Frank Scheck

The Reservoir suffers from both its excessive jokiness and overfamiliarity, redeemed mainly by Shelley Butler’s clever staging and the performances of its ensemble. Galvin expertly handles both the comedic and tragic aspects of his character and Armbruster and Saldivar do fine work in numerous roles. But it’s the four old pros onstage who truly shine, with Aaron stealing the show as the sardonic Beverly who’s younger than her years. Unfortunately, those veteran performers are not playing characters so much as archetypes in a play that purports to deal with serious issues but never gets beneath the surface.

It’s a shame, because Kauffman has provided a first-rate staging that easily handles the play’s stylistic diversions, and Shawkat, so amusing in such sitcoms as Arrested Development and Search Party, makes us acutely aware of her character’s emotional pain while mining laughs in the process. It’s not enough to prevent the evening from succumbing to its ambitions. By the time You Get Older ends, you’ll feel older.

That’s thankfully not the case with The Unknown, receiving its world premiere at Off-Broadway’s Studio Seaview. Starring Sean Hayes, this endlessly tricky solo drama by David Cale is less a confessional monologue than a scarily gothic tale of shifting identities. It’s the rare one-person play that you can imagine as a fully fleshed-out film, perhaps directed by Brian De Palma.

You can feel playwright Alexander Zeldin’s struggling with his new play “inspired by” by Sophocles’ Antigone. Yes, The Other Place borrows an important plot element from that ancient Greek tragedy, namely a conflict revolving around the conflict over where to place someone’s remains. And just to keep us on our toes, it throws in another significant narrative device from Sophocles, one that won’t be revealed here. Ultimately, however, The Other Place feels like yet another dysfunctional family drama, albeit one blown up to semi-mystical proportions. None of it feels particularly convincing, but thanks to the superb performances and the playwright’s riveting staging you’re mesmerized for every one of its concise 80 minutes.

Scott Pask’s minimal set design serves the abstract narrative well, while Stacey Derosier’s lighting and Brian Hickey’s sound design and music are integral to the proceedings. Blackout Songs proves a bit repetitive at times and probably would benefit from some paring of its 95-minute running time. But there’s no denying that it packs a powerful punch.

Ultimately the play, directed by Sarah Frankcom, proves more serviceable than profound, but it works effectively in the unique format. First, for no apparent reason, you’re asked to take off your shoes (the venue had the same requirement for their recent immersive production Viola’s Room, making you think that someone there has a foot fetish). Then you take a chair in a large, carpeted space adorned with a huge white orb on the ceiling, and are outfitted with the headset that fits snugly on your noggin. Wearing glasses with it on would prove virtually impossible, but not to worry; corrective lenses can be inserted. It’s like a trip to the optometrist!

It’s frustrating trying to get a handle on the new play by Erica Schmidt at the Minetta Lane Theatre. And there’s good reason for that: the playwright doesn’t seem to a handle on it herself. The work deals with serious themes, almost more than it can handle, while attempting to be the sort of broad comedy that Charles Busch might come up with. Not much of it makes sense, either narratively or thematically, but it’s a lot of fun along the way thanks to the clever writing and terrific performances.

When Bug was first seen Off-Broadway in 2004, it seemed prescient in its portrayal of mental illness and conspiracy theories. Now — after the world has gone collectively crazy with wacky notions about COVID, pedophile rings, vaccines, and 5G, among countless other things — Tracy Letts’ play practically feels quaint. Receiving its Broadway premiere in a Manhattan Theatre Club production in association with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, it nonetheless remains a grippingly unnerving thriller that feels like a waking nightmare.

More problematically, Williams doesn’t bring the necessary intensity to the role of a young, hard-edged prostitute who falls in love with Mat Burke (Tom Sturridge), a shipwrecked Irish stoker who literally emerges from the sea. In her opening scene, when she walks into a waterfront saloon and utters the immortal lines “Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side…and don’t be stingy, baby!” she might as well be a teenager ordering an ice cream soda. Although she’s done fine work onstage in Cabaret and Blackbird (she received a Tony Award nomination for the latter), her performance here feels tenuous, lacking the magnetism that would draw us into her character.

It also seems sharper, more resonant, and more deeply poignant in the current Broadway revival once again directed by Anne Kaufman. Partly this is due to its first-rate cast including June Squibb, miraculously still treading the boards at age 96. And on a personal note, perhaps it’s also due to my having experienced personal losses in the last decade that made the play hit home in a more profound way.

Squibb is the marquee draw, proving once again that she’s become a national treasure (check out her wonderful performance in the recent film Eleanor the Great). She doesn’t miss a beat onstage, displaying the engaging feistiness of her screen persona but also conveying the pain of someone painfully aware of her physical and mental decline. She’s funny as well, delivering her lines with well-honed comic timing. And her sotto voce rendition of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” is worth the ticket price itself.

