Jeremy Gerard — Theater Critic

...the show has deepened greatly since that first preview, resulting in a genuinely disturbing show that also will satisfy fans of Rivera, who at 82 can still belt it out to the far reaches of the balcony...Rivera is an incomparable trouper but I must admit her vocal charms are lost on me. The greater disappointment, however, is Rees, whose singing is simply painful to endure. His Anton is a small, broken man...Kander's music has never stopped evolving in its beauty, complexity and breadth, and the melodies here get under your skin even if the lyrics are not up to Ebb's best. McNally's compressed book does the job elegantly.

Something Rotten! revels in its silliness while delivering such a nonstop blitzkrieg of production numbers, each out-doing the one before, that you hardly notice how much you've fallen in love with the Bottom bros...It's entirely possible that I would have had a different reaction had not the show given us the exuberant D'Arcy James in his best role ever...Ditto Borle....The book is jam-packed with outrageous puns, bad jokes and inside references to Shakespeare and Broadway, and in that the show is like the much-missed series Forbidden Broadway, but on steroids...One surefire combination in the art of producing for Broadway is the ability to make audiences feel smart -- but not outsmarted -- and giddy at the same time...Anyone who can pull off jabs at Cats and Les Miz at this late hour has tapped into something, you know, not rotten -- and the best tonic I can imagine for this endless winter season.

Something Rotten! revels in its silliness while delivering such a nonstop blitzkrieg of production numbers, each out-doing the one before, that you hardly notice how much you've fallen in love with the Bottom bros...It's entirely possible that I would have had a different reaction had not the show given us the exuberant D'Arcy James in his best role ever...Ditto Borle....The book is jam-packed with outrageous puns, bad jokes and inside references to Shakespeare and Broadway, and in that the show is like the much-missed series Forbidden Broadway, but on steroids...One surefire combination in the art of producing for Broadway is the ability to make audiences feel smart -- but not outsmarted -- and giddy at the same time...Anyone who can pull off jabs at Cats and Les Miz at this late hour has tapped into something, you know, not rotten -- and the best tonic I can imagine for this endless winter season.

Simon, who can write lush ballads, here tends to the overwrought, with deafening accents provided by the intermittent firing of guns and cannons, of which McAnuff seems wildly enamored (possibly to encourage us to stay awake). Flag-waving, barricade-mounting protesters and a bizarre thematic set-element of chairs stuck together nod frequently, perhaps incessantly, to LES MISERABLES. Doctor Zhivago has all of that show's bombast -- minus the expert story-telling and skillful pop-music hooks that make the damned thing work. The tunes are unmemorable, the lyrics are generic and why is everyone speaking with British accents? Against all this, it seems unfair to assess the stars' performances.

Can we please get this straight, Broadway? Sprawling European novels do not make great musicals...Unfortunately, this lesson...has fallen on deaf ears at the Broadway Theatre -- and I don't just mean those forced to endure the overamplified mess that is Doctor Zhivago. I also mean its authors and director, who together have turned Boris Pasternak's 700-page novel into a musical so aggressively awful it is almost sadistic...It's not just the constant noise and gore he hurls about...It's also that he has called forth the same concussive aesthetic from Weller and even the songwriters. Lucy Simon...once again provides well-crafted Romantic Lite tunes, but they are too often whipped into bombast by relentless overproduction...The English actor Tam Mutu...is clearly expert at the romantic bellow; he makes what can only be called an impressive Broadway debut as Zhivago. He pretty much blows everyone else away...The rest of the cast seem like afterthoughts, bits of fluff and color mainly useful for moving around the stage.

Sometimes, what happens in Williamstown really oughtta stay in Williamstown...Vito is played by Douglas Sills with everything you'd expect of a comic Italian stereotype: malaprops galore, a leering gaze, peripatetic hands, flaring nostrils, animated hair, etc...DiPietro's script is so inside in its opera references and jokes, sonic and visual, that you may find yourself gasping for air, though probably not from the laughs that director Kathleen Marshall works overtime extracting. The great Fleming is a trouper but she's slumming here. It's possible to imagine this as the perfect diversion for a summer evening on sabbatical from Tanglewood. But on Broadway, it's piffle, forgotten by the time you reach the corner to hail a cab.

