Greg Evans — Theater Critic

Leon, a top-notch director who has done recent work that is both more exhilarating (Purlie Victorious) and more revelatory (Home), here makes a few attempts at diversifying and era-defying Wilder’s classic without offering a complete re-think that might have brought fresher life to the theatrical chestnut.

We can start by thanking Hwang’s terrific play – cut by a half-hour since its overlong Off Broadway version – and crackerjack direction by Leigh Silverman. Perhaps most of all, the production’s appeal rests with a cast led by an excellent Daniel Dae Kim, the Lost and Avatar: The Last Airbender star making a seamless transition to the Broadway stage.

Laura Donnelly plays both the thirtysomething Joan and, in the flashbacks, mother Veronica. It’s an astonishing dual performance. As the would-be, maybe nearly-was rock star Joan, Donnelly pitches her voice to a cigarette-stained California hippie burnout with only a hint of the Blackpool roots she so clearly has worked mightily to eradicate. As Veronica, Donnelly is a stage mother wannabe with arguably good intentions, a smart, talented woman smothered by the times and desperate to give her daughters the opportunities she never had. Equal parts Mama Rose, Miss Jean Brodie, Amanda Wingfield and Sophie Zawistowska, Veronica is a monster for an instantly regretted minute, and she and those she loves will pay for that lapse the rest of their lives.

Ghost of John McCain ultimately comes off as a nicely performed, conceptually overcooked 90-minute SNL cold open set to an amiably cartoonish show tune score.

If The Roommate would have us believe that this Grace & Frankie could become Bonnie & Clyde in the blink of an eye, it at least does so with enough good humor and easy charm to keep our eye-rolling in relative check.

Director Lear DeBessonet does her very best to keep the goings-on humming, but Mattress gives her so, so much less to work with than what she was got from Sondheim’s Into The Woods, another recent Encores!-to-Broadway project that was easily one of the most satisfying bits of alchemy to arise from the long history of that beloved City Centers endeavor. Mattress has, and always will, feel like a sketch or one-act with one essential song (“Shy”) padded with unnecessary characters and sub-par musical interludes, all designed to forestall the show’s 11 O’Clock number, which in this musical has nothing to do with belting a song.

There’s funny, there’s very funny, and then there’s Oh, Mary!, Cole Escola’s riotous new comedy that brings more laughs to Broadway than all the Gutenberg!s, Edelmans and Birbiglias combined. You can throw in Shucked for good measure.

Williams didn’t live to see the revival, dying peacefully in North Carolina last month at 78. Roundabout and Leon have kept their end of the bargain. Home opens tonight on Broadway at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre in a top-notch production that serves as a fitting and heartfelt tribute to the author.

As good as Stuhlbarg and Keen are – and they’re very good, as are Luke Thallon as oligarch-turned-Putin puppet Roman Abramovic and Alex Hurt as Berezovsky’s doomed security man – Patriots never fully conveys the emotional vitality or grand drama – in short, the Shakespearean – in the power plays. As history lesson, Patriots is more than worthy. As drama, well, it’s a history lesson.

Though the musical’s book and lyrics remain doggedly by-the-numbers, Chavkin’s direction (and a good cast that includes Andrew Samonsky, Amber Iman, George Abud, Beth Leavel and Natalie Joy Johnson) keeps Lempicka barreling through the last century’s wartime horrors, peacetime optimism and an art that grew from both.

With a superb cast headed by Broadway newcomer Ali Louis Bourzgui as Tommy, the “deaf, dumb and blind kid” – most of whatever language less-than-acceptable by today’s standards has been retained – and Alison Luff as his mom Mrs. Walker, Tommy feels less like a stick-to-what-works revival than a top-to-bottom reimagining. Nearly all of it works beautifully.

That’s faint praise, to be sure, but credit where it’s due: Despite source material whose hold on at least some segment of the popular imagination remains inscrutable to the rest of us, the new musical is never less than diverting, with its gorgeous aerial acrobatics, solid work from director Jessica Stone (Kimberly Akimbo) and a plucky pastiche of a score that hints, to my ears, at ’30s-era novelty songs, old timey banjo music, Tin Pan Alley, Black gospel, Jesus Christ Superstar-era Andrew Lloyd Webber and 21st Century stage musical pop.

But have no doubt: Audiences on any every night of this limited 16-week run at Circle in the Square will witness a taut and exactingly directed production. Sam Gold’s An Enemy Of The People is one of the best play revivals of the current season to date, right up there with Purlie Victorious, besting Doubt and even Gold’s own, shakier Macbeth starring Daniel Craig in 2022.

Played out mostly on a nursing home set by David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis that manages to be both attractive and suitably off-putting (Noah’s renovated antibellum farmhouse hits nostalgic notes without summoning unwelcome ghosts), The Notebook gets to its final pages – or very nearly so - without letting its manipulations become too overbearing (more about that “nearly so” in a moment), yet it never approaches the finer works of nearly everyone involved (director Greif gave us Next To Normal and Dear Evan Hansen). The wonderful Plunkett nails the confusion and panic of dementia from the get-go, meaning she has little place to go. Woods, as Middle Ally, breaks through the musical sameness with the production’s unequivocal showstopper (“My Days”), though her musical theater brassiness seems to have no counterpart in either the character’s younger and older versions.

