Greg Evans — Theater Critic

Not that this new production of Merrily completely fills in and smoothes out the musical’s legendary potholes, but it certainly helps us step around them without too much effort or frustration. You’d be hard-pressed to imagine a better Merrily We Roll Along.

Perhaps there’s not a false word in that realization, but, reached, on stage at least, so soon on this lickety-split path of grief, there’s not much complexity or depth there either. Her recovery from unimaginable grief seems blessedly brief, and in real life we wish her for nothing less. That it doesn’t ring true on a dramatic stage is a problem, though. Melissa Etheridge: My Window is a performance built as much on candor as it is on musical talent, and until the big, rushed moment towards the end, Etheridge succeeds on both counts. One suspects its just too soon to deal with the latest tragedy, and Etheridge, her co-writer and her director just haven’t yet found a way to turn this ultimate heartache into art.

Long before Slave Play, decades before Ain’t No Mo, there was Purlie Victorious, the Ossie Davis comedy masterwork that, like those descendant plays, fused broad comedy, satirical minstrelsy, racial satire and still-relevant social commentary to create a play that is so encompassing in its views of history and legacy, so generous in its humanity and pinpoint sharp in its take on debts long owed and now demanded that Kenny Leon’s revival, opening tonight on Broadway, feels as current and bracing as a folding chair.

The problem facing the playwrights is finding a new hook (sorry) in telling this oft-told making-of-a-fish tale. Much of the behind-the-scenes details have been widely known since the 1970s, in part due to the outstanding memoir The Jaws Log by screenwriter Carl Gottlieb. Indeed, the on-set difficulties have become so entrenched in cultural lore that the title of this play needs no explanation or elaboration to reel in audiences. And even though the film cast’s personality clashes are nearly as legendary as the mechanical shark’s short circuits, the play’s authors and performers deliver such nicely detailed characterizations that The Shark Is Broken holds our interest throughout its 95 minutes.

Still, nothing on stage here measures up to the screen version, except the obvious: The live special effects, most notably a final sequence in which 1955 Doc climbs to the top of that clock tower during a lightning storm, with Marty speeding the DeLorean through town. The lighting and video projections that have so far provided some amusement come to fruition here, and Back To The Future: The Musical finally and fully justifies its transition from screen to stage. A coda, which will bring to mind a certain Phantom chandelier or maybe a Saigon helicopter, can’t help but seem a tad anti-climactic.

So how can a tale so depressing in description make for what will surely become one of the most popular nights on the town for New Yorkers and tourists alike It starts with the music. Byrne and Slim (and Tom Gandey and J Pardo) have concocted some terrific blends here. There’s the pulsating American dance club music that so enthralled Filipino nightlifers, there’s a heavy dose of Filipino folk music tradition, some fairly straightforward American show tunes and – listen carefully – a dash here and there of Talking Heads-era Byrne. It all combines into a winning soundscape. But the real pull of Here Lies Love is the staging, with a malleable performance space, an audience herded to and fro, and cast members finding perches throughout the venue. In Here Lies Love, a D.J./Emcee provides narrative segues, musical set-ups, dance instructions and how-tos for the dance-floor audience members guided here and there by pink-suited ushers holding large glow-stick-style batons.

Alex Edelman has built quite the reputation over the last few years, with sold-out comedy shows and knock-’em-dead late-night performances, honing material for a Broadway debut that does his reputation proud. Just For Us, opening tonight at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre and running through Aug. 19, might seem as unlikely as the WTF story that forms the basis of Edelman’s performance. A stand-up comedy routine without the usual visual and special-effects embellishments that accompany trips to Broadway, Just For Us lands on the theatrical stage with no need for anything but sheer story-telling bravado, energetic direction (by the late Adam Brace, with Alex Timbers credited as creative consultant) and a terrific yarn.

