Greg Evans — Theater Critic

Better than Broadway's reigning, mostly enjoyable and definitely money-making example of the genre - the Temptations biomusical Ain't Too Proud - Tina, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and crammed with one recognizable song after another from Turner's five-decade career, opens with one of the best scene-setters I've encountered in a genre that usually leaves me cold, and ends with a mini-concert finale that for sheer out-of-your-seat excitement blows away any Broadway challenger.

Better than Broadway's reigning, mostly enjoyable and definitely money-making example of the genre - the Temptations biomusical Ain't Too Proud - Tina, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and crammed with one recognizable song after another from Turner's five-decade career, opens with one of the best scene-setters I've encountered in a genre that usually leaves me cold, and ends with a mini-concert finale that for sheer out-of-your-seat excitement blows away any Broadway challenger.

Featuring songs from his chart-topping 2018 album that gives the show its title, American Utopia (in case you're wondering) also includes a crowd-pleasing selection of hits from his Talking Heads days, flawlessly performed by Byrne and an onstage ensemble of 11. In fine voice (if he's lost any range over the years, it's unnoticeable beneath an ear-catching blend of Bowie croon and Dylan whine), Byrne remains a constant traveler of his own rabbit holes, and it becomes our job and pleasure to keep up.

Featuring songs from his chart-topping 2018 album that gives the show its title, American Utopia (in case you're wondering) also includes a crowd-pleasing selection of hits from his Talking Heads days, flawlessly performed by Byrne and an onstage ensemble of 11. In fine voice (if he's lost any range over the years, it's unnoticeable beneath an ear-catching blend of Bowie croon and Dylan whine), Byrne remains a constant traveler of his own rabbit holes, and it becomes our job and pleasure to keep up.

Broadway doesn't really do thrillers anymore. Unless we expand the definition to encompass the wailing banshees of The Ferryman or the occasional Martin McDonough blood drench, the stage has mostly ceded the genre to Hollywood. Yet that scarcity goes only so far in explaining the odd power of Adam Rapp's The Sound Inside, a remarkable psychological mystery starring the ever-astonishing Mary-Louise Parker and her sole co-star, the up-to-the-challenge Broadway newcomer Will Hochman.

The indefatigable cast, given loads of stage business by director Brackett and clever lines by Tracz (whose credits, besides Chill, include Netflix's wildly inventive Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), pulls everything together. Each performer taking on any number of roles (except for McCarrell and, as the Hermione to his Harry, Kristin Stokes), the cast includes Izzy Figueroa, Jorrel Javier, Ryan Knowles, Sam Leicht, Sarah Beth Pfeifer, James Hayden Rodriguez, Jalynn Steele and T. Shyvonne Stewart.

The indefatigable cast, given loads of stage business by director Brackett and clever lines by Tracz (whose credits, besides Chill, include Netflix's wildly inventive Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), pulls everything together. Each performer taking on any number of roles (except for McCarrell and, as the Hermione to his Harry, Kristin Stokes), the cast includes Izzy Figueroa, Jorrel Javier, Ryan Knowles, Sam Leicht, Sarah Beth Pfeifer, James Hayden Rodriguez, Jalynn Steele and T. Shyvonne Stewart.

As for the fates of the rest, well, romantic comedy wasn't exactly Williams' wheelhouse. He plays by its rules sure enough, even giving Serafina and Alvaro a shot at happiness rare in his universe, but all the effort feels like, well, effort, febrile and verbose and matched shout for shout, sob for sob by a production that could have used a little of the restraint Cullman showed with Choir Boy or Lobby Hero. If happily ever after is better than a shattered glass unicorn or getting carted off to the neighborhood loony bin, it probably shouldn't feel less fun.

He can't, of course, and his awakening is no less rude for being expected. Letts, his director and his cast show no mercy on characters whose lurking selfishness and cruelty would, in any Neil Simon comedy, give way to repentance and forgiveness. Linda Vista doesn't let anyone off the hook that easily, and if there's hope to be had, it won't come cheap.

And then Harris and his simpatico director Robert O'Hara - near miraculously blending their talents to pull off an incendiary work that could go wrong in any single minute of its intermission-less two hours at the Golden Theatre, where it opens tonight - add yet another meaning to the title.

An energetic, insistently likable mash-up of rap, improvisational comedy, hip hop, R&B crooning and, crucially, audience participation, FLS - in its own shorthand - is both the show and the rotating troupe of performers who have been bringing it to unique life off and on, in various venues, since around 2003, now including the Booth Theatre, where it opens tonight.