A memory musical, as haunted and haunting as The Glass Menagerie, thanks to Kron's quicksilver script and lyrics and the music by Tesori (Violet, Shrek, Caroline, Or Change), whose work merges the experimentalism and euphony that suffuse the best of Sondheim; the only other contemporary composer in this vein was the late Jonathan Larson (Rent).

Now comes The King And I, in one of the most elegantly beautiful and beautifully sung productions I've ever seen, and the Beaumont looks like a living treasure chest for a director with the right vision and a company that can command a vast space and make it feel like your living room...Sher and his collaborator in dance Christopher Gattelli honor the originators of these shows while breathing fresh life into them...O'Hara is supremely comfortable in these R&H roles of independent-minded women in extraordinary predicaments, whether Ensign Nellie Forbush or Anna Leonowens. Her singing seems effortless and her Anna is determined yet tender...Watanabe...is strong, sexy and bewildered in a role forever owned by Yul Brynner. It takes a long time for this King and Anna to generate real electricity, but when it comes, in 'Shall We Dance?' it's shiver-inducing.

Finding Neverland flies. Occasionally it even soars. The miracle is that the darned thing not only got off the ground, but that this musical prequel to the Peter Pan story arrives on Broadway much improved after a storied, bumpy tour of the hinterlands, with its intermittent charms intact, many of its missteps gone or at least minimized...the script, by James Graham, has been sharpened so as not to treat the audience too much like idiots...Perhaps Weinstein and Paulus were correct in replacing Jordan with the better-known Morrison, who has the look and voice of a Broadway star but is something of a stiff. The role wants a mood transplant, a child-like quality to which Jordan was more suited. Grammer, on the other hand, is an indisputable improvement...As Hook, he's just a ton of fun...sashaying around the stage, brandishing his hook and bullying J.M...As to the score by pop writers Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy, well it doesn't offend, but I was still impervious to its desperate attempts to win me over...Finding Neverland is still too treacly...and the tear-wringing ending just goes on forever...But there's an audience for this show, which is visually cunning and something of a warm bath without being too insulting.

It's terrible. And it shoulda been left in turnaround after years of kicking around agency offices, instead of being offered up for sacrifice in this $7 million vanity production. Oh, the things we do for love...Perhaps I'm wrong about that. Maybe the exceedingly talented David Hyde Pierce...decided that this cellophane-thin story about the wedding day that would unite a crisply sniping Jewish family (hers) with a boozily bigoted Gentile one (his) was the brilliant choice for his debut as a Broadway director...The lyrics' rhymes are not only inane but you can predict them beats, if not whole measures, before they land, and Barbara Anselmi's melodies made me miss Frank Wildhorn. No, seriously...Nevertheless, Hargrove, Hyde Pierce and Anselmi are blessed with a superior roster of actors...So much talent, so little show.

There are many reasons to celebrate the arrival on Broadway of Hand To God. It wraps its seriousness in a veneer of XXX-rated irreverence. I don't know which I want to do more: Sing Hallelujah - or wash its dirty little mouth out with soap...Smaller in scale, song-free and purposely looking as though it was produced on a Cookie Monster-sale budget, Hand To God is a Book Of Revelations about what should be possible on Broadway, that one-time cultural bazaar that has come more and more to resemble a high-priced mausoleum...the best reason to make your way to the Booth Theatre is to see the most astonishing pair of performances by a single actor since Nina Arianda's Broadway debut in Venus In Fur...Praise Ensemble Studio Theater for the development production, MCC Theater for pushing Hand To God to the next level and a pack of producers led by Kevin McCollum for believing there's a place on Broadway for transgressive humor.

...Nighy and co-star Carey Mulligan have a brilliant vehicle worthy of their complementary talents. Piloted with exceptional sensitivity by Stephen Daldry and beautifully designed by Bob Crowley and Natasha Katz, this revival is as fine as the original -- while being utterly different in texture, tone and impact...Hare...refuses to stack the deck, giving us full rein to fall under the spell of both Tom and Kyra as they inevitably succumb to the forces that both brought them together and tore them apart...Nighy...exudes a to-the-manor-born elegance that's heightened by the nervous tics of a febrile personality used to getting his way...Mulligan casts a hypnotic spell, playing combativeness and vulnerability in perfect balance. The result is riveting, as absorbing a drama as can be seen anywhere this season, played at the highest level...Skylight is a keeper and this revival is one for the ages.

