Frank Scheck — Theater Critic

Grief Camp proves so elliptical and amorphous in its writing that it seems to drift along without providing anything to hold your attention, unless you’re riveted by the sight of young people fighting to get into their cabin’s sole bathroom.

The Playbill cover for John Proctor Is the Villain conveys it perfectly. It features several of the young characters in a circle while appearing to be screaming their heads off. That’s exactly how you’ll feel after enduring this well-meaning but exhausting play.

What was galvanizing onscreen is curiously lifeless onstage, its airless quality not helped by the lackluster staging from the normally superb David Cromer. Despite running a mere 90 intermission-less minutes, the play feels much longer...

They certainly do so here, although this rendition features one significant miscasting that robs the play of some of its impact. Odenkirk and Burr fare the best, with the former playing the older salesman Shelley “The Machine” Levene like a sadder, tired-out version of Saul Goodman. If he doesn’t quite convey the pathos of previous actors who’ve played the role such as Robert Prosky or Jack Lemmon, his sharp comedic instincts garner laughs that weren’t there before.

Leon’s staging has its predictably silly touches, such as frequently having actors march through the aisles to the stage as if they’d wandered out of the theater for a smoke break only to find the stage door locked. A key scene is played in the dark, illuminated only by flashlights, which is more annoying than ominous. And the climactic scene set in Desdemona’s bedchamber is prefaced by florid background music that Douglas Sirk would have dismissed as too kitschy for one of his ‘50s melodramas. Lacking an overriding concept or strong directorial vision, this Othello fulfills its basic goal of putting its two stars onstage and letting them rip. But it’s hard not to wish that it had strived for something more.

For all its affectionately nostalgic, piquant details, however, the play never quite coheres dramatically. Its episodic, non-linear structure frequently proves confusing, and such tangents as an account of Renee’s solo trip to Paris when she was 35 feel like minor anecdotes barely explored. For every powerful moment— as when Ellen informs us that she had told her mother that if she ever drank in front of her grandson, she would never be able to see him again — there are more that feel like filler.

The revival has been directed by Rebecca Frecknall, whose production of Cabaret, excuse me, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, was a sensation in London but has proved more than a little divisive on Broadway. Here, she not so much stages Williams’ play but comments on it. It feels less like an actual production than a series of annotations scribbled in her copy of the text.

What it mainly provides is the opportunity to see such film and television stars as Calista Flockhart, Christian Slater, and Cooper Hoffman in the flesh. Unfortunately, they’re all upstaged by Lois, an adorable sheep whose program bio informs us that she appears annually in the Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas show.

Redwood might have been more effective with a powerful score, but the songs, composed by Kate Diaz and featuring lyrics by Diaz and Landau, all have a similar power-ballad sheen that quickly proves repetitious and unmemorable. That’s not to say that Menzel doesn’t sing the hell out of them, which she does. But her powerhouse vocals can only do so much with numbers that aren’t exactly “Defying Gravity” or anything from Rent, in which she appeared in the same theater nearly three decades earlier. The performer sings and acts her heart out, but you still leave the theater humming the projections.

The play’s episodic structure results in inevitable choppiness, with some vignettes landing harder than others. The back-and-forth chronology, with later scenes sometimes bookending earlier ones, can prove confusing. But under the precise direction of David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan, The Antiquities proves a provocative cautionary tale, not that one was needed, about how we may not always be able to fully control the technology that seems to be advancing with dizzying speed. The writing is consistently clever, such as the tiny mistakes the characters sometimes make when emulating human behavior that they never experienced firsthand.

Sometimes, plays, like people, take a while to grow on you. Such is my experience with Sanaz Toossi’s English, which I first saw in its world premiere at the Atlantic Theatre Company nearly three years ago. At the time, I found the play stubbornly undramatic and narratively inert, even while thinking highly of the performances. Seeing it again on the occasion of its Broadway premiere by the Roundabout Theatre Company, I found it much more thematically complex and moving. (And I swear the fact that the play won the Pulitzer Prize in the meantime had nothing to do with it.)

Yes, the show is not “a” comedy, meaning an actual play, but rather a collection of short humorous pieces written by Simon Rich (son of former New York Times theater critic Frank), read by a rotating quartet of well-known performers. The current stars are comedian John Mulaney (certainly the show’s biggest draw), veteran character actor Richard Kind, Tony-winner Renee Elise Goldsberry (Hamilton), and actor-writer-musician Fred Armisen, who, like Mulaney and Rich, is a Saturday Night Live veteran. Among the stars appearing later in the limited run for stints of varying lengths are Lin-Manuel Miranda, Annaleigh Ashford, Hank Azaria, Jimmy Fallon, Aidy Bryant, and Nick Kroll.

But neither the dialogue, characterizations, nor plot elements, the latter including the revelation of an affair between Eli and Meiko, have the crisp sharpness of, say, Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, which similarly lampooned parental conflicts. The 100-minute evening feels longer than it is thanks to the sluggish pacing and frequent repetition. There is the occasional powerful moment, most notably a monologue by Suzanne in which she reveals the tragic backstory behind her opposition to vaccination. But too much of the play is dependent on such tired cliches as the “artisanal scones” which help the board members get through the long meetings in which decisions are made not by majority vote but consensus. Still, Eureka Day deserves praise for its comic treatment of the sort of contemporary social issues not often paid attention to on Broadway, the fine performances by its ensemble (Irwin deserves special credit for tamping down his usual comic persona), and that amazingly funny livestream sequence that will prevent you from ever sitting through a similar one with a straight face ever again.

