Frank Scheck

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.

Still, it’s a pleasure to once again hear new music from him, and deeply sad to realize it will be the last (except for the trunk numbers that will inevitably turn up). On first listen, it’s hard to imagine that any of the songs will become the sort of cabaret staples that prove unavoidable, but those sorts of expectations have been defied before.

Many years later, the show has now arrived on Broadway, where its thin charms and relentless meta-humor don’t prove quite as accessible in the large James Earl Jones Theatre with its commensurately extravagant ticket prices. Since the show is not widely known despite its many regional theater productions, the main selling point is its stars Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells, reuniting after their breakout turns in The Book of Mormon and seemingly aspiring to become the next hot Broadway comedy team after Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. How much you’ll enjoy the results will depend greatly on your tolerance for very silly jokes and your fondness for the two stars. The pair appear to be having a fine old time onstage, displaying the sort of chemistry that seems the result of their well-meshed comedic styles and warm rapport. They work beautifully together, garnering laughs not only from the wittier dialogue and bits of business but also from their jovial presences.

Satire doesn’t always age particularly well. Fortunately, the new production of Ossie Davis’ 1961 play Purlie Victorious has sidestepped any issues about its being dated for two reasons, one good and one bad. The good is that director Kenny Leon has provided such a breakneck, well-staged rendition, superbly performed by its terrific ensemble, that the fun never lags. The bad is that the issues depicted in the play have lost little of their resonance even in these supposedly “post-racial” times. For evidence of the latter, simply look to the hysterical reaction from the audience to one character swinging a metal folding chair in menacing fashion (look up the meme online). That’s not to say that the production entirely succeeds in its wildly farcical depiction of a traveling preacher, the elegantly named Purlie Victorious Judson (Leslie Odom, Jr.), who attempts to claim a $500 inheritance by duplicitous means in order to fund his dream of starting his own church. The humor leaps from broad to wildly over-the-top to mixed results, with not all of the gags landing. And some may have trouble with the “white savior” trope with which the proceedings are resolved, although it’s here employed so charmingly that it’s hard to resist.

Veteran director Robert Falls has staged the piece with his usual impeccable professionalism, with Todd Rosenthal’s homey set design and Evelyn Danner’s on-the-nose costuming providing heartland verisimilitude. But the top-notch production is not enough to compensate for the fact that Swing State — even the title feels overly calculated — feels like a sociology paper in search of a play.

His heart, though, is in the large-scale illusions, including one in which he suddenly makes a helicopter appear onstage (someone should have told him that Miss Saigon beat him to the punch decades ago). He does some impressive aerial work with wires, flying around the stage as if auditioning for the next Peter Pan revival (he’s certainly got the boyish charm for it). But his principal trick, one which he performs in several variations, is to have one or more people, including himself, appear one moment in a large transparent cube and then suddenly reappear in another one across the stage. It’s a spectacular illusion, but one that wears thin with repetition.

It’s a terrifically fun and amusing story that works nearly as well onstage as it did on film, although the original songs, as is so often the case with these adaptations, mainly come across as superfluous. Not that they’re all that bad, mind you. Some of them are quite catchy, such as the 1950s girl group homage “Something About That Boy,” the inspirational “Gotta Start Somewhere” and the amusing “21st Century,” the last performed by Doc and the ensemble with a sort of Devo-like thing happening. The musical numbers, featuring lively choreography by Chris Bailey, are generally rousing but, as you can probably tell by the song titles, the lyrics are strictly of the generic variety.

But the humor is so devoid of reality that the laughs become increasingly strained. The plot twists have little impact since we’re so little invested in the characters or situations, and with its two-hour running time the evening has the feel of an elongated Carol Burnett Show sketch (Harvey Korman and Burnett would have made a great Beau and Sylvia, with Tim Conway as Clarke and Vicki Lawrence as the pregnant Marjorie. But it would have been 8-10 minutes, tops). It’s hard to see exactly who The Cottage is for, since even a first-class Coward revival would have a tough go of it on Broadway without major star power. It’s a play whose ideal audiences have by now passed on to become blithe spirits themselves.

Just for Us proves extremely well crafted, as one hopes it would be after being performed on and off for nearly five years. He begins the evening with an anecdote about how Koko the Gorilla related sadness upon hearing of the death of Robin Williams after having met the comedian only once. If you’re wondering how that connects with the rest of the piece, Edelman provides the answer toward the end of the show, followed by the sort of mic-drop capper that brings it to a triumphant conclusion.