I think Elisabeth Moss was born to play Heidi Holland on Broadway. She couldn't possibly have had better preparation than her role as Peggy Olson...Pam MacKinnon (just off the revival of A Delicate Balance) has staged the play with a light touch, a very good thing, and she is well served by the three stars. Moss wears vulnerability and determination with equal appeal; Biggs tops his terrific performance on Orange Is The New Black in subtlety and humor; and Pinkham has catching warmth as the caring doc. Jessica Pabst's costumes are perfect and Japhy Weideman's lighting provides much of the atmosphere otherwise absent from John Lee Beatty's uncharacteristically sterile sets.

The result is positively schizoid, a show that desperately wants to crack the shell of archaic convention and emerge as the madcap musical it longs to be. It has patches of memorable high style, slapstick amusement and wry songs, but also longueurs that stretch the 90-minute movie into tedium... Gallagher has the suave good looks to play Oscar but not the slightly demented charisma called for, and vocals have never been his strong point. Chenoweth certainly has what it takes in the singing department and the crowd adores her. I just wish she wasn't so charmlessly vulgar with her oversexed physical shtick.

Very funny. Occasionally very, very funny. Four-stars funny. If that's all you need to know about Larry David's Fish In The Dark...then read no more...Or maybe not. I'm not usually one to put a price on art but you may want to know a little more before shelling out...for a show that's as good as some episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld. (If that seems like praising with a damned feint, you've caught my drift.) Of course in this case you're getting the added thrill of seeing Larry David shrug, blink, holler, wince, pace and blurt, up close and personal. As a fan of both TV series, I can understand the attraction. I'm with you. On the other hand, to sample an image from the show itself -- a dining table laden with curated paninis, baby micro-greens, artisanal bagels, organic crudités and Diet Coke -- the show is too much of a muchness...Through it all, and under the fleet direction of Anna D. Shapiro, Larry David pays Larry David, also very convincingly...Of course, this is the age of binge-watching, so two hours of shtick can be satisfying. Or give you heartburn.

You think they just don't make 'em like they used to? To find out how wrong you are, head to Broadway's Nederlander Theatre for a couple of hours of finger-snapping, tap-dancing, hip-swiveling, Elvis-impersonating, night-club crooning fun. That's what the musical adaptation of Honeymoon In Vegas promises and what it delivers, courtesy of an ingratiating performance by Tony Danza...Jason Robert Brown is terrifically talented but he's no Frank Loesser, and...Honeymoon In Vegas is no Guys & Dolls...the show has been struggling through weeks of poorly-attended previews that began before Thanksgiving, when it ought to have opened right away...The biggest toll was taken on Danza...He has a Sinatra-like stage presence, but in truth he's Sinatra's opposite: Warm, not cool; needy, not diffident. Those aren't necessarily bad things, but at the critic's preview his voice was pretty well shot and his dancing was unsteady...The balance of the show has gone much more in McClure's favor...

Gyllenhaal proved himself an irresistible stage actor a few years ago in another Nick Payne play, If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, playing the rude, crude but immensely sympathetic uncle of a fat girl with uncomprehending parents. Wilson won her Golden Globe for The Affair and she has an off-kilter comic sensibility that works beautifully with her grounded co-star. They have great chemistry and charm here, even when saying and doing preposterous things, frequently at the same time. I was rooting for them all the way. Under Michael Longhurst's timing-is-everything direction, they work very hard at this repeated-scene business, which can't be easy. As an exercise in physical comedy, Constellations is a neat trick. But call it a trick or call it an exercise, it's never much more than either, and a challenge to take seriously.

Cooper is the best Merrick yet, in a production sensitively staged by Scott Ellis first seen a couple of seasons back at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Cooper and Ellis have their cake and eat it too: Although the star suggests Merrick's deformity with no more than a bent arm, a contorted mouth, twisted fingers and a hip-challenging limp, he is aided in the opening scene with blown-up slides of Merrick actually taken by Treves that leave no doubt about what both the man and his acquaintances actually had to contend with.

