Frank Scheck — Theater Critic

Another year, another Beatles tribute show on Broadway. Less than two years after the Fab Four were last resurrected in the tribute show Rain, the similarly conceived and executed Let It Behas arrived to satisfy the nostalgic demands of aging baby boomers. Indeed, this show is so closely patterned after Rain that its creators have initiated a lawsuit arguing copyright infringement. But whatever legal complications ensue, there's no doubt that the experience is virtually the same...Devoid of narrative, it simply presents a group of Beatles imitators delivering some forty of the iconic group's classic songs, accompanied by video projections. It's essentially a concert by an excellent cover band, featuring elaborate visual trappings.

Director-choreographer Jeff Calhoun has ratcheted up the show's gothic elements in his high-intensity staging, featuring extensive projections, a deafening sound design and a Grand Guignol-style presentation. But for all the production's excesses, it proves decidedly underwhelming, devoid of thrills or genuine emotion. Maroulis... fully unleashes his powerful pipes in the dual roles of the mild-mannered scientist and his rampaging, id-driven alter-ego. But his schematic portrayals...lack the complexity necessary to fully involve us in the melodramatic proceedings. Cox, too, displays a gorgeous voice as Lucy...Although her acting never quite hits the same heights, she delivers a more than respectable turn in the underwritten role.

But any reservations end when the music begins. Cavaliere's voice has lost none of its soul, and Cornish's blistering guitar solos sound ripped from a garage band. Danelli pounds his drums with swinging precision, while Brigati sings and dances like a blissed-out teenager. Why did they break up? They themselves don't really know. But here they are, decades later - virtually the only band of their stature with its membership intact. If you grew up with the Rascals, this is a show you can't miss.

But any reservations end when the music begins. Cavaliere's voice has lost none of its soul, and Cornish's blistering guitar solos sound ripped from a garage band. Danelli pounds his drums with swinging precision, while Brigati sings and dances like a blissed-out teenager. Why did they break up? They themselves don't really know. But here they are, decades later - virtually the only band of their stature with its membership intact. If you grew up with the Rascals, this is a show you can't miss.

To quote a famous Star Trek catchphrase, resistance is futile to William Shatner’s one-person show, Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It. The octogenarian actor—here making his first Broadway appearance in a half-century--is such an engagingly hammy and funny raconteur that only the most curmudgeonly will begrudge him this celebration of his life and career. ... The rambling monologue, including such subjects as his love of horses (an adjustable office chair, the show’s chief prop, is called into much action for this part), his mortality (“Death is the final frontier!”) and a personal encounter with Koko the gorilla, is infused with enough one-liners to fill a stand-up act. Not all of them land, but his joy in delivering them is infectious.

To quote a famous Star Trek catchphrase, resistance is futile to William Shatner’s one-person show, Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It. The octogenarian actor—here making his first Broadway appearance in a half-century--is such an engagingly hammy and funny raconteur that only the most curmudgeonly will begrudge him this celebration of his life and career. ... The rambling monologue, including such subjects as his love of horses (an adjustable office chair, the show’s chief prop, is called into much action for this part), his mortality (“Death is the final frontier!”) and a personal encounter with Koko the gorilla, is infused with enough one-liners to fill a stand-up act. Not all of them land, but his joy in delivering them is infectious.

Relatively Speaking, the new evening of comic one-acts by Woody Allen, Elaine May and Ethan Coen, has just opened on Broadway, and all I can say is…oy! That this level of writing talent--not to mention an estimable cast of many comedic pros--could produce such a lethargic, laugh-free evening is a mystery and a tremendous disappointment.

One of history’s greatest ironies is that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his soaring “I’ve have been to the mountaintop” speech on the very night before his death. Now, emerging playwright Katori Hall has imagined the events of that final evening at the Lorraine Motel in her work The Mountaintop. This Olivier-Award winning play, being presented on Broadway in a production starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett, is a theatrical tour de force.

The Roundabout Theatre Company is presenting a cannily timed revival of this largely forgotten work—a flop in its original 1963 London and Broadway productions—that offers a juicy star turn for Frank Langella. The 73-year-old delivers a mesmerizing performance as Gregor Antonescu, a Romanian financier whose fraudulent empire is on the verge of collapsing. Pursued by both the media and the authorities, he takes refuge in the basement Greenwich Village apartment of his long-estranged son Vasily (Adam Driver), who has taken the new name of Basil Anthony.

It’s been a mere ten years since the last Broadway incarnation of Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman’s Follies, but that ill-conceived version was lamentable enough to warrant another revival sooner than later. Thankfully, the Kennedy Center production has now arrived at the Marquis Theatre, and this beautifully staged, acted and sung rendition might well become the must-see hit that this brilliant if problematic show has never quite managed to be.

You don’t have to be an opera buff, although it certainly helps, to appreciate the incisive portrait that the playwright has created of one of the twentieth century’s most iconic performers. And Daly, like Caldwell and LuPone before her, delivers a commanding performance that is a master class all by itself.

