Frank Scheck

It shouldn't work, it really shouldn't. A three-and-a-half-hour drama spanning over 160 years, featuring a mere three actors playing dozens of roles ranging from infants to coquettish young women to elderly men, depicting complicated historical and financial events with a minimum of scenery. And with much of the dialogue delivered in the form of third person narration, no less. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but The Lehman Trilogy proves an unalloyed theatrical triumph.

There's a palpable urgency to Keenan Scott II's poetic drama making its Broadway debut after several regional theater productions. Revolving around numerous themes endemic to the Black experience in contemporary America, Thoughts of a Colored Man is the sort of finger-on-the-pulse work that elicits murmurs of approval from its audience, one that is more racially diverse than usually seen on the Great White Way. It's advertising proclaims it to be 'A New American Play for a New Broadway,' and the tagline doesn't seem like hyperbole.

The performers, several of them new to Broadway, strive mightily to mine the broad humor for all its worth and generally succeed. The standouts are Mizzelle, a hoot as the precocious teen, and Urie, who gets laughs with every nervous twitch, although he's playing the sort of role from which he should have graduated by now. For more than a few, Chicken & Biscuits will live up to its name by being enjoyable theatrical comfort food. But you can't ignore the fact that it simply isn't very nutritious.

There are only two men onstage, but there's an awfully big crowd populating Lackawanna Blues. Ruben Santiago-Hudson's autobiographical one-man play (plus musician) paying loving tribute to the woman who raised him features such a gallery of colorful characters that it's no wonder it was adapted into a cable television movie featuring a large ensemble. But the piece works best as it was originally conceived-the actor narrating the tale and portraying some two dozen other characters in a virtuoso demonstration of solo storytelling.

The three actors, repeating their Lincoln Center performances, couldn't be better. Hill and Smallwood expertly play off each in the manner of seasoned vaudevillians, while Ebert delivers a tour-de-force turn, infused with comic physicality and an undercurrent of danger, that keeps us on edge even as we're laughing.

Watching the new comedy by the normally more adventurous playwright Bess Wohl, it's hard to avoid the feeling that it resembles a never-aired episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. The play features a squabbling elderly couple and their adult children who trade sharp one-liners while dealing with a domestic crisis. And if you've seen the memorable episode of the long-running sitcom in which Marie, the family matriarch played by Doris Roberts, crashes a car through the Barone family house, you will have effectively gotten a sneak preview of one of the more startling moments in Second Stage Theater's Broadway production of Grand Horizons.

Mea culpa. The show's producers apparently took my review, and many other favorable notices, too much to heart. Arriving on Broadway following a national tour for a limited run (timed to the upcoming holiday season, natch), The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical has lost all of its charms while gaining a dramatic uptick in ticket prices. What seemed inventive and clever in the confines of a small off-Broadway theater feels utterly wan in its current incarnation. The production represents glorified children's theater, only with seats going for as much as $199. Any parents who shell out that kind of money for this tacky, bargain-basement production seriously need to reevaluate their financial priorities.

The show essentially follows the same structure as the troupe's off-Broadway engagement last winter, but since every performance is almost entirely improvised, your experience will be different each time. And this is definitely a show that rewards repeat viewings, if only to be amazed again by the endless ingenuity with which the performers devise their versatile routines.

The show, directed by Andy Nyman and Andrew O'Connor, who co-wrote the material with Brown, is infused with a theatrical polish that makes its substantial running time fly by. By the time it's over, you'll be thrilled you've been so oblivious to the evening's devilish machinations that you somehow didn't see a man in a gorilla suit snatching a banana from a podium onstage in plain view. Not once, but twice.

It's easy to see why Terrence McNally's 1987 romantic two-hander is being presented on Broadway less than 20 years after its last incarnation. Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, about one very long night in which two lonely souls debate whether or not to take a chance on love, is a veritable feast for actors. And in the new revival directed by Arin Arbus, Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon wolf it down with gusto.

Reminiscent of Greek tragedy in its depiction of its central character's inexorable fall from grace, All My Sons can feel overly mechanistic at times. Some scenes, such as George's confrontation with Joe, the man he blames for his father's imprisonment, don't quite ring true in their quicksilver emotional shifts, and the play's symbolism can be heavy-handed (a downed tree is not just a downed tree). But the classically structured drama nonetheless still exerts a tremendous raw power that is fully realized in this rendering.

It would be a pleasure to report that the gamble has paid off, at least creatively. Unfortunately, despite the tremendous abundance of talent both onstage and off, the production is mainly notable for being the most batshit-crazy thing to be seen on Broadway in many a moon.

Be More Chill doesn't benefit from a repeat viewing for anyone who's already gone through adolescence. Iconis' pop/rock score, augmented for its Broadway debut with an additional, inconsequential song, 'Sync Up,' is catchy enough. It features some fun, upbeat numbers, including the title tune and 'Upgrade,' while another, 'Michael in the Bathroom,' is a terrific showcase for Salazar, who gets a huge ovation when he first walks onstage, signifying how familiar many audience members already are with the show.

