' is an unfathomable misstep from the gifted Emily Mann, whose work I have often admired as both director and playwright. Helmer Mann and her starry cast treat the work as if it were a combination soap opera and sitcom. The result is embarrassing and sad.

Director Pam McKinnon keeps things crackling with her sharp direction, and the top-notch cast has further refined its comic timing. The standout remains Frank Wood, who makes the seething Russ into the play’s sole multidimensional character and has found a way to register Dan with greater force than before...Ultimately, “Clybourne Park” entertains without ever unsettling.

The terrific physical production puts us on the convention floor, thanks to Derek McLane's immersive set. ... Vidal's insights resonate today, from Tea Party true-believer pressure to birth control controversies, to the point of being scary. There aren't many plays at which the audience regularly applauds the dialogue. You'll likely applaud much more than that in Wilson's grandly satisfying revival.

Fugard's delicate three-person work has a great deal of talk and very little action. The drama turns on small moments and subtle subtext and requires intimacy. Despite sterling performances from Carla Gugino, Jim Dale, and the luminous Rosemary Harris, it's a bit of a slog to 'Mecca' as the show tries to punch its way across the footlights in the Roundabout Theatre Company's too-large American Airlines Theatre.

Norm Lewis, as Porgy, is the show's saving grace, singing powerfully and playing with a simplicity and quiet intensity that only make McDonald's work seem more artificial. The supporting cast is a mixed bag, with Nikki Renée Daniels' charming Clara, Joshua Henry's boyish Jake, and Phillip Boykin's glowering Crown—Bess' abusive lover—coming off best. NaTasha Yvette Williams' Mariah, the matriarch of Catfish Row, is too cute, especially in the contemptuous 'I Hates Your Strutting Style,' and Bryonha Marie Parham, as the suddenly widowed Serena, fills the searing 'My Man's Gone Now' with awkward indicating rather than honest emotion.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it's the songs, stupid. More specifically, the clutch of top-flight tunes written by book writer–lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Burton Lane for their problematic 1965 Broadway musical comedy about reincarnation, 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.' Those siren songs have lured re-conceiver–director Michael Mayer right onto the rocks in this misguided retooling attempt. Mayer and current book writer Peter Parnell keep trying to jam them into a new story and characters that manifestly don't want them, diminishing the very thing Mayer and Parnell supposedly value. The result is the depressing misfire currently at the St. James Theatre, starring a distinctly ill-at-ease Harry Connick Jr.

It's a critic's job to figure out what the artists wanted to do and then analyze whether or not they succeeded and why. If Diamond's goal was a lively potboiler that would bring serious ideas to the masses, then mission pretty much accomplished.

The one thing that a show about infamous killers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow should not be is safe. Unfortunately, book writer Ivan Menchell, lyricist Don Black, composer Frank Wildhorn, and director-choreographer Jeff Calhoun have settled for a paint-by-numbers primer that presents the murderous pair as a couple of misunderstood kids trapped by the Depression. But there were many people in the 1930s who didn't respond to poverty and oppression by robbing banks and machine-gunning those in their way. Whatever made Bonnie and Clyde special is missing from this sentimental musical, as are sufficient character development, adequate dramatic thrust, and any kind of subtext. If this is what passes for serious musical theater on Broadway today, heaven help us.

The reason for this revival is Kim Cattrall, a fine stage actor whose 'Sex and the City' TV and film gigs have made her bankable. Cattrall, in her mid-50s, looks great and handles an English accent effortlessly, but she has trouble locating Amanda's dryness and mercurial whimsy. Gross, also 50ish, a top Canadian star known here for his wonderful work on the TV series 'Slings and Arrows,' looks just as great and brings a commanding presence to the stage.

There are definitely better singers, finer actors, and more-accomplished dancers out there than Hugh Jackman. There are even bigger stars. But I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone else in show business today who can levitate an audience the way Jackman is doing right now in his not-exactly-one-man musical show at the Broadhurst Theatre. Combine his potent triple-threat capabilities with unstinting charisma and bottomless geniality and the result is one of the most memorable performers ever to grace a Broadway stage in my lifetime.

Director Eric Schaeffer deserves credit for working hard to address the numerous shortcomings of his Kennedy Center production of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's towering musical classic 'Follies.' Performances have been retooled, staging and pacing tightened, misconceived choreography redone, misguided casting changed, and a much-criticized red dress has vanished. As a result, the show's potentially vast emotional power, smothered in its initial Washington, D.C., run, has begun to emerge. Unfortunately, problems remain. For those well-acquainted with the work, the result is a cruelly tantalizing miss. For audiences unfamiliar with 'Follies,' this production may prove more satisfying.

Manhattan Theatre Club has imported this production of 'Master Class' from the Kennedy Center's 2010 tribute to playwright Terrence McNally, where it was a sizeable hit. Spruced up with some recasting and featuring an improved turn from star Tyne Daly, the show should repeat its D.C. success.

Mantello navigates Ned's symphonic rage expertly, never alienating us even when the character easily could...Kramer's indispensable work tells us who we were and how we got here. Such knowledge is indispensable for knowing where we should be headed and how to get there. If you see only one play this year, make it 'The Normal Heart.'

Definitely a play of its time, 'Born Yesterday' moves at a more leisurely pace than contemporary works and is unembarrassed by its idealized political message concerning a democracy's need for an informed citizenry. I hope that won't stop younger audiences from enjoying it. Me, I had a ball.

