Greg Evans — Theater Critic

With Guettel’s often sublime score and lyrics that get at the terror, cynicism and, most of all, undying hope against hope well captured in Landau’s book, Floyd Collins might haunt some of those who see it now just as surely as it haunted so many back in ’96... Still, the score, and the production itself, can, and does, drag at times, particularly near the end, when, maybe with a bit of guilt, some audience members might wish a fast-forward to fate. Not to compare our endurance test to that of poor ol’ Floyd, but still, tighter tale-telling, less musical repetition and more intimate staging could send the estimable Floyd Collins soaring.

A play of uncommon nuance, shifting allegiances, and the wisest, most compassionate depiction of teens since the wonderful Kimberly Akimbo, John Proctor Is The Villain – first workshopped in 2018 – feels absolutely of the moment, as relevant today as Netflix’s brilliant Adolescence (though Proctor has no shortage of laughs).

Perhaps most perplexing about Smash, though, is its weirdly cynical, ungenerous take on the Bombshell herself. For a musical, and a musical within a musical, that gives lip service to her cultural value, Smash: The Musical treats Monroe as a perpetual punchline. Ivy-as-Marilyn is an inconsiderate, amphetamine guzzling faux-intellectual whose devotion to the acting craft is presented as a vainglorious affectation. This Marilyn is without even a smidge of the sweetness and vulnerability that features in even the most cliched takes on the icon. Hurder does her best with what she’s given, but we leave Smash: The Musical baffled as to what all the fuss was about.

the problem with The Last Five Years, even with White’s sensitive direction, splendid orchestrations that lean heavy on piano, percussion, guitar and some gorgeous cello, and an impressionistic New York streetscape set, is the play itself, too confusing to offer clarity when clarity is needed – is Cathy a good actress or just a pipe-dreamer? Is Jamie a narcissist or just a writer who wants to write? Given that the musical is written by Jamie, er, Jason Robert Brown who, like his onstage stand-in had just had his commercial breakthrough – Brown’s Parade on Broadway to Jamie’s bestselling novel – when their actress wives allegedly began their cycles of depression and failure – The Last Five Years can’t help but feel a little skewed toward the dudes.

Good Night, and Good Luck certainly doesn’t lack point of view or conviction, but neither of those things can do much with an overly familiar story, a lack of subtlety and an odd tone of understatement that extends to everything from the writing to Clooney’s performance.

Director Marber clearly has a solid understanding of Mamet’s intentions, never favoring one character over the other or shining one in a more sympathetic light. Marber knows that if anything can be said about Glengarry Glen Ross‘ take on toxicity it’s that it comes in all shapes and sizes, whether it’s the good-buddy approach adopted by Culkin, the sympathetic shark embodied by Odenkirk, McKean’s befuddled butter-wouldn’t-melt take or the brutally honest red-faced manipulations of Burr’s character.

Equal parts acting masterclass, tech wizardry, illusion and clockwork stage management, all costumed and set designed with the wit and color schemes of the most vivid Cindy Sherman photographs, Dorian Gray marks audacious Broadway debuts by both Snook and director-adaptor Kip Williams.

Unfortunately, the modernizing premise – aside from the de rigueur costumes and odd laptop, more pretense than premise – seriously impacts the emotional punch of the ending. We might assume that in ages past, Othello’s murder of Desdemona was presented as something cockeyed noble, misguided through Iago’s duplicity, a mean trick played not so much on the woman but on the gullible man (the full title of the play is The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, not The Tragedy Of Desdemona, His Horrifically Murdered Wife). By setting the action In The Near Future, any hint at sympathy for Othello – especially after we’ve just witnessed Osborne perform Desdemona’s heart-wrenching, useless pleas for her life (“Kill me tomorrow!”). Washington’s tear-jerking post-mortem apologies are likely to fall on deaf audience ears, Othello’s suicide a decidedly un-noble good riddance.

Pulling it all together is Rashad, who directs her excellent cast with insight and nuance, no false moves from beginning to end. The play doesn’t pretend to answer all the lofty questions it raises – how could it? Finding purpose is an elusive and difficult endeavor, and Jacobs-Jenkins has fashioned a play that, more than anything, embraces the search.

Absolutely nothing gets lost in the translation of Sanaz Toossi’s English as the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a group of Iranians longing for the West finally makes its Broadway debut, two years after its Off Broadway bow garnered critical raves and regional stagings won over audiences with its unfailing wit, grace and compassion.

Then I actually saw All In, and count me among the Rich converts. Directed by the ever nimble Alex Timbers and performed by a rotating cast of four actors – I was lucky to get the truly excellent John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Richard Kind – the 90-minute All In is a perfect holiday snickerdoodle, a light and tasty snack no less funny for its brevity and lack of splashy production values.

And finally there is the inevitable “Rose’s Turn,” that very definition of the showstopping 11 o’clock number in which Rose’s pent-up ambitions and decades of resentments come roaring to the fore. There’s often a temptation to add one eruption too many – Tyne Daly famously slapped the floor – and McDonald doesn’t sidestep the urge. She plays down the soprano trills successfully enough, but in their place she chews more scenery than might be necessary. There’s no denying her power, here and throughout this revival. Her Rose is her Rose (just as – let’s not forget – her Billie Holiday was her Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill) – and who are we to do anything but treasure its fragrances?

Quick, think of something really humorous about vaccinations. No? Me neither, but playwright Jonathan Spector has done us all a favor and molded one of the most divisive, inane, grotesque and newly, resurgent issues of the day and polished it into a shiny, insightful and damn funny little gem so that all of us can ogle and ponder and reconsider just how in the name of Jonas Salk did we get here.

