Frank Scheck — Theater Critic

The show dutifully features all the major characters and dramatic moments familiar from the book and film, but in a breathlessly paced, mechanical style that never manages to engage the heart or mind...As the poet/physician Zhivago, British actor Tam Mutu...strikes a handsome presence and sings strongly. But his character, who should anchor the proceedings, never comes across forcefully, remaining a bland cipher throughout. Equally unmemorable is Kelli Barrett, who despite her blonde prettiness fails to convey the desperate urgency that would make us care about Lara's fate...Only Paul Alexander Nolan...truly impresses, delivering a nuanced turn while displaying truly powerful pipes...Simon's music is suitably lush, but the barrage of power ballads all tend to bleed together, lacking the soaring melodicism of...Les Miz...McAnuff has staged the complex proceedings with his usual solid professionalism, but it mainly comes across as an exercise in managing the voluminous onstage traffic.

...It Shoulda Been You, which plays like vintage dinner theater infused with a Borscht Belt sensibility. That it nonetheless manages to be truly amusing is a testament to the talent both on and offstage: such comic pros as Tyne Daly, Harriet Harris and Edward Hibbert manage to make the hoariest of jokes uproarious, while director David Hyde Pierce has staged the proceedings with a brisk expertise that makes the 100 intermissionless minutes fly by. It's the sort of show that practically redefines the term 'guilty pleasure'...The score by composer Barbara Anselmi...and book writer-lyricist Brian Hargrove (Hyde Pierce's real-life husband) is utterly negligible, and the show would probably have worked just fine without it...The characters and situations are hopelessly contrived and formulaic...and the plot twist late in the show will only seem shocking to Middle Americans...But for all its obvious deficiencies, It Shoulda Been You...is the sort of shamelessly lowbrow comedy too often missing from Broadway these days, Larry David's Fish in the Dark notwithstanding.

All told, 'On the Twentieth Century' is on track to score big at Tony Awards time - Chenoweth might as well start practicing her acceptance speech. Buy your tickets before the train leaves the station.

Unfortunately, what must have worked beautifully in the Steppenwolf's far more intimate environs doesn't fully register in the large house, making the play seem smaller than it really is. This is despite the expert direction by Shapiro, who's guided the performers, two of them playing their first stage roles, into vividly memorable turns. The 31-year-old Culkin...is undeniably too old for the role, but he perfectly captures Dennis' youthful braggadocio as well as his carefully hidden insecurities...Cera...Playing not too far from his familiar dorky screen persona, he makes an impressive stage debut, fully mining the pathos and humor of the fumbling Warren and easily scoring the evening's biggest laughs. The 18-year-old, waif-like Gevinson has no such problem in terms of age...But the awkwardness she displays onstage, whether intentional or not, works beautifully for the role of a young woman struggling with a transition into adulthood, and her off-kilter line readings are consistently engaging.

Director/book writer Daniel S. Wise attempts to cram far too much into the proceedings, which feel much longer than two-and-a-half hours. The choppily episodic storyline is enlivened by some three dozen songs written by Carlebach, mostly featuring new English-language lyrics by David Schlechter. Although simple in structure, they're undeniably infectious, and their joyous energy does much to fuel the evening.

It's not surprising to read in the Playbill for Broadway's First Date that book writer Austin Winsberg has extensive television credits, including Gossip Girl and Jake in Progress. This romantic musical comedy -- first seen in a co-production by Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre and A Contemporary Theater -- has a definite sitcom-like quality. But it also displays a genuine wit and musical flair that marks a refreshing change from the onslaught of overblown musicals permeating Broadway these days. Starring Zachary Levi of TV's Chuck in his Broadway debut and Krysta Rodriguez (The AddamsFamily, Smash), this modest, unassuming tuner is a definite crowd-pleaser, although it may find itself struggling for tourist dollars when the bigger shows arrive in the fall.

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.

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.”

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.