Jeremy Gerard — Theater Critic

The production is the latest transfer by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater, and as staged by Anna D. Shapiro, it's typical of that celebrated troupe in its physicality combined with thoughtfulness...The play, which launched the careers of both Lonergan and Mark Ruffalo (the original Warren), now feels like a period piece; a shell of amber surrounds it. This may have to do with fine performances that nonetheless fail to connect. Culkin exudes energy but not the menace that makes Warren interesting; Cera raises blankness of expression almost to the level of art and Gevinson is simply out of her league on the Broadway stage.

Visually sumptuous and musically rapturous - and really, what more could you ask for? - the show has so many charms. And yet, like that earlier Tharp production, An American In Paris is fabulous looking but vacant. It's a dance show that features some wonderful dancing yet never takes flight.

A stylish music-hall mystery in which we know whodunit from beginning to end, 'A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder' has lively songs, a congenial villain and a physically and morally flexible mistress...Most important, it has the fine actor Jefferson Mays playing all eight heirs to Highhurst Castle as they're dispatched one after another in comically gruesome ways. What he lacks in finesse as a quick-change artist, he more than makes up for in force of personality.

A stylish music-hall mystery in which we know whodunit from beginning to end, 'A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder' has lively songs, a congenial villain and a physically and morally flexible mistress...Most important, it has the fine actor Jefferson Mays playing all eight heirs to Highhurst Castle as they're dispatched one after another in comically gruesome ways. What he lacks in finesse as a quick-change artist, he more than makes up for in force of personality.

As Olivia, he glides across the stage like a hovercraft, first veiled in mourning weeds then transformed by her affection for Cesario, who is in fact the disguised Viola (and thus, in this case, a man playing a woman playing a man).

His Richard crows with glee at every lethal lie, venomous kiss, broken promise. Rylance has mastered each of Richard’s 1,171 lines and adds guffaws, asides, stutters and winces.

Craig is suave and collegial as Robert, a London book publisher. Spall is hungry and rough-edged in a sexually magnetic way as his best friend Jerry, a writers' agent. Rachel Weisz is extraordinary as Robert's wife and Jerry's lover, her face registering with exquisite exactitude every conflicted emotion Emma feels over the course of the seven-year affair well. Mike Nichols's devastating production is above all a showcase for this terrific actress...Nichols has calibrated each of those 100 minutes to strike a nerve. You quickly forget you're watching capital-S Stars. The show has more urgency than the Broadway original or the very good 1983 film. I wish the tickets didn't require a second mortgage and the audience weren't restricted to the very wealthy or the very lucky. But this production will stay with me as few others.

Craig is suave and collegial as Robert, a London book publisher. Spall is hungry and rough-edged in a sexually magnetic way as his best friend Jerry, a writers' agent. Rachel Weisz is extraordinary as Robert's wife and Jerry's lover, her face registering with exquisite exactitude every conflicted emotion Emma feels over the course of the seven-year affair well. Mike Nichols's devastating production is above all a showcase for this terrific actress...Nichols has calibrated each of those 100 minutes to strike a nerve. You quickly forget you're watching capital-S Stars. The show has more urgency than the Broadway original or the very good 1983 film. I wish the tickets didn't require a second mortgage and the audience weren't restricted to the very wealthy or the very lucky. But this production will stay with me as few others.

A thriller of the sort rarely seen on Broadway these days, John Grisham's 'A Time to Kill' brings a satisfying, if unsettling, courtroom drama to the Golden Theatre with an engaging cast playing juicy dramatic characters in a lurid tale spiked with a mild frisson of sex...They're all appealing, in comic-strip-thin roles. Holmes ('The Mystery of Edwin Drood') has streamlined the narrative almost to the point of flash cards. Ethan McSweeny's staging, in contrast, is oddly stilted, with drawn-out scene changes (the sets are by James Noone) and portentous music (by Lindsay Jones) that drag the story-telling for no apparent reason. Still, the twists and surprises of Grisham's efficient revenge-tragedy come through and the actors are good company for a couple of hours; I never was bored.

Lindsay Posner's elegant staging heightens the spring-wound tension Rattigan skillfully builds. The supporting cast is uniformly first rate, especially Michael Cumpsty as the Winslow's hangdog retainer and Charlotte Parry as the object of his unrequited affection.

This exuberant, phenomenally well-executed 'concert' avoids the lurid vortex-of-darkness that similar biographical shows (most recently, 'Lady Day') revel in. The heroin-addicted, Southern Comfort-swilling, sexually ambiguous Joplin arrives on Broadway essentially stripped of her rough edges.

I doubt Broadway has ever seen a prettier, more sensuously kinetic musical than Susan Stroman's adaptation of 'Big Fish' set to music by Andrew Lippa ('The Addams Family.') It's enchanting, especially once it slows down a bit to catch its breath. That doesn't happen until the second act, but it won't matter much, even to fans of the Tim Burton movie (or the Daniel Wallace novel that started it all). When the brooding trees begin their laconic dance before morphing into swamp witches, you know you're watching a Stroman show. By then, we've already fallen under the spell of Edward Bloom, Alabama homeboy, teller of tall tales and creaky jokes, absentee husband and father.