A Second Stage Theater production steered like a fast-moving sleigh by director Trip Cullman, Cult Of Love boasts an excellent cast (headed by Zachary Quinto, Mare Winningham, David Rasche and, in an impressive Broadway debut, Star Wars: The Acolyte‘s Rebecca Henderson) that pulls off a familiar scenario with unexpected freshness.

A perfect rejoinder to the ubiquitous Broadway Sucks These Days gripe about the too-many movie-to-stage adaptations has arrived at long last, and it’s a simple three-word response: Death Becomes Her. A virtually perfect big-budget, broad-appeal musical comedy that improves in every way over the 1992 film, director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s wildly entertaining vehicle for two of our best singer-actor-comedians on any stage today renders the movie-as-source snipe worthless.

O’Hara’s rather rote direction does his play no favors, though he gets terrific performances from his talented cast. Messing, in particular, scores in a go-for-broke comedic performance, and Oberholtzer – a late replacement for Billy Magnussen, who dropped out for health reasons – will remind anyone who saw his Tony-nominated performance in Take Me Out just how powerful an actor he is. Wu subtly demonstrates how her Asian character likely has more in common with Logan than the white majority gathered here, and Harris and Krakowski effectively tap into their sitcom roots while adding some sinister undercurrents – a description that, come to think of it, pretty much applies to the play itself.

As enthralling as it is disquieting, Swept Away, opening tonight on Broadway, is a taut and captivating new folk musical featuring the gorgeous songs of the roots-rock group The Avett Brothers and an impeccable cast headed by John Gallagher Jr. and Stark Sands.

Elf The Musical, the cheery – very, very cheery – revival opening tonight for a limited holiday run on Broadway, is an entirely suitable gift from a hard-working cast for fans of the well-liked 2003 Will Ferrell Christmas perennial. If you crack up at memories of Mr. Narwhal (here represented by a large tusk rising from the orchestra pit as the conductor intones, “Bye Buddy, hope you find your dad!”), Elf has your tinseled name on it.

Opening tonight at Broadway‘s Palace Theater, with a book by James Graham, lyrics by Jake Shears and music by Elton John, Tammy Faye is only slightly more fun than church on a hot July day. All concerned seem absolutely determined to transform the town madcap into a respectable, saintly and rather dull church-lady-next-door.

After the amazing firefly scene, and even more spectacularly, a scene in which our lovers’ inner circuits reveals themselves in a heart-stopping, full-stage display of light and sound that explodes from the set’s early, more constricted (if still lovely) aperture approach, Maybe Happy Ending could happily end, and if Arden and his team can’t quite restrain themselves from stretching things a bit, well, it’s hard to blame them: There still a delight or two, not to mention a lump in the throat, that demand to be experienced. Maybe Happy Ending deserves no less.

A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, starring a terrific James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton) as the legendary Satchmo, opens on Broadway tonight at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, and if it doesn’t escape every pitfall of the jukebox musical, it certainly comes closer than most. Wonderful World is too expansive in chronological scope to delve too deeply into the crucial question of what made Armstrong such an incomparable figure in the history of American music, but with Iglehart and a fine supporting cast of excellent singer-actresses portraying Armstrong’s four wives – Dionne Figgins as Daisy Parker, Jennie Harney-Fleming as Lil Hardin, Kim Exum as Alpha Smith and Darlesia Cearcy as Lucille Wilson – the musical rarely gives us enough time to ponder what’s being left out. What we’re seeing on stage is too entertaining.

Without tinkering with Shakespeare’s language, this R+J is full of youthful energy – and, what’s more, contemporary youthful energy. Watch how the young cast gestures, maneuvers, gets their bodies from one place to another – courtesy of movement direction and choreography by Sonya Tayeh – and the effect is entirely fresh. A small example: Connor doesn’t climb up a balcony or a trellis – he jumps up and grabs ahold Juliet’s bed platform hovering high over the stage, then does a very impressive chin-up to get his lips where they need to be. It’s a charming touch, and R+J is full of them.

Frankly, there’s not much by way of plot that doesn’t feel well-worn, but director Susan Stroman, ably assisted by Beowulf Boritt’s lovely, very efficient set design, Jeff Mahshie’s appealing and city-accurate costumes and projection designs by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew of leafy Greenwich Village and romantic Manhattan skyline, infuses the entire affair with a warm affability that’s as inviting as the affectionate performances of Margulies and Gallagher. Left on Tenth is a slight endeavor – slighter, probably, than a cancer odyssey has any right to be – and certainly falls short of better Ephron Sister efforts. Even so, there can be only one response to it, and that’s well wishes for all.

All that madness in Gloria Swanson’s eyes at the end of Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece Sunset Boulevard is amplified to breathtaking lengths in Jamie Lloyd‘s commanding and gorgeous renovation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical Sunset Blvd. With a career-expanding performance that redefines the one-time Dancing With The Stars competitor Nicole Scherzinger as thoroughly as Lloyd’s staging does Lloyd Webber’s musical, the revival opening tonight at Broadway‘s St. James Theatre is a stunner, stark always, funny sometimes and ultimately terrifying.

It’s not that Hold On To Me Darling – opening tonight Off Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre – is bad (it isn’t, though there are moments that do their best to convince otherwise). Confounding might be a more accurate description, starting with this: In the eight years since its last Off Broadway production, directed, like this one, by Neil Pepe, how could the supremely gifted Lonergan (This Is Our Youth, The Waverly Gallery, Lobby Hero) not come to some decision about what, exactly, this shaggy dog is supposed to be about?