Unfortunately, the evening remains an underwhelming theatrical experience, with the biggest disappointment being the unmemorable score. Bono and The Edge, who have written so many stirring anthems for U2, have failed to work similar magic here, with pedestrian music and lyrics that--with rare exceptions such as “Rise Above” and the lovely ballad “If the World Should End”--fail to be sufficiently stirring. While the sound mix has been improved, no doubt due to the increased presence of the composers in recent months, it’s not enough to make the music soar to the heights that it should.

A musical whose themes encompass the Holocaust and Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t exactly qualify as a feel good experience. That’s perfectly fine—there’s plenty of room on the boards for serious musicals these days. But the Roundabout’s The People in the Picture squanders its good intentions with its ham-fisted execution, a plethora of cheap jokes, and the sort of Jewish stereotypes (an elderly mother tries to score a handsome doctor for her single daughter, among other things) that may please elderly matinee ladies but few others.

You can’t say that the new musical Baby It’s You! is shy about its intentions. In the opening moments of this show about the mega-selling ‘60s girl group The Shirelles, an image of a jukebox is projected. Clearly this new effort conceived by Floyd Mutrux (Million Dollar Quartet) is aiming to be a jukebox musical competitor to Jersey Boys. Except in this case a more accurate title would be “Jersey Girls.”

You can’t say that the new musical Baby It’s You! is shy about its intentions. In the opening moments of this show about the mega-selling ‘60s girl group The Shirelles, an image of a jukebox is projected. Clearly this new effort conceived by Floyd Mutrux (Million Dollar Quartet) is aiming to be a jukebox musical competitor to Jersey Boys. Except in this case a more accurate title would be “Jersey Girls.”

It may be a time capsule of a play, but the sterling new Broadway revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart reveals that it has lost none of its urgency or power. A semi-fictionalized account of the beginning of the AIDS crisis and the efforts of a group of dedicated activists to spur the city and country into action, this work, first seen in 1985 in a landmark production at the Public Theater, is relentlessly gripping and moving.

In his revelatory production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, director David Cromer unearthed the darkness underlying a play that is usually presented as a paean to a more innocent America. He applies the same approach to the new Broadway revival of John Guare’s 1966 absurdist comedy The House of Blue Leaves, but with vastly diminished results. The production captures the desperation and pathos of the play’s troubled characters, but at the cost of the play’s humor.

The title of Garson Kanin’s play proves all too accurate with the new Broadway revival of Born Yesterday. This comedy about a crooked businessman in cahoots with corrupt politicians may have been written in 1946, but it seems timelier than ever in this era of tawdry Washington backroom dealings. The same can’t quite be said of its romance plotline, which has become familiar via the endless imitators that have followed it.

Considering his brilliant comic turn earlier this season in the revival of La Bete and now his titanic performance in Jez Butterworth’s new play Jerusalem at the same theater, we might as well engrave actor Mark Rylance’s Tony Award right now. We also might as well hand over the Music Box Theatre to this dazzling thespian so he can pretty much do whatever he wants with it.

There’s fun, if not musical comedy heaven, to be found in Sister Act, the new Broadway musical adaptation of the hit 1992 movie starring Whoopi Goldberg. Featuring plenty of talent both on and off stage, the show boasts some terrific performances, an engaging ‘70s era-style soul-flavored score, and a few raucous laughs. But its relentlessly juvenile humor eventually proves more wearisome than soul lifting.

Despite its manipulative aspects, the play is nonetheless reasonably compelling due to the inherent emotional power of its subject matter and Turner’s compelling performance. The veteran actress commands the stage with a ferocious intensity that would make anyone scared straight.

Wonderland is the sort of horrifically bad Broadway musical that doesn’t come along too often these days. Based on-- you guessed it—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this new work by Frank Wildhorn isn’t numbingly ponderous like such previous efforts by the composer as Dracula and The Civil War. Rather, it’s aggressively bad, almost but not quite enjoyably so, although that will be scant comfort to those who’ve shelled out for tickets. In any case, look for the poster for this one to quickly join the flop musical hall of shame adorning the walls of Joe Allen’s restaurant.

The battle sequences are also particularly powerful, with evocative sound, lighting and projection effects employed that thoroughly draw us into the action. Such sequences as when the British officer is literally blown off his steed by a flying projectile and another in which Joey is confronted by a menacing tank are staged with a nightmarish intensity.

The Motherf**ker With the Hat has at least two things going for it right off the bat. The first is that marvelously profane--albeit generally unprintable--title. The second is the coup of having landed comedian Chris Rock for his Broadway debut in this new dark comedy by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Our Lady of 121st Street, among others). Ironically, both elements actually work against the production. The title, although certainly memorable, has proven off-putting to mainstream Broadway audiences. And Rock has been less of a box-office draw than expected, even though his presence no doubt accounts for this Broadway engagement of a play that would have seemed far more at home in an intimate, non-commercial environment.

The Motherf**ker With the Hat has at least two things going for it right off the bat. The first is that marvelously profane--albeit generally unprintable--title. The second is the coup of having landed comedian Chris Rock for his Broadway debut in this new dark comedy by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Our Lady of 121st Street, among others). Ironically, both elements actually work against the production. The title, although certainly memorable, has proven off-putting to mainstream Broadway audiences. And Rock has been less of a box-office draw than expected, even though his presence no doubt accounts for this Broadway engagement of a play that would have seemed far more at home in an intimate, non-commercial environment.