Howard Shapiro

Bonnie and Clyde were real public enemies. The new Broadway musical Bonnie & Clyde is really its own worst enemy.

Fiery, intense and so sexy you could sweat, the production of David Ives' new Venus in Fur, a sensation when it ran Off-Broadway last year, opened in a remounted production Tuesday on Broadway. Much of the heat comes from a living generator, the actress Nina Arianda, who reprises the role she created downtown in the original production. There's a booster to this furnace - the Broadway actor and film star Hugh Dancy, who is essentially her prey. The two of them deliver performances that bubble, then explode, on the stage of Manhattan Theatre Club's Friedman Theatre.

Still, this Godspell is not just a good time but often outright funny, which is why it will be a hit. The brilliant Stephen Schwartz, who wrote its score (as well as Wicked, next door to the theater where Godspell plays), has updated his lyrics, which pop.

In Jon Robin Baitz's searingly funny and jolting new play Other Desert Cities, which opened at Lincoln Center and then again on Broadway Thursday night, this is a family larger than life, and overwhelmed by it...Jon Robin Baitz has given them a terrific, insightful and often funny play, and they know just what to do with it.