Bad Cinderella could have been the poison apple that killed off revisionist fairy tales once and for all, but Britney Spears and Once Upon A One More Time, the new Broadway musical opening tonight that brims with her hits and high spirits, has come along to deliver a happy ever after that’s as unexpected as it is enchanting. Smart, funny, splendid to look at and all with a beat you can dance to, this tribute to the Brothers Grimm, the sisters of the Second Wave and, not least, the indomitable Ms. Spears, is a delight.

When it comes to horror, Broadway typically cedes turf to Hollywood, the occasional Martin McDonough play notwithstanding. There have been giant apes, operatic phantoms, and a misguided vampire or two without providing so much as a single genuine tingle. All of which makes the effort of Grey House so bold. A creepy mash-up of haunted house tropes, cabin in the woods traditions, ghosty kids, errant hatchets, screams, black-outs and the sort of Lynchian lounge music that drips with reverb and menace, Grey House hails from the playwright Levi Holloway and director Joe Mantello, with stars Laurie Metcalf, Tatiana Maslany, and Paul Sparks joined by ferociously talented quintet of child-to-adolescent actors.

Inspired, at least in name, by Martin Scorsese’s 1977 movie starring Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli, New York, New York is less an adaptation than it is a John Kander & Fred Ebb jukebox musical: In addition to the two very famous songs from the film – “But The World Goes ‘Round” and, of course, the title number – the Broadway production includes songs from the duo’s Golden Gate, The Rink, The Act, the unproduced Wait For Me, World, and even Funny Lady. (Lyricist Ebb died in 2004; Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda has stepped in to contribute additional lyrics.) With a pedigree like that – and toss in Susan Stroman, as fine a director-choreographer as Broadway knows, Beowulf Boritt’s dependably sumptuous sets and a costume design by Donna Zakowska to rival her work on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – New York, New York can’t possibly be less than watchable. But it should be so much more. That it is not falls largely to the predictable, cliche-loaded book by David Thompson and Sharon Washington.

The short answer, maybe even the long answer, is that friendship happened. Summer, 1976, thoughtfully directed by Daniel Sullivan (reuniting with his Proof playwright Auburn and his The Little Foxes star Linney), captures an experience that’s as universal as it is inexplicable: a friendship that shouldn’t work but does, and that should endure but doesn’t.

And before you ask Phyllis Who?, consider that even those of fleeting fame can make for fine, compelling biographies. Wright, Hayes and director Lisa Peterson are likely very sure that Levant ranks among that list, but Good Night, Oscar is less than convincing.

When the play (100 minutes, no intermission) enters its latter half and Tessa’s long-in-coming court date arrives, Prima Facie rarely lets us raise our hopes or even, really, challenges our expectations – most of us have been prepared by too many Law & Order: SVUs. The drama is in how Tessa deals with the crumbling of her ideals and the smashing of her self-delusions, and in how Comer can so vividly, indelibly display both.

Playing out on Simon Scullion's ingenious, deceptively ramshackle set (Roberto Surace designed the clever costumes), Peter Pan Goes Wrong is directed by Adam Meggido with the vitally important precision, abundant good humor and no end of mischief.

Opening tonight at the Hayes Theater, The Thanksgiving Play, directed by Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812) and starring D’Arcy Carden, Katie Finneran, Scott Foley, and Chris Sullivan – all of whom, director and cast, have done much better work on other stages – is the sort of easy-target satire that should by all rights have sophisticated New York audiences seeing their own foibles and smiling at their own political vulnerabilities.

Aaron Sorkin works up an answer to that question in the new Lincoln Center Theater production of the 1960 Lerner & Loewe musical, and the result is an adaptation that seems at every turn to be pleading its case for its own relevance. Where the West Wing creator conjured a real sort of writerly sorcery in 2018 with his transformation of the beloved property To Kill A Mockingbird into a new, relevant and thrilling stage work, his efforts this time around often seem strained in their attempts to drag Camelot into the 21st Century.

