Jeremy Gerard — Theater Critic

Springsteen on Broadway is a perfect concert...Seeing Springsteen on Broadway must be similar to what it was like to be in the audience for Clapton Unplugged: an electrifying (well, an acoustifying) session of mostly big big songs rendered without embellishment...Underscoring that seriousness, it's important to acknowledge the brilliant work of sound designer Brian Ronan, who manages the neat trick of high volume without losing the essential closeness of the experience...And Natasha Katz's lighting is hauntingly effective, through shadow into play, or just letting the man sing enveloped in a deep, quiet aura.

Coming right off her deserved Tony win for staging Indecent, the director offers a case study of her own theory of time and its consequences: Indecent was the product of several years' development with the playwright and a fully integrated company. Time and the Conways, on the other hand, feels stitched together in a hurry, a costume drama with no coherent point of view and performances so at odds with one another as to screech like chalk on slate. McGovern is the chief victim of this; her shrill performance lacks the conviction necessary to make this monster mom compelling or even much more than a vague annoyance.

Prince of Broadway bristles with the joyful noise of familiar songs delivered by a gifted and versatile cast of nine, under the direction of Prince himself, with an assist from Susan Stroman (The Producers,Scottsboro Boys). Jason Robert Brown's high-octane overture quotes composers as disparate as Stephen Sondheim and John Kander, Leonard Bernstein and Andrew Lloyd Webber, not to mention J.R. Brown. It sets the scene for a celebration of a theater maker who still refuses to be pigeonholed as high- or middle-brow. A director who deserves the honor not only for championing many of the greatest stage artists of the late 20th century, but for making their work urgent and central to an audience lured from Times Square by movies, TV and rock arenas.

The Terms of My Surrender is heartfelt and represents the thinking and ideology of a crucial voice of dissent and opposition at a time direly in need of such voices. But it's a lazy show that severely underestimates it audience. Preaching to the choir is one thing; pandering to to (sic) it is of a somewhat lower order.

It's to the credit of everyone involved - these committed actors, the sensitive director and most of all McPherson - that the connections slow to take hold are soldered like emotional strands that throw off sparks as they finally fuse. Even the vaguely batty Ruth - touchingly played by Celia Weston without an ounce of condescension - addicted to soap operas as she is to the little box that gives her a charge of relief (while setting off the automatic garage door at the same time) plays a key role. McPherson's roar of valedictory comes in Bessie's quiet remonstrance to Lee near the end, that her greatest fortune in life is not to have been loved but to have loved, fully and completely.

Such hucksterism really is unnecessary, however. The show memorably reinvents one of the most terrifying tales of modern times, one that also happens to be among the best known, not only through the popularity of the 1949 novel, but in films - especially the 1984 version (!) starring John Hurt, Richard Burton and Jan Sterling. And although the import this limited run was prompted by the election of Donald J. Trump, the production makes no pandering attempt at relevance (as was the case with the recently closed Julius Caesar in Central Park). It lets Orwell speak for himself, and he does just fine, thank you, though in a distilled version that must make blatantly visual what the novel takes pains to incite in the consciousness.

The last show to open on Broadway this season turns out to be the funniest, and the sharpest play of the year, which is a pleasure to report. A Doll's House, Part 2, which opened tonight at the Golden Theatre, is not so much a sequel to Henrik Ibsen's proto-feminist groundbreaker of 1879 as it is a heartfelt meditation on how far we've come in the century and a quarter since. If that sounds more like a master's thesis than a comedy, you need only know that Lucas Hnath's 90-minute quartet contains five S-bombs, four F-bombs and the return of Laurie Metcalf (after the futility of Misery) in full blossom as Ibsen's Nora Helmer, last seen making the most famous stage exit in the canon not involving a bear.

The last show to open on Broadway this season turns out to be the funniest, and the sharpest play of the year, which is a pleasure to report. A Doll's House, Part 2, which opened tonight at the Golden Theatre, is not so much a sequel to Henrik Ibsen's proto-feminist groundbreaker of 1879 as it is a heartfelt meditation on how far we've come in the century and a quarter since. If that sounds more like a master's thesis than a comedy, you need only know that Lucas Hnath's 90-minute quartet contains five S-bombs, four F-bombs and the return of Laurie Metcalf (after the futility of Misery) in full blossom as Ibsen's Nora Helmer, last seen making the most famous stage exit in the canon not involving a bear.