Schenkkan's telling, while necessarily concise, offers few, if any, surprises. Each character and development is no more or less than what anyone with a passing understanding of the age - or a passing grade from first-year college history class - will anticipate.

'Haunting' is a word critics overuse, but sometimes nothing else will do. Still, I'll do my best to avoid it - after this review of The Height of the Storm, the thoughtful and engrossing new play by Florian Zeller, translated from the French by Christopher Hampton, opening tonight at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway.

So descriptors, all accurate, will have to suffice. Stunning. Captivating. Thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. Etc. Even his previous Netflix specials can't quite capture the dizzying buzz of watching him do what he does in person.

So descriptors, all accurate, will have to suffice. Stunning. Captivating. Thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. Etc. Even his previous Netflix specials can't quite capture the dizzying buzz of watching him do what he does in person.

Secret love shacks, or love flats as the case may be, notwithstanding, no affair is an island built for two - there's always at least a third person in the mix, typically considered the betrayed. In Jamie Lloyd's masterful revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal - one is tempted to call it a reinvention, so deeply and definitely urgent is his take - three of the ever-shifting betrayers and betrayees occupy the stage at all times, one or another bearing silent witness as the other two enact an affair's all-too-familiar scenes of lies, transgressions, excitement and the love that, at least fleetingly, prompts it all.

When I reviewed the production in February during its Public Theatre engagement, I was struck by the emotional impact of the performances, the writing and Carrie Cracknell's direction. All of that stands, but seeing it again, this time in the larger Broadway venue, I noticed the many moments of humor that Gyllenhaal and Sturridge pull off so efficiently. Gyllenhaal, in particular, seems to have loosened up a bit in his role, superbly providing quicksilver shifts in tone and mood. Sturridge, in the more unrelenting Sea Wall, couldn't get any better than he was Off Broadway. Assuming the show's producers invite Tony voters to this strictly limited nine-week engagement, either actor could stake an early claim on next year's trophy nominations.

he something-for-everyone approach has its advantages - not least a steady stream of applause and recognition chuckles that make Moulin Rouge! feel like one of the liveliest shows on Broadway. With box office soaring), this reportedly $28 million enterprise will swat away any stray critical brickbats like so many gnats. But I don't think I'll be the only one leaning more toward grimace than grin.

he something-for-everyone approach has its advantages - not least a steady stream of applause and recognition chuckles that make Moulin Rouge! feel like one of the liveliest shows on Broadway. With box office soaring), this reportedly $28 million enterprise will swat away any stray critical brickbats like so many gnats. But I don't think I'll be the only one leaning more toward grimace than grin.

he something-for-everyone approach has its advantages - not least a steady stream of applause and recognition chuckles that make Moulin Rouge! feel like one of the liveliest shows on Broadway. With box office soaring), this reportedly $28 million enterprise will swat away any stray critical brickbats like so many gnats. But I don't think I'll be the only one leaning more toward grimace than grin.

When Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny In The Clair de Lune premiered Off Broadway in 1987, critics saw a sidelong glance at the AIDS crisis and the toll it took on intimacy. Nothing in the text has been changed for the affecting new production opening tonight on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre starring a powerful, ideally matched duo in Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon, and so those references to sexual terror remain.

Maybe if they'd said it a fourth time. Three times - 'Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!' - summons to life the stripe-coated, fright-wigged demon that made a superstar of Michael Keaton way back when. Could a fourth have magically conjured that extra something needed to transform Broadway's Beetlejuice into something beyond the realm of good enough?

Reflections on the heyday of scandalous Fleet Street likely won't stir Broadway audiences with the same vigor that roused the West End when Ink debuted there in 2017. Little matter. James Graham's play is so well-crafted that not knowing your Sun from your Mirror is a fairly minor hindrance.

You'll have just enough time during the false-start opening moments of director Scott Ellis' wonderful new Tootsie to ponder such things, and then the musical and its star Santino Fontana grab hold and don't let go. It's not without a few runs in its stockings, but this Tootsie is a delight, a not-quite-blind date that plays out so much better than you could have imagined.

A muddled casting controversy and the resignation of a prominent director no doubt diverted some early public and press attention from the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, but this Broadwayproduction, opening tonight, can handle whatever comes its way. When all's said and done, Jack O'Brien's knock-you-from-behind staging is as powerful and sturdy as Miller's post-war classic itself. And in a shattering performance that adds yet another layer to her quietly remarkable career, Annette Bening finds grace notes in the role of the grieving Gold Star mother that brings the character to vivid, brutalized life.