Excellently performed by the entire cast, Fat Ham is cleverly transferred to Broadway by director Saheem Ali from the smaller Off Broadway Public Theater space (the play originated in a Covid-era filmed presentation at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia). By turns sweet and saucy (and very funny), the play stays just close enough to Hamlet to keep us off-balance. Although there will be blood (well, a little) and death, along with a fine rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep” and recitations of at least some of Hamlet‘s greatest hits – no To Be or Not To Be, though, as Juicy’s self-doubts are of a less existential sort – Ijames’ play resolves on an exhilarating, life-affirming note. Or, to be more precise, notes, as in song, and dance, and enough good-time gender-bending disco sparkle to win over all but the grumpiest of spirits.

Consider that pedigree for a moment: Horn won a Tony for 2019’s Tootsie, and has written for Dame Edna, Designing Women, Bette Midler and RuPaul. Clark and McAnally have stacked up a big barnful of CMA Awards, Grammys and country music hits. Together this trio is a match made in some bizarro Broadway cornfield of dreams, and if the rapid-fire aw-shucked jokes elicit groans almost as often as laughs, the ratio can’t dampen the high spirits and goofy charm.

Still, the kid knows how to spin a terrific yarn. Even Broadway audiences still tickled by the bovine Milky White of Into the Woods and the massive prehistoric creatures of Lincoln Center’s The Skin of Our Teeth will be charmed by the creatures of Pi, courtesy of puppetry and movement director Finn Caldwell and his co-designer Nick Barnes. Same goes for the work of set and costume designer Tim Hatley, video designer Andrzej Goulding, and lighting designer Tim Lutkin (their combined Olivier trophies could capsize a ship of their own). At one point, Pi jumps overboard and is swallowed by the sea/stage, a bit of theatrical trickery no less effective for its simplicity. Still, visual appeal can’t quite wash away a stacked-deck ending, or make a convincing case for the fanciful over the plausible. Deep down, Mr. Okamoto probably agrees.

In a Broadway season that might be remembered for a lovely, pared-down minimalism – the intriguing starkness of A Doll’s House with Jessica Chastain, the less-is-more near-concert-style presentations of Into the Woods and Parade – director Thomas Kail’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street will stand out for, among many other attributes, its full-on, unabashed ambition. A prodigious theatrical event that aims for greatness and achieves it, this revival of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler masterpiece is not to be missed.

By the time it reaches its happily-ever-after ending – the musical doesn’t pretend for a moment it won’t get there – Bad Cinderella leaves us both more or less satisfied and more or less disappointed (you’ll think of the loose ends before you hit the exit door; whatever did happen to that we coulda been friends alliance between the good-bad heroine and her bad-bad stepsister?). It’s certainly not the worst Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (Aspects of Love is safe), nor as remotely problematic (or distinctive) as Evita. Put it somewhere between School of Rock and The Woman in White, enjoy it, and hope for a happier ending next time around.

What Bad Cinderella does have is an amusing enough premise, an appealing score of songs that please in the moment, a gorgeous set design, performers that give it their all, and just enough rousing, good-natured moments to hold onto hopes that Bad Cinderella will arrive somewhere transformative before Dorothy has to return to Kansas.

With a cast as fine as it is large, led by Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond – two of the best singers currently on Broadway – Parade, set in 1913 Georgia, scores its topical points with all the artistry and theatrical know-how to meet and exceed its noble intensions. Parade is as commanding as any musical revival to hit Broadway in years.

But anyone willing to give in to the wily charms and stealthy spell of this stark, thoughtful production will find a singular Broadway experience, a smart and captivating experiment in the power of the voice to transport us to places both far away and deep inside the human psyche.

While the intimate and honest views of a family’s inner workings can’t help but touch our hearts at steadily paced moments, Pictures From Home is too blunt in its characterizations, with father and son especially, repeating their arguments and complaints with unstoppable frequency. Lane has the toughest job here, having to convince the audience that we don’t know who he really is, that we haven’t seen a version of this guy displayed and portrayed in everything from An American Family to (at its most extreme) Succession. The challenge proves a bit too tough even for the indefatigable and always appealing Lane, whose left to fill the holes with high-volume point-making.