Greg Evans — Theater Critic

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.

A very busy Broadway season comes to a close with its final production, and Sam Gold's staging of Macbeth starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga is nothing if not a dynamic attempt to cap an unusual and often extraordinary theater season. Uneven - if not so much as Gold's 2019 King Lear with Glenda Jackson - and peppered with choices both curious (what, no 'double double toil and trouble?') and captivating (a brief prologue that's as funny as it is timely), this iteration of The Scottish Play, which opened last night at the Longacre Theatre, nearly holds up to the unavoidable hype of its starry cast.

Better is the sibling friction Crystal and Paymer display, with the irresistibly sad-sack Paymer doing the forever-disappointed also-ran brother convincingly and appealingly. The chemistry between the brothers - or, more accurately, between real-life pals and long-ago co-stars Crystal and Paymer - is easily the most enjoyable thing in a generally enjoyable production. The pleasant score by Jason Robert Brown and Amanda Green keeps things light, putting all that much heavier a dramatic burden on a book (by Crystal, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) that can't quite carry it. Buddy's career comeback isn't assured - and never entirely credible, come what may - but the familial reconciliations are as predictable and welcome as a joke that always makes you laugh.

If POTUS, directed by Susan Stroman and opening today at Broadway's Shubert Theatre, never quite rises to the level of those three influences - not as darkly clever as VEEP, as lightning quick as Noises Off nor as go-for-deliriously-broke as Ludlam - POTUS barrels through its weaker stretches on the contagious enthusiasm and in-it-together vivacity of a crowd-pleasing cast.

Fluidly directed by Stephen Brackett, with Raja Feather Kelly's clever choreography punctuating Jackson's delightfully brash score, A Strange Loop grabs hold of us the moment Usher concludes that funny introduction. If the show begins to lose a little steam - but just a little - towards the end, it's only because Jackson has already made his points so clearly, pointedly and winningly.

Lincoln Center Theater's major new revival of the play, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, with additional material by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the tireless efforts of an exemplary cast, does, in fact, afford some newfound vitality for a work so often more admired than loved. An exercise in endurance - for the cast, for the audience - The Skin of Our Teeth long ago passed along the novelty of its time-tripping, allegorical flourishes to subsequent (and, frankly, less laborious) heirs, from Caryl Churchill to Tony Kushner to the Wachowskis, so any attempt to meet and rise above the play's inherent challenges would seem to require a vision, maybe a ruthlessness and certainly a firm grasp of the play's continued reason for being.

Feldstein is at her best (even when the show occasionally lets her down). While she doesn't have the vocal gifts that Streisand could employ to stake a claim on show-within-a-show stardom, Feldstein is no less convincing in her Fanny's self-belief and determination. No one would dare rain on her parade.Well, maybe a drizzle or two. Was it necessary to have Feldstein fall to the ground and roll downstage for the cheapest laugh in a show that has its share? Not even the possible period-correctness of a Ziegfeld comedy bit in which Fanny plays a Jewish WWI doughboy with bagels hanging from his belt could justify that groaner (and Feldstein's exaggerated, desperate mugging doesn't help). The kettledrum sound when a wedding-dressed Fanny, sporting a comic pregnancy pillow, bumps into her fellow dancers seems more like a bad 1970s Sonny and Cher Show sketch than anything worthy of today's Broadway stage.

With a sure eye for finding the laughs and the shocks in McDonagh's universe, director Dunster and his cast inhabit this little corner of the world with total conviction, conveying the larger implications - safe to say Harry's resolute convictions about guilt, justice and the unshakeable rightness of his life's work aren't the mere personal quirks of an isolated individual - while maintaining the specificity of a seemingly safe little cocoon where everybody knows your name, if not your secrets.

Director and choreographer Camille A. Brown and her cast of seven female singer-dancer-actors breathe life and vitality into Ntozake Shange's still-potent mid-1970s touchstone for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. Opening tonight at the Booth Theatre on Broadway, Shange's fantasia of poetry, dance and stories of confession, defiance, sisterhood and, above all, perseverance, holds a power that's not been weakened either by decades or the loss of a once startling newness.

In the 25 years since Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse first performed Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned To Drive, the name for the disturbing process that we witness being depicted on stage has long since entered widespread usage. If audiences can now readily label what happens as 'grooming,' Vogel's emotionally complex masterwork remains as unsettling, disarmingly funny and as deeply moving as ever.

Tracy Letts' The Minutes would be one of the most thrilling new plays on Broadway this season even if recent real-life events hadn't made it seem as uncanny as it is funny and, ultimately, disarming. The Minutes - there are a brisk 90 of them in all - begins as one thing and ends up quite another, and every step along the way is so finely rendered that we're too busy savoring the moment to see what's waiting just ahead.