Frank Scheck — Theater Critic

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.

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.

The production certainly fulfills its modest creative aspirations. The actors are very good at being bad and are so daring with the outrageous physical comedy that we often fear for their safety. There's no paucity of wit to the proceedings, and director Mark Bell stages the action with clockwork precision. Nigel Hook's purposefully cheesy set design deserves special commendation, rivaling Disney's Haunted Mansion with the ingenuity of its surprises. But for all the strenuous effort involved, the repetitive show evaporates in your mind the moment it concludes.

The true-life story that inspired the new musical Come From Away would seem like the stuff of a Frank Capra movie. The show relates the tale of how a small Newfoundland town in 2001 found itself unexpectedly hosting 7,000 airline passengers stranded there for days after 9/11. But though the material might have lent itself to sickly sweet sentimentality, creators Irene Sankoff and David Hein have crafted a heartwarming and thoroughly entertaining musical. Especially in these politically fractious times, it should prove a true crowd-pleaser on Broadway following previous hit engagements in San Diego, Washington D.C. and Toronto.

The song 'As If We Never Said Goodbye' takes on touching new resonance in the Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1993 musical Sunset Boulevard, based on the classic Billy Wilder film. This version once again stars Glenn Close in the role that won her a Tony Award 22 years ago, and the veteran actress reprises it magnificently. Playing Norma Desmond, the aging former movie star obsessed with making a comeback, Close delivers a more subtle, nuanced performance well suited to a production dramatically scaled-down from the original.

The appeal of paying Broadway prices for such an experience can be debated. More to the point, In Transit, while boasting engaging performances, features cliched characters and situations too bland for a sitcom, let alone theater.

For this Broadway production first seen earlier this year at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse, the co-directors are DeNiro and Jerry Zaks (who staged the original solo version), with Palminteri as the book writer. Despite its by-now overfamiliarity, the piece achieves a new freshness in this entertaining musicalization, featuring a tuneful score by two Disney veterans - eight-time Oscar-winner Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) and Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid, Tangled), whose previous collaborations include the screen-to-stage musicals Sister Act and Leap of Faith

For this Broadway production first seen earlier this year at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse, the co-directors are DeNiro and Jerry Zaks (who staged the original solo version), with Palminteri as the book writer. Despite its by-now overfamiliarity, the piece achieves a new freshness in this entertaining musicalization, featuring a tuneful score by two Disney veterans - eight-time Oscar-winner Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) and Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid, Tangled), whose previous collaborations include the screen-to-stage musicals Sister Act and Leap of Faith

Most musicals are lucky to have one showstopping number. Holiday Inn, the new Broadway show adapted from the 1942 film starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, features two. One of them, 'Shaking the Blues Away,' sums up what this musical packed with 20 Irving Berlin songs succeeds in doing. So sweetly wholesome that you experience a sugar rush while watching it, the show is corny and predictable. But it will surely provide a happy diversion for stressed-out theatergoers during the holiday season, much like its similarly conceived predecessor, White Christmas, which received limited end-of-year Broadway runs in 2008 and 2009.

Most musicals are lucky to have one showstopping number. Holiday Inn, the new Broadway show adapted from the 1942 film starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, features two. One of them, 'Shaking the Blues Away,' sums up what this musical packed with 20 Irving Berlin songs succeeds in doing. So sweetly wholesome that you experience a sugar rush while watching it, the show is corny and predictable. But it will surely provide a happy diversion for stressed-out theatergoers during the holiday season, much like its similarly conceived predecessor, White Christmas, which received limited end-of-year Broadway runs in 2008 and 2009.

Although it remains to be seen whether this revival will live up to the original production's tagline of 'Now and Forever,' enough time has passed for a new generation of theatergoers to embrace the show, while those who saw the original (and liked it) will probably want to return for a blast of nostalgia. And with the dramatic upturn in tourists to the Big Apple in recent years, there's no reason to think that this Cats won't be purring on Broadway for a very long time.

..their latest effort attempts to combine Cirque's trademark acrobatic acts with an original Broadway musical. Unfortunately, the resulting hybrid, Paramour, is more Frankenstein's monster than love child...The $25 million production is a traditionally-styled Broadway musical, albeit a very mediocre one, infused with the sort of acrobatic routines normally seen under a big top...And so it goes throughout melodramatic proceedings in which the humor is largely unintentional...Granted, audiences going to a Cirque du Soleil show expect extravagant acrobatics. But the creators of Paramour - tellingly, no writer is credited - seem to have gone out of their way to produce as banal and generic a musical as possible. Featuring atrocious dialogue and forgettable songs, it feels more like a parody than the real thing...The show does have some imaginative, thrilling sequences...Kushnier delivers a thoroughly professional performance in his thankless role, and Lewis and Vona are both appealing....

The story of an 11-year-old girl encountering a family in the woods who seem perfectly normal except that they're immortal, Tuck Everlasting is a sweet concoction that feels in over its head amidst the flashier delights of Wicked and Matilda, among many others...The book...is more serviceable than inspired...The tuneful country and folk music-influenced score by composer Chris Miller and lyricist Nathan Tysen is equally unmemorable. Director Nicholaw...keeps things moving at a sprightly pace, although he overdoes the carnival-style dance sequences that are clearly intended to provide visual distraction...The performers put the fanciful material over with admirable energy and emotional conviction...But the real find is Lewis, who amazingly is 11 years old in real life and whose precocious talent suggests that she may secretly be immortal herself.

The almost entirely sung-through show is remarkably faithful to the historical facts, packing immense amounts of detail into its sprawling narrative. But it does so in such riotously entertaining fashion that it never feels like a history lesson, although it surely delivers one...Largely unaltered from its original production save for one important cast change, the lyrically dense show makes an even greater impact on the large Broadway stage, which provides ample room for its large ensemble. The performers have only gotten better, with Miranda in the title role...delivering a commanding star turn that is as charismatic as it is emotionally affecting. But there's also terrific work from Leslie Odom, Jr. as the scheming Burr, stopping the show with the rousing number 'The Room Where It Happens'...The musical is a triumph...More to the point, it signals its immensely talented creator and star as a game-changing figure in musical theater.

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.