The final musical of the 2016-2017 Broadway season, Bandstand opened tonight at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre with a swinging look back at 1946. It's about the post-WWII era and the conflicted welcome rolled out for returning veterans (think William Wyler's The Best Years of Their Lives) and the music that swept across the U.S. during that period. Bandstand, staged with breathtaking originality by director-choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler (Hamilton), swings in a different way, as well: between the soft-focus lens of nostalgia and the jarring clarity that a contemporary view demands.

On the evidence of the spectacular revival that opened tonight at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, with a cast led by Allison Janney (Mom, The West Wing), Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton) and John Benjamin Hickey (The Normal Heart), either it's been a very long moment that Guare captured. Or, more likely, Six Degrees transcends its particulars and addresses something ineffably human: The terrifying gulf between how we see ourselves and how we need others to see us. That's a theme for the ages, from Moliere to Arthur Miller to Tony Kushner. Guare, however, using a brief, intriguing newspaper report as his jumping off point, found a way in Six Degrees to make us laugh in the face of our own insufficiency in bridging that midnight-dark gulf.

While Charlie and the Chocolate Factory may not enjoy more critical approval in its second iteration, it's going to make a ton of money, both on Broadway and the road. It's goofy, loud and imaginative - superatively so, in some key respects. And it delivers two things children delight in: stories about scrappy urchins triumphing over doltish adults (cf Annie, Matilda), and comical obliteration of ill-behaved nasties (cf Shockheaded Peter).

Dolly's big Act I closer, 'Before The Parade Passes By' was limp the night I saw it, with the star searching for the key and clearly holding back on what wants to be a roof raiser...Perhaps they will improve with time. It certainly is the case that by Act II, Midler was in full command of the show, not only with her wonderful rasp of a voice at peak power, but with a sense of intimacy and, yes, feeling, that humanizes Dolly as she embarks on one of her many 'conversations' with her beloved, dead Ephraim. That makes 'So Long Dearie' truly touching and sends us out whistling all those happy tunes, happily.

Dolly's big Act I closer, 'Before The Parade Passes By' was limp the night I saw it, with the star searching for the key and clearly holding back on what wants to be a roof raiser...Perhaps they will improve with time. It certainly is the case that by Act II, Midler was in full command of the show, not only with her wonderful rasp of a voice at peak power, but with a sense of intimacy and, yes, feeling, that humanizes Dolly as she embarks on one of her many 'conversations' with her beloved, dead Ephraim. That makes 'So Long Dearie' truly touching and sends us out whistling all those happy tunes, happily.

The Manhattan Theatre Club production, staged with a rock solid hand by Daniel Sullivan at the Friedman Theatre, is flawless. Which is to say tastefully mean-spirited without any need to overemphasize what is emminently self-evident. Visually, it's sumptuous, with a realistic set by Scott Pask, lovely costumes by Jane Greenwood and clear, unobtrusive lighting by Justin Townsend.

It's humbling, not to say near-impossible, to fully convey the thrumming resonance of Indecent, the evanescent shimmer of a show that arrived on Broadway tonight following its New York debut last spring at the Vineyard Theatre. But I'll give it my best and hope that you'll set aside any argument touting its importance - because Indecent ain't just spinach - and instead make haste for the Cort Theatre simply to share the astonishing power of this new play with music about a delicious ancient Broadway scandal that pulses through the decades to our own time.

But star and set were in fine form for the opening, and while Groundhog Day may not actuially be the best musical, it is, as I said, very good. This will come as a surprise, no doubt, to diehard fans of the film, which starred Murray as Phil Connors, a self-loving Pittsburgh weatherman assigned for the third year running to hit the road for Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the annual rite of P-Phil and his shadow. Accompanied by his producer and camerman (Andie MacDowell and Chris Elliott, in the film), Pittsburgh Phil approaches Punxsutawney Phil and all his human Punxsutawney denizens with loathing and condescension, and basically can't wait to get out.