There are plenty of quibbles to be made about Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). It drags at times, and its two-and-a-quarter hour running time could easily be cut to an intermissonless 90 or 100 minutes. The plotting occasionally proves murky and less than convincing, and it’s more effective in its comic than emotional beats. But no matter. This is a show so charming, so adorable, that you can easily overlook its flaws. A little bit like falling in love.

It’s still fun to watch. How could it not be, with Hanks and O’Hara onstage? But the convoluted storyline — reminiscent of such time-travel stories as the film Somewhere in Time and the classic Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever — never fully comes to life.

Ickes’ staging mainly proves powerful throughout, from the digital clock in the background that counts down the time, not only to the election results but also the revelation of the truth that shatters the characters’ lives (unity of time, don’t you know), to such visual devices as having a team of workmen gradually stripping the office of its furniture, mirroring the losses they endure.

Unfortunately, we have to stick with what we’ve been given, which is an evening of illusions large and small as performed by Lake, whose chief claim to fame seems to be having been a finalist on America’s Got Talent (the longer television competition shows go on, the more we’re going to see their alumni on our stages).

It all plays like a darkly comedic thriller, showing us how the diplomatic sausage is made that ultimately affects our very existence on the planet. Although there are occasional longueurs and scenes that feel more convoluted than necessary, the production proves so energetic and fast-paced that they don’t matter. This is the sort of evening in which one of the most exciting scenes features nothing more than two characters shouting adjectives at each other in a sort of linguistic duel to the death.

As if to convey the smallness of the characters’ world, Scott Pask’s set design consists of nothing more than the oversized couch and a gray circular rug, even when the scene shifts to the bar in which Ethan and James meet. At first it feels constraining. But when a drama features characters this vividly drawn, sometimes that’s all the scenery you need.

The endlessly raunchy Let’s Love! revels in its own outrageousness, feeling like an evening of Playboy magazine cartoons come to life. It’s funny as hell, but you’ll feel the need to take a shower afterwards.

There are some plays which foster such a degree of intimacy that you feel like you’re eavesdropping on private interactions rather than watching a performance. Such is the case with Preston Max Allen’s drama receiving its world premiere at MCC Theater. Depicting the interactions between a young mother, her precocious 9-year-old child, and the child’s grandmother, Caroline is the sort of small-scale family drama that packs a big emotional punch.

Punch dramatizes the circumstances surrounding the fateful moment when a drunk and stoned 19-year-old Dunne, itching for a fight, accidentally killed a man with one punch. The play delivers a message of forgiveness that we desperately need right now.

Ultimately, it’s the intimacy of the environment that makes Masquerade such a special experience. You’re just a few feet away from the performers as they sing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s gorgeous score, and it’s safe to say you haven’t lived until you’ve had a performer of the caliber of Hugh Panaro singing “Music of the Night” to you directly, just inches from your face. It’s enough to make anyone a Phan.

The actors manage to hold their own, although their lack of seasoned stage chops is made more evident by the excellent supporting turns from theatrical veterans Brandon J. Dirden, mesmerizing as a Southern-accented Pozzo, and Michael Patrick Thornton, arresting as a wheelchair-bound Lucky. Reeves has always projected a certain spacey, ethereal quality in his persona which works well for his Estragon, while the hangdog Winter effectively conveys an air of pathos as Vladimir. But they don’t come close to truly conveying the characters’ existential despair, nor their vaudevillian-style clowning. To compensate, Lloyd has them frequently sliding up and down the sloping walls of the set, like children at a playground, to garner cheap laughs.

There’s still work to be done, especially in terms of tightening and focusing, on the show which clearly has aspirations beyond off-Broadway. And if Cardasis and Ijames can reduce the material of some of its feel-good cliches, Saturday Church just might get there.

The three performers mesh together beautifully, with Harris providing just the right haughty snobbishness, Cannavale making comic exasperation into an art form, and Corden so lovable and vulnerable you can almost forget how nasty he can be to waiters in real life. Ellis keeps the proceedings moving like a Swiss watch, the precision of his staging well matched by David Rockwell chic set, Linda Cho’s casually elegant costumes, Jen Schriever’s modernistic lighting design, and Kid Harpoon’s subtle music score.

The large ensemble handle their versatile chores expertly, and generally look fabulous. And Newton anchors the proceedings with his obviously deeply felt performance in which he makes clear McQueen’s inner demons. “Money isn’t important,” the fashion designer insists early in the play. “All I want to do is fix ugliness.” House of McQueen makes clear, however imperfectly, how he couldn’t fix himself.