Shepard's enigmatic play defies easy interpretation, with its vague themes of sibling rivalry, the mythos of the American West and the thin line between civilization and anarchy never truly coming into focus. But it works marvelously as a mood piece, which for several reasons this production only partially succeeds in capturing. The expansive American Airlines Theatre isn't intimate enough to provide the necessary air of claustrophobia; the slack pacing of Act I allows boredom to settle in; and Hawke, as good as he is, is a bit too studied in his affect. He certainly tries hard, but you never get the sense of true danger that his character is supposed to emit.

To say that the humor is unsophisticated is an understatement. The jokes are frequently hoary ('We're on, Mitch,' Tygen taunts. 'We're on like your prom date's dress.') and such running gags as Tygen constantly beginning epigrams only to leave them uncompleted ('It's like my dad used to say. There are two kinds of people in the world.') get tired awfully fast.

If you have trouble imagining songs like 'Vacation' and 'Cool Jerk' fitting into a scenario depicting a royal family's romantic complications, you still will after seeing this relentlessly frothy musical, for which the term 'check your brain at the door' could have been invented. The farcical, gender-fluid shenanigans are as campy as things get on Broadway. And that's saying something.

Straight White Men is great fun for much of its running time, but the play falters when it attempts to explore more serious terrain. The playwright doesn't manage to convey successfully what she's trying to say about the expectations that inevitably accompany privilege. The work's ambiguity, deliberate or otherwise, ultimately proves frustrating, especially in its unresolved conclusion.

Burn me at the stake for heresy if you must, but I'll say it. Even when done well, Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan is a slog. And since Manhattan Theatre Club's Broadway revival of the 1923 play isn't done very well, it's even more of a slog than usual. The production has been anticipated for the starring turn of three-time Tony nominee Condola Rashad in the title role. Unfortunately, this talented actress fails to galvanize the lengthy proceedings, making the play feel longer than it is. And at nearly three talk-filled hours, it's already very long.

You don't have to enroll for a graduate degree to enjoy Tom Stoppard's simultaneously wacky and intellectual 1974 comedy, now being given its first-ever Broadway revival by the Roundabout Theater Company. That's largely due to the accessible nature of director Patrick Marber's rollickingly staged production, which garnered raves for its London stints at the Menier Chocolate Factory and the West End. The handy crib sheet provided in the program doesn't hurt either.

Rock and classical music had a shotgun wedding, and their love child is on Broadway in the form of Rocktopia. Not since K-tel's best-selling Hooked on Classics series in the '80s has there been such a misguided attempt to combine two musical forms.

That a fairly large percentage of the crowd at a recent Wednesday matinee enthusiastically shouted out those lyrics indicates that the show may find its audience, even if New York is probably not the epicenter. But even those unfamiliar with Buffett's songwriting oeuvre (I know, not a word usually associated with the composer of 'Cheeseburger in Paradise') should find the proceedings relaxedly enjoyable. This jukebox musical is the theatrical equivalent of sipping on a frozen drink while lying on a beach chair in the blazing sun. It's not good for you, but it feels good.

Directed by Daniel Sullivan, the piece has been given an expert production, enhanced by John Lee Beatty's homey, wood-paneled set featuring little more than a comfortable easy chair, a small table and a stool. Kenneth Posner's warm lighting - which keeps the house lights up for the first several minutes, as if to emphasize our collective involvement in the act of storytelling - strives to intensify the intimacy of the proceedings.

A thoughtful and provocative theme about one generation's responsibility to the next eventually comes into play, but unfortunately, the evening takes way too long to get there. The plot, such as it is, doesn't kick in until nearly an hour into the intermissionless proceedings, when Rose finally announces the reason for her visit. Before that, there is an endless amount of small talk that, while it teases out revealing information about the characters, proves a trial to sit through. The attempts at comic relief, such as the lengthy exchange revolving around whether Rose did 'number one' or 'number two' in the couple's temperamental downstairs toilet, hardly amuses.

Morose over being stuck in the city during the holidays? Tired of seeing those same old perennials like the Radio City Christmas show or The Nutcracker? If you answered yes and wish to throw yourself even further into seasonal depression, there's a new show on Broadway that's just the ticket. Expertly recalling the sort of entertainment you'd experience on a cruise ship or in a low-rent Vegas casino, Home for the Holidays is a Christmas show only Ebenezer Scrooge could love

From its title and marketing campaign, you'd think the new musical Bandstand would simply be an exuberant paean to the joys of big band swing. But there's a gloominess hanging over this thematically ambitious show, written by Broadway newcomers Richard Oberacker and Rob Taylor. And why shouldn't there be, since its troubled main characters include six World War II veterans and the widow of a man killed in combat. Uneasily attempting to be simultaneously a feel-good, swinging musical and a serious depiction of post-traumatic stress, Bandstand is at war with itself.