I’ll leave it to the theater historians and pundits to debate the ramifications of this turn of events in Broadway musical theater. My job, such as it is, is to report on how well the show’s creators succeed in fulfilling their artistic aspirations. Of course, that’s assuming they have any. Based on the fact that it distributes free glowing bracelets to every audience member to wave in the air for the inevitable megamix during the curtain call, they’re not exactly straining for Sondheim-level depth. Rather, they simply want their target audience to have a good time; not, as the characters in Seinfeld used to sheepishly say, that there’s anything wrong with that. The problem is that this latest revisionist exhumation of fairy tales arrives shortly after such superior examples of the burgeoning genre as the recent revival of Into the Woods and & Juliet (not a fairy tale, I know, but it feels like one) and such far worse examples as Bad Cinderella. It’s beginning to seem as if Broadway is less a destination for the tired businessman than the tired tyke who didn’t get in their nap. Not that they’d be able to sleep through this show if they tried, since the volume is pumped up to the sort of deafening levels you’d expect at, well, a Britney Spears concert.

A first-rate cast and creative team have been assembled for the play which premiered at Chicago’s A Red Orchid Theatre in 2019. Director Joe Mantello’s production features contributions from scenic designer Scott Pask, costume designer Rudy Monce, lighting designer Natasha Katz and sound designer Tom Gibbons, all working at the top of their game. And the sterling ensemble includes Laurie Metcalf, Tatiana Maslany (who missed critics’ performances after being sidelined with Covid), Paul Sparks, and Sophia Anne Caruso. It’s hard to avoid the feeling, however, that the play, which depends highly on a tightly controlled, ominous atmosphere, might have been more impactful when presented in the Chicago theater’s much smaller space.

The play nonetheless proves affecting, thanks to its sensitive insights about the vagaries of friendships and the way they can evolve, or not, with the passage of time and the impact of external forces. Under the uncluttered direction of Daniel Sullivan, the two actresses deliver sterling performances, displaying an authentic-seeming chemistry and making the closeness between their very different characters fully believable. You come away from Summer, 1976 feeling like you wish you’d been able to spend more time with Diana and Alice, and that they’d been able to spend more time with each other.

You would never know that Jodie Comer is making her stage debut in Suzie Miller’s harrowing one-person play Prima Facie. The thirty-year-old British actress has rocketed to fame in recent years, thanks in large part to her award-winning turn as a ruthless assassin in the international hit television series Killing Eve. But while many film and television stars prove underwhelming on stage, Comer instantly affirms herself as a top-rank theater performer with this dynamic star turn in which she absolutely commands attention for 100 uninterrupted minutes. Already the recipient of the Olivier Award for the play’s London run, she should repeat that success when the Tonys are handed out in June.

Not all of the jokes land, and even with its brief 90-minute running time, the evening ultimately has the feel of an overextended sketch. That’s particularly true of this new production directed by Rachel Chavkin, which feels much broader than the original staging and features some theatrical flourishes near the end that feel wholly unnecessary. But the play still delivers plenty of uproarious moments and this starrier Broadway cast milks them for all their worth, with Carden and Finneran particularly hilarious with their physical comedy.

Director Jack O’Brien orchestrates the proceedings with endless imagination and precise comic staging that accentuates the show’s strengths while downplaying its weaknesses. Thanks to the outstanding efforts of all concerned, Shucked feels as light and airy as Scott Pask’s beautiful set design of a huge, multi-level wooden barn.

Besides the spellbinding puppetry, the production features stunning projection designs, special effects, lighting, sound design and musical underscoring that combine to create a truly stunning experience. That praise, however, must come with a caveat: Theatergoers would be well advised not to sit in the front orchestra section, as many of the projections, including the swirling ocean, are displayed on the particularly high stage floor, making viewing them difficult if not impossible from there. The best seats would definitely be in the front mezzanine. The play feels somewhat drawn out at 135 minutes (including intermission), and the climactic narrative twist is too blatantly spoon-fed to the audience, as if the show’s creators were afraid that we would not be able to figure it out. But those are minor quibbles about this enthralling, wildly imaginative production.