A storm rages at the center of the Broadway revival of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance. Though camouflaged in the elegant, comfortable mufti of the affluent upper classes, it's leveling everyone in its wake while leaving the building intact, like a neutron bomb. Its name is John Lithgow...surveying it all, tolerating it all, the affable Tobias of John Lithgow smolders, bursts into flame and slowly grows cold. It's as rich a performance as I've ever seen, the achievement of a lifetime spent commuting brilliantly between New York stages and Hollywood screens of every size...Nothing in Pam MacKinnon's finely calibrated but emotionally uneven and infrequently unnerving staging measures up to the sheer power of either Albee's dramaturgy or Lithgow's inhabitance of Tobias. There is no better interpreter of Albee today; her revival of Virginia Woolf was nothing less than a revelation, in part because its ensemble was perfectly knit. Such unity is absent here in a stellar cast that nevertheless seems mismatched.

Hugh Jackman is electrifying in The River, a concentrated, mysterious fish tale of a play. Seeing him onstage in one of Broadway's most intimate theaters confers a sense of privilege upon the audience something akin to having Mick Jagger show up at your cocktail party just to shoot the breeze. You may not believe your luck. Forget the fact that he is too old by a decade or more to be playing a bachelor whose secluded cabin in the woods above a riverbank appears to be date bait for attractive younger women. That fact merely adds another layer of meaning (or confusion, depending on your receptiveness to such matters) to Jez Butterworth's new play, a hairpin turn away from his last Broadway outing, the sensationally funny, wildly overpopulated, anti-capitalist Jerusalem.

Tom Stoppard's 1984 dazzler gets the matinee-comedy treatment from director-of-the-moment Sam Gold in a revival that leaves its attractive stars, both in their Broadway bows, deeply in the lurch. Glib and weirdly chilly for a literate comedy-drama about love, commitment, the sanctity of words and the enduring perfection of 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling,' the Roundabout Theatre Company production is as full of ideas as the play itself -- all of them wrong.

Timely dramas on Broadway are in very short supply, and that alone makes the bow of Disgraced an event worth applauding...The play has lost its essential velocity in the move from Lincoln Center Theater, where Amir was played with a thousand volts of electricity by Aasif Mandvi...On the stage of the tiny Claire Tow Theater, Mandvi seemed ready to explode at any second. Dhillon is clearly a skilled actor, but his Amir doesn't fibrillate with the pent-up anger the character needs if he is to be credible. This may have something to do, as well, with the ciphered performance by Mol, who seems to be sleepwalking through the show. She's out of her league on the Broadway stage, and you can sense from the other actors that she's giving them nothing to work with. The dazzler in this production, staged again by Kimberly Senior, is Pittman, taut and almost serenely tough...It still raises deeply discomfiting questions. But this little off-Broadway potboiler has reduced to a simmer in the move to Times Square.

Too realistic to be a fable and too incredible not to be jangled by the plot holes (How do the men get into the guarded, fenced shipyard every day? How are the materials for the ship brought in? Where the heck are they all sailing off to?) The Last Ship is soul-nourishing as a concert piece but only fitfully convincing as a total work of theater.

Some playwrights (they know who they are) have a middlebrow gift for making audiences feel smart by throwing in just the right dash of intellectual-seeming palaver. McNally has a gift for making the audience feel like Broadway insiders, unleashing an absolute cataract of inside-baseball jokes about shows currently running a few doors down, about theater producers and landlords whose names no-one outside a 10-block radius has ever heard of, and personal competitors like playwright and book-writer Harvey Fierstein...Lane indeed carries the show on his capable shoulders, doling out the cutting lines and abashed double-takes as expertly as a Las Vegas croupier at a gaming table...O'Brien's unimpeachable pacing and the engaged performances may be enough to satisfy even those not in the know. But It's Only A Play is wildly overlong and wears out its welcome a full half-hour before the final curtain. It is, after all, only a play.

What Stephens, Elliott and Christies (who also designed the tone-perfect costumes) - along with blazingly expressive lighting by Paule Constable, projections by Finn Ross and music by Adrian Sutton - is bring us inside the head of an exceptional outsider who is also unyieldingly one of us. Don't think for a second this is an after-school special, though special The Curious Incidentcertainly is. It may in the end be too sentimental to qualify as highbrow - but it's brilliant nonetheless.