A child of English parents, I often cross the pond to visit relatives, so I don't think my problem with 'Jerusalem' is that I don't get it. I just don't buy it.

Director Jerry Zaks told The New York Times that he and script reviser Douglas Carter Beane were brought in to retool the West End version of 'Sister Act' for Broadway by making the show more believable and less cartoonish. If they've actually done their job, then London must have seen a real doozy. A ramshackle yet agreeable film comedy with plausibility issues has here become an even more ramshackle and outlandish musical comedy that consistently diminishes its source.

Rob Ruggiero's obvious direction does little to mask the writing's flaws, nor do the actors transcend them. The fiery Turner reminds us of her ability to command a stage, but she's hard-pressed to find Sister Connelly's emotional fragility, despite the fact that the plot depends on it. Stephen Kunken, who last season shone brightly while going down with the 'Enron' ship, is less successful here, unconvincing as a bullying administrator but then equally unpersuasive in the simple-mindedly weak and foolish choices his character makes. Evan Jonigkeit brings an admirably focused intensity to Cody but provides little variance in the character's surly defiance and textbook anguish.

Ultimately, however, the show belongs to Seth Numrich as Albert. The Juilliard-trained actor, whom I first admired Off-Broadway in 2009's 'Slipping,' is the heart and soul of 'War Horse.' His vivid performance is rigorously honest, with a breathtaking emotional transparency. Commanding the stage like a seasoned vet, Numrich effortlessly provides the considerable size that this production requires. I only hope that his superb work will be recognized come awards season.

Under Jack O'Brien's impersonal direction, the talented cast works hard to make an impression. As Frank, Aaron Tveit has stage presence, sings powerfully, and dances with pizzazz, but he's unpersuasive as a teenager and misses the character's vulnerability. The role of Hanratty has been retooled to fit Norbert Leo Butz's wonderfully shlumpy eccentricity, and the actor brings all his formidable musical comedy skills to bear on it, but even the heroic Butz can't transcend the synthetic material. As Frank's downward-spiraling father, Tom Wopat sounds the evening's sole notes of genuine humanity but can't finesse a final exit of extreme bathos. In the too little, too late role of Brenda, a young nurse Frank falls for, Kerry Butler offers her trademark ditziness and is saddled with the painfully pointless 'Fly, Fly Away,' a misguided attempt at a late-Act 2 showstopper.

You start hoping for the best. Radcliffe's charm quotient is high, he showed significant stage chops two seasons ago in 'Equus,' and he grew up loving musical theater. In the opening number he displays a thin but true singing voice. But by the time he and a subdued Rob Bartlett get through Loesser's hilarious paean to yes men, 'The Company Way,' without generating a single laugh, it's clear we're in trouble. Once we get to Finch's Act 2 showstopper 'I Believe in You,' and Radcliffe merely stands there staring determinedly in the washroom mirror during the instrumental fills designed to give Morse room for sublime bits of comic business, well, the jig has long been up.

Tom Stoppard's eloquent play 'Arcadia' operates much like the iterated algorithm graphs of which it speaks. Individual dots randomly appear, until gradually a shape (e.g., meaning) is revealed. Further, these dots often appear due to understated moments or quiet subtextual inferences. This means that to be successful, the play must be performed with the nuance and precision of a finely conducted piece of orchestral music. Unfortunately, despite several topflight turns, director David Leveaux's production is just fuzzy enough to keep us out of 'Arcadia.'

Michael Yeargan's grand but musty, museumlike living-room set is absolutely right, as are Jane Greenwood's character-defining period costumes and Peter Kaczorowski's appropriately unforgiving lighting. This is a play, after all, that wants to lay its characters' self-deluded myths bare. Unfortunately, when a playwright indulges in such obvious, over-the-top symbolism as having George throw up into the urn of the team's sacred silver trophy, it's a good bet that what he means to lay bare is probably already glaringly apparent.

Tate Donovan proves a fine foil as Mike, highlighting the character's conflicting feelings of relief at escaping a dead-end life and guilt at no longer being a true Southie. As Kate, Renée Elise Goldsberry is best when scrambling to avoid the inadvertent cultural condescension this highly educated daughter of an African-American doctor keeps stumbling into with Margaret. Goldsberry then scores when Kate suddenly shows spine and maturity as she nails Margaret for putting her pride ahead of her daughter's well-being. Estelle Parsons makes Dottie into an engagingly colorful sideshow of eccentricities, Becky Ann Baker is a convincingly curdled Jean, and Patrick Carroll smartly stresses Stevie's decency, though the character is largely a plot device.

It took me a while to understand my disappointment in Lincoln Center Theater's musical adaptation of Pedro Almodóvar's 1988 film 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,' now at the spectacularly restored Belasco Theatre. There had been much to enjoy: Jeffrey Lane's frequently funny book, David Yazbek's perfectly professional Latin-infused songs, a stellar cast at the top of its game, and Bartlett Sher's fluid staging that combines with a highly imaginative physical production to capture Almodóvar's idiosyncratic visual style and editing rhythms. Yet the show hadn't jelled. Eventually, a light dawned. 'Women' is what composer Mary Rodgers calls a 'Why?' musical. It has no compelling reason to sing; it's just the original property with songs dropped in.