Cherry Jones also defies expectations, playing Amanda not as a badgering witch but as a cauldron of disappointment overwhelmed with love and fear for her children's futures. Warm and touchingly humane, she anchors the near perfect quartet completed by Celia Keenan-Bolger, who makes Laura more than just a wind-tossed leaf, and Brian J. Smith's effusively amiable Gentleman Caller, whose kiss embodies all the dashed hope that is Laura's fate. The play has been sensitively staged by the 'Once' team of John Tiffany and movement director Steven Hoggett. You will probably forgive them, as I did, the digressions into mimed business that occasionally stop the play in its tracks.

Cherry Jones also defies expectations, playing Amanda not as a badgering witch but as a cauldron of disappointment overwhelmed with love and fear for her children's futures. Warm and touchingly humane, she anchors the near perfect quartet completed by Celia Keenan-Bolger, who makes Laura more than just a wind-tossed leaf, and Brian J. Smith's effusively amiable Gentleman Caller, whose kiss embodies all the dashed hope that is Laura's fate. The play has been sensitively staged by the 'Once' team of John Tiffany and movement director Steven Hoggett. You will probably forgive them, as I did, the digressions into mimed business that occasionally stop the play in its tracks.

There's fire aplenty in Jesse Poleshuck's visually striking design, but none ignited by the lovers, more ill-matched than star crossed...Bloom, 36, seems a bit old to be hanging out with the gang, let alone to be this callow. I was watching a good actor laboring against a director's two-dimensional construct: Bloom couldn't possibly have chosen to be so flat and uninflected...Yet Leveaux seems intent on underscoring the difference not only in their ages but in their levels of maturity. Condola Rashad, 26, an actress who has been nothing less than hypnotic in other roles (most recently in 'The Trip to Bountiful') is sentenced to wide-eyed innocence...

As in Simon and Marvin Hamlisch's 'They're Playing Our Song,' Aaron's and Casey's friends keep popping out of the furniture to give them foolish advice, which they mostly ignore. Casey's best friend (gay, of course) keeps phoning for an update, and boy is he frustrated when she doesn't pick up. 'First Date' is harmless and instantly forgettable.

The opening moments of 'Pippin' are the most thrilling since the humans and beasts of 'TheLion King' spilled down the aisles to the onstage savannah more than 15 years ago... Paulus's 'Pippin' is G-rated, frisky rather than sexy, the slick sweat of lust replaced by dazzling but vague innocence. That makes it a visual treat, but eye candy takes you only so far...Thomas has boyish charm, but Pippin hasn't changed by the time he chooses to settle down at the closing...Gorgeous Patina Miller...seems robotic here, another victim of the leeching of sex from the show. There's little here of what we need to feel in the gut from a musical. Only Andrea Martin's open-hearted turn resonates long enough to transport us, however briefly, way beyond the razzle-dazzle.

But even as gifted a director as Joe Mantello can't make us care much about this character who figured so powerfully in a small circle of wildly self-important 'friends.' Those who come knowing Midler but not Mengers (who died in 2011) will be disappointed by this weightless valedictory, for there's no swan, and no song.

But even as gifted a director as Joe Mantello can't make us care much about this character who figured so powerfully in a small circle of wildly self-important 'friends.' Those who come knowing Midler but not Mengers (who died in 2011) will be disappointed by this weightless valedictory, for there's no swan, and no song.

Nothing and everything happens on Carrie’s trip to Bountiful. Tyson, 79, suffuses every scene in Michael Wilson’s meticulous production with feeling yet little sentimentalism, a deft achievement that keeps the show from going gooey.

Astonishment may have become a debased word in the exclamation-pointy world of theater reviews. So electrifying is Fiona Shaw, however, that the performance left me, along with the rest of the audience, struck silent after the final wrenching words were spoken...Long-limbed, dark and hollow-cheeked, Shaw is an actress of fathomless expressiveness and dancerly motion. These well suit Colm Toibin's lamentation, a text that calls for subtle flashes of anger, irony, eulogy, horror and regret over its 90-minute course.

The Scottish actor, now best known as the cunning political operative Eli Gold on TV's 'The Good Wife,' brings an authentic burr to the role along with several terabytes of memory. The production, which opened last summer's Lincoln Center Festival (where it wasn't eligible for Tony Award nominations) struck me as even more gimmicky on second viewing. It reveals more about the actor than the would-be king.

The Scottish actor, now best known as the cunning political operative Eli Gold on TV's 'The Good Wife,' brings an authentic burr to the role along with several terabytes of memory. The production, which opened last summer's Lincoln Center Festival (where it wasn't eligible for Tony Award nominations) struck me as even more gimmicky on second viewing. It reveals more about the actor than the would-be king.

Without a menacing atmosphere, 'Orphans' -- with its hermetically sealed environment and elliptical story-telling -- now plays like cut-rate Pinter.

Ownership and changing fortunes are at the heart of this mystery play. It's the most engrossing to date from a writer whose work ('Take Me Out' is the best known) I usually find too self-consciously clever to be taken seriously...Nothing and everything happens in this Manhattan Theatre Club production. The strength of 'The Assembled Parties,' staged by artistic director Lynne Meadow with a fluidly involving intimacy, is the way family secrets insinuate themselves into the fabric even of lives lived independently. They penetrate the walls and overlap, and they always have unforeseen consequences.