Greg Evans

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.

Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah and inspired by the real life 1984 painting collaboration of the aging (at least in terms of artistic relevance) Warhol and the soaring Basquiat – a project presented so much more convincingly and movingly in the 1996 film Basquiat, starring Jeffrey Wright and, in the definitive performance of Warhol, David Bowie, who haunts this play like a shadow – The Collaboration is an oddly lifeless endeavor, a failure in capturing even a moment of simple artistic inspiration much less the ignition of of collaborative genius.

Unlike previous stagings of the play, Off Broadway and elsewhere, the Broadway production features McDonald as both the younger and older versions of Suzanne, and here the actor is a marvel, conveying a student’s excitement with a heady new world that she’ll soon learn doesn’t want her, and as an accomplished author whose success can’t outrun her grief. It’s in the portrayal of those contrasts that McDonald finds something close to perfection in a flawed production.

There are more than the usual number of miracles to be observed with the latest version of A Christmas Carol to hit Broadway. The usual suspects are here, all the ghosts and spirits and flights over ye olde town and all the witnessing of things past, present and future. And there's the miracle of one man - the great Jefferson Mays - breathing life into more than 50 characters and having us believe every single shift. And there's the perhaps more - if only slightly more - quotidian miracle of a creative team - directors of lighting and sound and costumes and projections - at the tops of their games coming together to create gobsmacking theater magic, a blessing director Michael Arden's Carol has in great bounty.

It's not that & Juliet is unenjoyable - it isn't. Somewhere beneath the bombast and repetition and overwrought-from-minute-one approach is a sweet(ish) and smart(ish) tale that gives voice to the marginalized and, not incidentally, provides fans of the music of Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, Kesha, Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Bon Jovi, Celine Dion, Pink and Justin Timberlake a chance to hear their favorite songs in a musical that makes no secret of its identity: A jukebox takes early pride of place on the set.

Lest you think all of this sounds too heavy to support the 'comic' part in 'comic storyteller,' know that Birbiglia's audience rarely stops laughing throughout the performance, even when - especially when - he calls for a moment of silence for a fellow YMCA swimmer who died in an absurdly preventable manner. Birbiglia, with a sort of faux-anger, scolds individual audience members whose giggles soon give way to howls, like children trying to contain laughter in church.

Opening tonight at the Booth Theatre with its original Off Broadway cast intact, the miraculous Victoria Clark leading the very fine ensemble, Kimberly Akimbo remains a stunner, a sly, quirky, eccentric work of stage art transformed into a crowd pleaser by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire's captivating book and lyrics, Jeanine Tesori's delightful music that, like Kimberly Akimbo itself, works its way into your heart with a jauntiness that both hides and ultimately amplifies its serious ambitions. Add to all that a winning group of singing actors, from young newcomers to stage veterans, that work together with an ease and chemistry that's apparent from the start and only grows in power toward an emotional and thoroughly satisfying end.

Twenty years after it first arrived to shake up a complacent Broadway and make a Pulitzer Prize winner of its author Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog has lost none of its vitality and power and cunning. Director Kenny Leon proves that in a vibrant new production opening tonight at the Golden Theatre.

There's abundant magic still in The Piano Lesson, August Wilson's grand, 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning tale of a Black family torn between legacy and ambition, the past and the future, and, it's not an overstatement to note, between life and death.In the new beautifully performed production opening on Broadway tonight at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, first-time Broadway director LaTanya Richardson Jackson unveils a great deal of that magic - and not always in the places you'd expect. Yes, there are the flashes of the supernatural visitations and omens that the playwright mined from Blues mythology and African American folklore, but the magic Jackson conjures from her cast is one of the most impressive displays currently on Broadway

Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller's classic tragedy of the American Dream gone sour, is revitalized and given room to encompass the Black experience in director Miranda Cromwell's intriguing production opening at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway tonight. Boasting flat-out terrific performances - Wendell Pierce as Willie Loman and the amazing Sharon D Clarke as his wife Linda - this Death of a Salesman doesn't so much reinvent Miller's masterpiece as open its doors to perspectives that enrich the material.

But at its best, the Roundabout's production of 1776, opening tonight at the American Airlines Theatre, shakes off any undue weight of expectation, treating the audience to classic musical theater songs sung by voices that have never before been given access. That alone makes up for any shortcomings, notably in the acting of some of the smaller roles.

As character study, Cost of Living can be moving, funny and intriguing, but the plot mechanics and string-pulling undercut the drama. When the two stories finally commingle, the hopeful ending — well, hopeful for some — feels as though it’s been predetermined from the start, with all the tragedy, cross-messages, hurt feelings and dashed dreams set in motion for no reason other than the late-night meeting of two strangers who’ve survived the plot.

The great playwright Tom Stoppard and his simpatico director Patrick Marber make a lasting gift of remembrance in the brilliant, gorgeous and devastating new play Leopoldstadt, opening tonight at Broadway's Longacre Theatre. But it's a gift that comes with strings, ropes even, the author seems to be warning us: There's burden attached to memory, and pain, and, above all, responsibility - duty, even - that accompanies every yellowed snapshot in an old family album and every fading face that once seemed fixed with such clarity.

From the moment she begins to sing the opening number 'Who Are You Now?,' audiences relax in the assurance that this musical, for whatever its other merits - or lack thereof, and there is plenty of lack thereof - will be sung by a voice that can do it justice. No, more than justice, because Michele is so good in the role of Fanny that she lifts the entire mixed-bag production if not up to her level then pretty darn close. She makes performers who were fine the first time around - Ramin Karimloo as Nick Arnstein, Peter Francis James as Florenz Ziegfeld - seem all that much better, and raises the general level of performance to such a degree that the terrific Jared Grimes, as dance teacher Eddie, now no longer seems adrift during his spectacular tap dance routines: He seems a part of the show, rather apart from the show.

The latest incarnation, adapted by Matthew Spangler, opens tonight at Broadway's Hayes Theater under the direction of Giles Croft. Despite its heartfelt intentions and some impressive performances, The Kite Runner doesn't improve in any significant way over The Kite Runner on screen. And it's a whole lot talkier.

Originally staged at New York City Center Encores!, Lear deBessonet's magnificent, starry Into The Woods all but demanded a Broadway transfer, with sold-out crowds packing City Center and those left out wanting in. Last week at a Broadway preview, the audience was so stoked for this show and this cast that a loud and prolonged cacophony of applause greeted the rise of the curtain. Clearly, this Into The Woods preceded itself. To say it delivers on its promise is an understatement.