Now comes the extraordinary Oslo, Rogers' riveting dramatization of another complex political tarantella that unfolded in secret before, in September 1993, stunning the world. That was when Bill Clinton presided at a Rose Garden ceremony in which Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestine Liberation Organization's chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands after signing a historic peace accord. Oslo opened last summer in Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi E. Newhouse; it's moved upstairs to the Tony-eligible Vivian Beaumont, where it opened tonight. It's even better the second time around.

Somehow this all manages to be a huge bore though not for want of trying and effortful lung power from the leads in director Michael Greif's high-voltage production. The score, by the talented duo of Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie (lyrics) is as hard on the ear as the book, by their Grey Gardens colleague Doug Wright, is clunky and predictable. The Big Numbers seem equally apportioned between LuPone and Ebersole, but none of the songs achieves a necessary emotional payoff, perhaps because the authors are so intent on not letting one overshadow the other. (Adding to the muddle, LuPone's heavy, unplaceable accent makes her frequently difficult to understand.)

All of which is to say that Moritz von Stuelpnagel's revival is fleet, funny, deliciously cast and over the top when it should be - and occasionally when it needn't be, sweating just a bit too hard to earn the audience's whoops of pleasure. Fortunately, Coward and Kline are too dynamic a duo to suffer any damage from such picked nits.

I had the luxury of seeing Amélie twice, and I admit to finding its charms more readily revealed on second viewing, The score, for one thing, is more sophisticated than a single hearing suggests, and perhaps more cunning: There are what struck me as Sondheim Sunday In The Park in-jokes when the score turns to the knowing painter (played with lovely humanity by Tony Sheldon). And there is delicacy in the love story of Amélie and the young man (Adam Chanler-Berat) with the curious hobby.

An overabundance of non-sensical sight gags, slow burns, pratfalls, missed cues, wink-winks and the like dull the viewer's senses and drag out a sophomoric sketch that would be sharper and funnier at an intermissionless 80 minutes. On the other hand, staged with more commitment than panache by Mark Bell, The Play That Went Wrong aspires to no higher goal than escapism untainted by North Korea, Trump, Putin, the opening of the baseball season, Neil Gorsuch, and possibly striking writers. As George W. Bush said, mission accomplished.

These are fully realized characters who, especially when acting on their worst fears, are grippingly human. Drawn in part from interviews the playwright and director conducted with workers in western Pennsylvania, Sweat never feels less than authentic - and crucial. That said, Sweat still suffers from preachiness and some stilted writing that raise the volume and add exclamation points where none are necessary. This seems to have worsened in the expansion to a Broadway house, where the speechifying, especially by Day's overwrought Tracey, too often registers as harangue. Too much hollering.

Still, Miss Saigon was, and is, a phenomenon, and this production, directed by Laurence Connor, is sensational in every way: visually and sonically (often painfully so). Most important, it's brilliantly cast, to continue the baseball analogy, with leads from the Mackintosh farm team who are more than ready for the big leagues.

Has there ever been a better gift to scenery-chewing actors than The Price? This is, after all, a play so chock full of delectable scenery that half of it is hanging from the ceiling. No wonder Arthur Miller's 1968 breast-beater is irresistible to actors of a show-boating bent and the theatergoers who worship them. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but The Price is, at best, a master's second-tier work - Miller lite. Many of its qualities and all its flaws are thrown into relief in Terry Kinney's damask-heavy revival, which opened Thursday night at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre in a Roundabout production starring DeVito, Mark Ruffalo, Tony Shalhoub and Jessica Hecht.

Hein and Sarnoff are not Sondheim. The folksy songs in Come From Away are nearly all expository rather than revelatory (a key exception being the coming-of-age number 'Me And The Sky,' sung with perfect fervor by Jenn Colella as Beverley Bass, the first female captain of a commercial airline). The show, staged with kinetic enthusiasm by Christopher Ashley with Kelly Devine, positively reeks of integrity - positive being the operative word. In the company of 16, nearly all play multiple roles. The standouts, in addition to Colella, are Kendra Kassebaum as a novice reporter, Chad Kimball and Caesar Samayoa as boyfriends named Kevin, Rodney Hicks as a skeptic finally undone by generosity, and Astrid Van Wieren as a voice of reason. Come From Away eludes the jaded critic's arsenal of dismissive thrusts. It's necessary balm for this mean time.