In a staging that feels garden-fresh while honoring everything that made the musical such an invigorating blast nearly 40 years ago, this Little Shop sold out its limited run at the Westside Theatre (Upstairs) before performances began in September, prompting an eight-week extension through Jan. 19 that offers audiences a rare opportunity to see the show on the turf and in the manner that Ashman & Menken must surely have envisioned.

Under the assured direction of Scott Ellis, the revival’s cast is unfaltering in its convictions – we believe that they believe every word they say. If Father Flynn is lying – he’s the only character that has reason to – Schreiber doesn’t let on, a real achievement given that he’s not only squaring off against one tough nun, but several decades now of headlines and heightened public awareness of church atrocities.

Chalk it up to theatrical arts of the first order – acting, direction, book and Guettel’s mesmerizing operatic bebop – that we’re soon hand-in-shaky hand with characters who haven’t a clue how to break the cycle of whiskey-ice-repeat. We’re transported back in time by Kirstin’s lovely sleeveless, A-line cocktail dress (Dede Ayite designed the costumes, showing, among other things, how you really do Barbie), a delightful look that quickly enough gives way to ratty old Baby Jane Hudson bathrobes. And watch Joe morph from Man In a Gray Flannel Suit to rumpled slob in yesterday’s slept-ins, all inhabiting a midcentury modern world, perfectly designed by Lizzie Clachan, that seems by turns airy and claustrophobic.

With the inestimable assistance of Kata’s then-and-now set, Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting design, Daniel Kluger’s music and sound design and Sarah Laux’s spot-on costumes – to say nothing of Cromer’s direction, which easily matches his Tony-winning work on The Band’s Visit, Edwards and his castmates bring two distinct, if not always so dissimilar, eras to life, and they tell a sweeping story while conveying genuine intimacy. Prayer for the French Republic asks big questions – of history, of family, of identity – and, all but miraculously, answers their call.

Pay attention to those loud, annoying cicadas – they seem to have a story to tell. At least they do in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins superb, marvelously performed Appropriate, the Second Stage production opening tonight at the Helen Hayes Theater with one of the best casts – headed by an astonishing Sarah Paulson – on Broadway. A blistering family drama directed by Lila Neugebauer (easily matching her exemplary work in 2018’s The Waverly Gallery), Appropriate is a wicked cacophony of nerve-wrenching mystery, old resentments and laugh-out-loud comedy – the latter all the more remarkable coming, as it does, within a story about the darkest horrors of America’s legacies.

No, the let down is really the fault of a book that relies on easily predictable personal triumphs – shells will be broken, invitations extended, bad boyfriends dumped, all not a moment before or after you’d expect. And as loving and sweet-natured as Cannold’s direction is, it, and the show, is destined to live in the inescapable shadow of that Tony-winning musical populated with othered teens also demanding independence and dignity in a world not of their making. Kimberly Akimbo, that perfect show just a block away, raised a bar that How To Dance In Ohio just can’t limbo past. It’s not fair, but its the type of challenge Dr. Amigo’s clients would accept.

All the dancing, singing and questing unfolds on a clever, attractive set designed by Paul Tate dePoo III, whose projections – many seemingly inspired by Terry Gilliam’s instantly recognizable Python style of animation – play a crucial role in the production. Some of the effects are of a decidedly (and intentionally) DIY nature, like the catapulted (or, really, just tossed) cow or the bloodthirsty bunny, but all work terrifically within the show’s self-aware approach.

First-time stage director Jeff Ward takes a bold approach to the play, and even if all of the risks won’t pay off for all of the audience members – a sudden shift from brutal realism into avant garde modern dance (yes, you read that right) is bound to divide longtime Danny devotees – this revival nonetheless makes a fine display of Shanley’s streetwise Bronx poetry.

Manilow and his longtime writing partner and collaborator Bruce Sussman have set out to answer that very question, and Harmony accomplishes that goal handily. As a musical, Harmony occasionally soars, occasionally stumbles, but the former more often than the latter. With a structure that takes fewer chances than one might hope, Harmony is nonetheless steadily compelling and not infrequently stirring, attributes that speak as much to the Manilow-Sussman craftsmanship as to an intriguing tale long-lost to history.

Given the play’s underdeveloped feel, it’s no wonder the cast seems to flounder. Granted, the reviewed performance was early in the string of shows available to critics, and the actors’ tenuous grasp of the script – jumping lines, circling back, apparent improvisational word-grabs – might well have already tightened up (along with a tech issue that had the revolving set stubbornly refusing to move; other tech credits were fine despite some weird, Twilight Zone-ish sounds meant to signify that TV set’s age). More rehearsal time might have helped, along with a tougher hand by director von Stuelpnagel and some serious fine-tuning of Rebeck’s word-salad dialogue.

When Gutenberg! The Musical! debuted Off Broadway 17 years ago, critics wondered whether it was ready for Broadway. Perhaps they should have asked whether Broadway was ready for Gutenberg! All these years later, the answer to both is yes. Not only has the musical been fine-tuned and shined-up, but a Shucked-era Broadway is clearly in the mood for some absurdly silly good fun.