Frank Scheck — Theater Critic

Under the straightforward direction of Diane Paulus, the two actresses deliver sterling performances, with the veteran Taylor milking every bit of humor from N’s sardonic asides and Villafañe capturing A’s fervent idealism. If N/A ultimately doesn’t have the thematic depth or resonance to make it a truly great play, it provides a vivid reminder that the art of politics can actually consist of more than mere name calling.

One of the problems with the play, which never seems to find a consistent tone or narrative coherence. Periodically throughout the lighthearted interactions among the characters, Marina experiences memories of past traumas, conveyed by the sound of numerous loud explosions that might induce PTSD in audience members as well. There are also flashbacks to her wartime experiences, including a sad encounter with a refugee (also played by Halston.) More confusingly, some scenes are repeated, as if Marina is suffering from déjà vu, and others feature characters talking about her as if she wasn’t there, to which she reacts with understandable annoyance. Later on, yet another character briefly appears: Fed (a dashing Matthew Saldivar), Marina’s ex-husband and fellow war correspondent who now wants her back.

Kenny Leon’s bare-bones staging fails to deliver much in the way of vibrant theatricality, making the intimate play feel somewhat lost in the Todd Haimes Theatre. There’s not much visual stimulation either, with set designer Arnulfo Maldonado providing little more than backdrops depicting a field of corn and an urban landscape, the latter accompanied by a fire escape. Dede Ayite’s costumes and Allen Lee Hughes’ warm lighting design can’t be faulted, however.

Directed by Ashley Brooke Monroe in a manner that expertly navigates the play’s tightrope-walking balancing act between raucous laughs and poignant emotion, All of Me makes you laugh uproariously one moment and gives you a lump in your throat the next.

Under the direction of Tina Landau, Keenan-Bolger and Parsons are predictably fine in their roles, even if they’re not being stretched much. But it’s Lange who commands the evening, displaying the sort of star power and stage command that make her a Broadway diva. Just the sight of her in various outfits, including ‘60s-era hippie denim, is a pleasure, and it’s worth the price of admission to see her launch into disco dancing (the audience, predictably, goes wild). She’s even given a lengthy silent, solo interlude in which she listens to music, has a drink, smokes, and attempts to eat a frozen meal that’s made no less unpalatable by generous doses of hot sauce. Other than conveying the character’s loneliness in her older years, the scene doesn’t have much reason for being. But as brilliantly played by Lange, it’s an acting lesson that every budding thespian should study.

Anne Kaufman, repeating her staging from the play’s earlier NYC incarnation at New York Theatre Workshop, has delivered a beautifully calibrated production that expertly mines its subtleties. Featuring little blatant theatricality other than a stunning scene change (courtesy of Lael Jellinek), it features superb performances from its five-woman ensemble, all but the lead actress playing dual roles. McAdams, like so many film or television performers new to the stage, has difficulty with her vocal projection, making some lines unintelligible. But she’s such a warm, winning presence that your heart instantly goes out to her character who, somehow in the face of her anguish, achieves something akin to a state of grace.

But throughout the play’s lengthy running time, Morgan delivers the sort of brilliantly observed characterizations at which he excels. In Stuhlbarg’s wildly entertaining, outsized performance, Berezovsky emerges a man who deeply loves both his country and his extravagant lifestyle, complete with nubile young girlfriends and Caribbean fishing vacations. He becomes deeply outraged by his protégé’s betrayal, not only on personal terms but also because he sees that Putin is taking his country back to the past.

As for the show itself (I know, it almost seems like an afterthought), it has been given an undeniably powerful if somewhat imperfect staging. Among its chief strengths are its lead performances, or at least most of them, with Eddie Redmayne repeating his Olivier Award-winning performance (at least through early September) as the leering Emcee. He’s not quite as menacing as Alan Cumming in the Mendes production, at times seeming fragile and almost adorable. But the actor is certainly mesmerizing, using his angular physicality and androgynous looks to tremendous effect and employing his natural charisma to such a degree that you can’t take your eyes off him. During many dramatic scenes involving the other characters he silently lurks at the edge of the stage, doing nothing but making it seem like everything.