The latest example is Death Becomes Her, which actually manages the neat trick of being superior to the 1992 fantasy film starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. The musical adaptation, newly arrived on Broadway after a Chicago tryout, is a laugh riot from start to finish, featuring superb comic performances from its two female leads, a lavish physical production that actually reflects the astronomical (reportedly $31.5 million) production cost, and a book featuring more zingy one-liners than a Friars Club Roast. The only thing missing are memorable songs, but fortunately the show is so entertaining you’ll find yourself not minding very much.

Director Scott Elliott fails to make the proceedings fully coherent, and such stylistic devices as having actors silently remain onstage even when their characters are not in the scene simply feel pretentious. The performers struggle with their underwritten roles; Howard, playing Gus with suitable bluster, feels miscast, the actor’s natural likability at odds with his character’s piggishness. Tomei fares the best, conveying her character’s emotional and physical travails with intensity and humor. But it’s not enough to prevent Babe from feeling schematic in its #MeToo movement themes.

Shit. Meet. Fan. (the title is really fun) proves entertaining thanks to many witty lines and the skillful comic performances of its ensemble, several of whom have honed their chops on hit television sitcoms. All of them do excellent work, with Messing practically stealing the show with her uproarious line readings, facial expressions and body language. And it all looks terrific, thanks not only to the highly attractive performers but also Clint Ramos’ elegant bi-level set design that will induce apartment envy.

Despite its title, Swept Away is not a musicalization of the classic Lina Wertmuller film (or its abysmal Madonna-starring American remake). Rather, the show featuring the songs of the popular band The Avett Brothers is a dark, fable-like tale, inspired by a real event, about the fateful aftermath of a shipwreck. It’s strong stuff, and hardly the sort of musical for tourists simply looking for a fun time. But this superbly staged and acted production exerts a powerful, hypnotic force that demands attention and respect.

Unfortunately, the play’s vaguely sci-fi aspects feel woefully underdeveloped, mainly serving as a flimsy springboard for the generic interpersonal dynamics among the trio, including the hint of an attraction between Cassie and Bryan and a revelation about a tragedy in Bryan’s recent past. Despite the occasionally trenchant dialogue and welcome doses of humor, neither the characterizations nor situations are developed sufficiently to hold our interest. Running a mere 90 minutes, Walden lacks the seismic punch to gets its points across quickly and would have benefited from a greater fleshing out.

They say that a writer should write what they know. But in Delia Ephron’s case the advice may be a bit too on-the-nose. Left on Tenth, her new Broadway play based on her best-selling memoir, relates such life-changing events as the death of her first husband, her improbable late-in-life romance, and her battle with a rare form of cancer that almost killed her. By the end of the evening, you’ll have come to very much like Delia Ephron. The play, not so much.

All of that said, the evening is certainly not boring. You can’t take your eyes off Scherzinger, miscast as she is, even if her performance at times makes kabuki theater look subtle. She plays nearly every scene like Swanson’s climactic “I’m ready for my close-up” moment in the film, and though the overall effect ultimately proves exhausting (for both performer and audience) she’s hypnotic from first moment to last. And she sings the hell out of the two showstoppers “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” even with their tempos slowed down to a dirge.

The poster for the new show by Australian comedian/monologist Hannah Gadsby features the performer without their trademark geeky spectacles. Yet the glasses are back on when Gadsby appears onstage at the Abrons Art Center. If you want to know the reason why, you’ll just have to see Woof!, which represents the performer’s loosest, funniest outing yet.

Star power is not to be underestimated. Not only can it bring in audiences who may not normally attend new Broadway plays, it can also infuse a problematic work with a gravitas it might not normally possess. Such is the case with Lincoln Center Theater’s production of the new drama by Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced, The Invisible Hand) that touches on such themes as artificial intelligence, plagiarism, and writerly inspiration without really coming to grips with any of them. But it doesn’t matter, thanks to the presence of Robert Downey Jr. in the title role. Downey, who recently won an Oscar for the film Oppenheimer and is here making his stage debut, brings such charisma and magnetism to McNeal that it’s easy to overlook the play’s flaws.

Despite the fine efforts of the performers and solid production values including music by an overqualified David Yazbek, The Roommate, running 100 minutes without an intermission, always feels predictable despite its procession of narrative surprises designed for easy laughs. But that’s no reason not to take advantage of the unique opportunity to watch Farrow and LuPone play off each other with the expert comic timing of seasoned vaudevillians.

You can skip the gym the day you take in the new show from Emursive, the enterprising theater company behind the long-running (more than twelve years) immersive show Sleep No More. For their newest production, they’ve pulled out the stops, providing an experience that, if it can’t quite be described as theater, is certainly…something. Bigger, more lavish and clearly more ambitious than Sleep No More, Life and Trust is also something of an endurance contest, lasting three hours and taking place on six floors of a financial district skyscraper. By the time you’ve finished attempting to follow its thirty characters involved in 250 overlapping scenes, you’ll have more than put in your steps.

For all the effective stagecraft on display, however, Job (even the title, which many people will assume refers to the Old Testament book, is deliberately confusing) mainly smacks of gimmickry. It’s a psychological thriller that relies too heavily on cheap thrills.