Greg Evans — Theater Critic

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.