Watching the new Broadway musical The Outsiders, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’ve seen it all before. It’s not just because of the source material, including both S.E. Hinton’s classic YA novel and Francis Coppola’s 1983 film adaptation featuring a slew of young Hollywood hunks. It’s also because the show inevitably recalls West Side Story in its tale of warring youth gangs and a star-crossed romance (not to mention, of course, Romeo and Juliet) and, in its exuberantly choreographed dances featuring athletic young performers, Newsies. This musical adaptation, featuring a book by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine and a score by Levin and Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance (better known as the band Jamestown Revival) proves a perfectly respectable effort with many laudable elements. What it mostly seems to lack is a reason for being.

There’s a lot to take in at the new musical based on Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel (which has already inspired a 2011 film). The show features a melodramatic storyline set amidst a Depression-era traveling circus, puppetry, and numerous circus acts including aerial work, juggling, acrobatics, knife throwing, and even a clown routine. It would be nice to report that all of these elements have blended together to create a magical musical theater experience, but Water for Elephants feels more clunky than transporting. There are many things about it to enjoy, but it falls far short of being the greatest show on earth.

In this rendition of the play, when Stockmann vainly attempts to warn the citizens of the water’s danger at the town meeting they attack him by throwing bucketloads of ice cubes on him. In the next scene, it’s left to poor Jeremy Strong to painstakingly assemble the cubes into a neat pile. The actor’s cleaning up serves as a metaphor for a production so messy and ill-conceived it makes you wonder how the play has endured for nearly 150 years.

Lloyd only emphasizes the play’s weaknesses with his sterile production that makes you feel like you’re observing lab rats from a distance. The actors’ voices are loudly amplified, making even their most intimate dialogue sound ring announcements at a boxing match. The sound and lighting effects, including portions of the stage floor lighting up strategically, are so emphatic that you expect a white-suited John Travolta to strut onto the stage and dance. You get the feeling that if the director had his way, he’d be wiring up audience members with sensors to gauge their reactions.

Corruption doesn’t succeed as fully as Oslo because it’s a more complex, elongated story featuring so many characters that nearly every cast member, with the exceptions of Stephens and Burrows, play multiple roles. It’s sometimes hard to keep track of who’s who without a scorecard, and those not paying very close attention may find it difficult to keep up. (It would have been helpful if a guide to the figures involved had been included in the program). But even if you only have a cursory knowledge of the real-life events, the play proves gripping thanks to the playwright’s ability to craft sharp dialogue that proves both informative and propulsive.

There have been many dance theater pieces inspired by pop artists, but few carry the sweeping emotional heft of Illinoise. Justin Peck’s dance production based on Sufjan’s Stevens’ critically acclaimed 2005 album is now receiving its New York City premiere at the Park Avenue Armory after buzzy runs at the Fisher Center at Bard and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. If the rapturous audience response for this limited engagement is any indication, this won’t be its last stop.

It’s not often that you leave a play wanting more. But that’s exactly the case with the new romantic dramedy by John Patrick Shanley receiving its world premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club. Depicting the rocky courtship of two damaged souls grasping for what they perceive may be a final chance at love, Brooklyn Laundry proves as frustrating as it is charming. But Shanley — who’s proven his expertise at off-kilter rom-coms with such past efforts as Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Outside Mullingar, and the screenplay for Moonstruck — delivers the memorable characterizations and witty dialogue we’ve come to expect, and the romantic chemistry of leads David Zayas and Cecily Strong is off the charts.

Forget the bag checks. Theatergoers entering New World Stages to see the latest jukebox musical should be forced to present their birth certificates. Featuring more than two dozen pop hits from the 1960s in its period-set tale of an aspiring photographer arriving in New York City to achieve her dreams, A Sign of the Times doles out beloved songs to its baby boomer target audiences with the regularity of a food pellet machine. It’s force-fed nostalgia, to be sure, but plenty of fun, at least if you were born between 1946 and 1964 and owned a radio.

There’s a reason Twilight Zones episodes were a mere half-hour, including commercials. Most of the episodes’ premises, however ingenious, couldn’t really sustain a longer running time. The new play by Kate Douglas receiving its world premiere at Second Stage Theater could have fit in nicely in Rod Serling’s classic series, thanks to its vaguely futuristic setting and blending of sci-fi and horror. Unfortunately, The Aviary, which clocks in at a relatively brief but draggy 70 minutes, lacks the substance to fuel an evening of theater, feeling simultaneously underdeveloped and overlong.

There’s a formidable dramatic urgency inherent in the new musical by Jason Robert Brown (music & lyrics) and Jonathan Marc Sherman (book) about a young journalist who advances his career by writing fabricated stories for a prestigious magazine. Unfortunately, that dramatic urgency dissipated more than a quarter-century ago, when the true-life events that inspire The Connector took place. Loosely based on the story of Stephen Glass, who ignited a scandal when his made-up journalism for The New Republic was exposed, the show receiving its world premiere at MCC Theater feels both overly familiar and superficial.

The performances by the ensemble, both veterans and newcomers, are exemplary, with Aidem perhaps the standout as the mother desperately trying to hold everything together in the face of eternal forces. Only Edwards seems a bit out of place, and not only because of his celebrity relative to the rest of the cast. But his performance may sharpen as the run goes on.

There have been dysfunctional family dramas as long as there have been plays. (After all, what would you call Medea?) But playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins definitely ups the ante in Appropriate, his searing 2013 play only now receiving its belated Broadway premiere in a galvanizing staging by Lila Neugebauer. Featuring a stellar cast headed by Sarah Paulson, Corey Stoll, and, making her stage debut, Elle Fanning, this Second Stage Theater production about a family with enough skeletons in its closet to fill a dozen catacombs makes an already powerful play even more powerful. It’s the standout of the Broadway season thus far.

But the lack of a compelling narrative doesn’t matter whenever the music starts, and fortunately that happens very often during the course of the show’s two hours that seem to fly by. Several of the numbers also feature outstanding Latin-infused dances co-choreographed by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck and exuberantly performed by a six-person ensemble.

It’s hard to avoid the sound of gears grinding while you’re watching Manahatta, now playing at the Public Theater. Mary Kathryn Nagle’s drama takes place both in modern times, culminating in the 2008 financial crisis, and in the 1600s, when both Native Americans and Dutch settlers were populating the island that gives the play its name. As the action shifts back and forth in time, it painstakingly accentuates the similarities in the manner in which the country’s original inhabitants were screwed over by the European colonists and modern-day Americans by exploitative financial markets. By the time the evening’s over, you’ll be impressed by the playwright’s logistical ingenuity. But you won’t have been particularly moved. Manahatta ultimately feels like a thesis in search of a play.

It’s a familiar tale, not very interestingly told via the underwhelming book by Pulitzer-finalist Kristoffer Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity). But much like Keys, who overcame modest beginnings to become a pop star who’s sold tens of millions of records and multiple Grammys, the musical ultimately triumphs thanks to the soul-stirring music. By the time this production terrifically staged by Michael Greif reaches its conclusion, you’ll definitely be in an empire state of mind.

Director Arin Arbus has staged a relatively faithful and straightforward rendition, which is probably for the best since the playwright’s estate tends to take a dim view of any radical reinterpretations. A bare stage with the familiar leafless tree provides the setting, although it here takes the form of a long catwalk-like strip made to look like a desolate highway, with a painted line down the center. As we enter the theater, Shannon’s Estragon sits onstage, doing, what else, waiting. Except in this case for the show to begin.

Sure, there are actors so good you would pay to see them read the phone book. But how many are there that you would pay to watch them play a board game? Off hand, I can think of only one: Danny DeVito, who turns a solo game of Sorry into the comic highlight of Theresa Rebeck’s new play I Need That, now receiving its world premiere on Broadway courtesy of the Roundabout Theater Company.