Jeremy Gerard

Arrogantly trimming, reshuffling and “clarifying” what George and Ira Gershwin and the barely credited DuBose and Dorothy Heyward created, Paulus has so truncated the show that it plays like a soap opera. There’s little room for breathing. Only Bess -- thanks to McDonald -- comes wholly to life. She and Lewis make “Porgy and Bess” a must-see, its flaws notwithstanding.

It ought to be good news that 'Porgy and Bess' is back on Broadway for the first time in 35 years. Sad to say, the new version, which is billed by express order of the Gershwin brothers' estates as 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess,' is a sanitized, heavily cut rewrite that strips away the show's essence so as to render it suitable for consumption by 21st-century prigs. If you've never seen or heard 'Porgy,' you might well find this version blandly pleasing. Otherwise, you'll be appalled.

When the show opened downtown over the summer, much of its charm derived from the setting, a real gym that turned the audience into spectators...Junk food at Broadway prices is a tough sell. Pumping up the volume to ear-splitting levels only heightens the show’s irritation quotient. Don’t blame the game young cast. Producers, on the other hand, ought to know better.

Third-tier musicals have their place, sometimes producing hidden gems or giving newcomers a chance to shine. No such luck here. Connick is in his Sinatra-lite mode; the singing is passable but he marks time until the final scene, which has some juice. As the woman he falls for, Jessie Mueller, has some fine moments, especially in the lovely “Ev’ry Night at Seven,” one of several numbers interpolated from other Lerner and Lane scores. But they’re surrounded by a shrill, modestly talented cast reduced to frugging about Christine Jones’s Op Art sets, in Catherine Zuber’s atypically unsightly costumes. The uninspired retro choreography is by JoAnn M. Hunter. Whenever the dancing stops, Mayer plants his leads down stage to stare and sing directly at us. He’s got our attention -- for all the wrong reasons.

Diamond has a knack for setting up juicy situations without always knowing how to resolve them. Director Kenny Leon ought to have trimmed a half hour from the play and tightened its focus...Nevertheless, “Stick Fly” is one of my favorite plays of the year. Keep your eyes on Rashad, radiant in the harrowing “Ruined” and a further revelation here.

We can’t all be Mary Poppins. Frank Wildhorn’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” which opened last night on Broadway, has catchy songs, a fleshed out story and plenty of heart thanks to the snazzy direction by Jeff Calhoun and a design team that invokes the period in broad but astute strokes.

Another musical revue has landed on Broadway this season, though “An Evening With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin” could use an infusion of Hugh Jackman’s energy and pizzazz. Patinkin and LuPone may be Broadway royalty, but “An Evening” is a torpid affair.

Yes, you have seen this one before, the play/movie/novel about a debauched, embittered genius wreaking emotional havoc all around him until one talented voice breaks through the armor. Doubtless you’ll see it again. Rarely, however, will you see such toxic zingers delivered with more elan. Rickman and this extraordinary quartet, paced with feverish enthusiasm by Sam Gold, bring sexiness, verve and artistry to a tried-and-true formula. They come very close to making it seem seem fresh.

Cattrall, an experienced stage actress, is easier to admire than adore as Amanda...until, that is, she starts to bellow like a shrew, which is all too often, given the explosive nature of Amanda and Elyot's love. The sophistication yields to coarseness. Quite the same is true of Gross, who never manages the suavity Elyot must wear like a dinner jacket if his easy brutishness is to be at all tolerable.

Essentially a Las Vegas revue with a superb 18-piece orchestra, the show ranges from 'On Broadway' mashed up with 'Lullabye of Broadway' to 'Over the Rainbow,' each greeted with roars of approval.

No, the big take-away from playwright David Ives's latest comic free-for-all is the thrill of watching an actress named Nina Arianda -- a brand new, old-fashioned star -- light up the sky.

0 stars. Updating the show with mobile phones and references to Donald Trump makes it no less creepy. Jesus (Hunter Parrish) can't sing. The band sounds muddy. David Korins's set and Miranda Hoffman's costumes replace primary colors with dull tones. There's one standout among the dreary supporting players: a star-quality mimicker named Telly Leung.

Dark secrets unfurl in waves, eventually beaching the play with one Big Reveal too many. Even as skilled a director (and frequent Baitz collaborator) as Joe Mantello can't keep the thing from sinking in implausibility.

Any notion of Chinese subservience has been displaced by economic reversals making us debtors to the People’s Republic. Intrigue abounds; jokes resulting from wickedly bad translation are likely as not to be intentional, as competition for Chinese patronage has increased. Lighter in tone than “Butterfly,” “Chinglish” is the product of a more mature dramatic imagination.

Camae is equipped not only with caffeine, cigarettes and a flask, but a new generation's growing impatience with King's nonviolence. Hall gives her several brazen monologues and a final, surreal rap, all dazzlingly delivered by Bassett.

“Man and Boy” isn’t first-rate Rattigan along the lines of “The Browning Version” and “The Winslow Boy.” But it’s first- class entertainment, especially in our post-Madoff era. The notion that one man’s cunning criminal behavior can have such far-reaching consequences not only for the wealthy, but for the recipients of his largesse, seems thoroughly credible.

Broadway’s sterile Marquis Theatre has never looked so good as in the state of faux decrepitude that welcomes us to the latest, and finest, revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies...Near the end [of 'Loveland'] Raines, through a brilliant trick, snaps Ben and us back into the reality of 1971. We’re still feeling the jolt as the curtain falls and Technicolor nostalgia recedes into grim reality.

Terrence McNally's funny, reverential and wholly engrossing 'Master Class' brings us all too briefly into the distinctive orbit of Maria Callas...And as the play recreates a master class in singing, so Tyne Daly as the singer offers a master class in technique to inspire any acting student or colleague.

But the cloth now looks wrinkled and tired, as does much of a cast that has been giving its all for so long. The songs still stop the show in its tracks because they're pop songs, not theater songs that get inside the characters while advancing the plot.

In Donna Murphy, the creators have a shimmering star who can play a tender, doting grandma and yet evoke Lombard, that irresistible mix of winks and minx. But along with some syrupy writing, a mean streak runs through this show. For the first half, Jenny's mom, Red, is played (by Nicole Parker) as a strident over-achiever, hardened to her own mother's suggestion that she quit her job and care for her daughter herself.

In a Broadway season robust with bravura performances, comes another that makes demands of our souls along with our ears...As played -- no, embodied -- by Mantello with fathomless compassion and dignity (not to mention charm and humor), Ned is impossible to ignore. 'The Normal Heart' is unabashed agitprop, which is rarely welcome on Broadway, and Ned Weeks is an unlikely hero. But as 'Jerusalem' is also showing us, not all heroes wear white hats. Some are unpleasant company, doing what they must, demanding that attention be paid.

There are two reasons to see the revival of Garson Kanin’s 1946 comedy, “Born Yesterday,” and they’re both named Nina Arianda. This actress, who made a splash last season in the off- Broadway show “Venus in Fur,” just knocks it out of the ballpark as Billie Dawn, the curvy chorus girl who landed a big one with thuggish millionaire junk dealer Harry Brock, played by Jim Belushi.

Stiller needs more time to get a purchase on the role. Jennifer Jason Leigh is archly convincing as Bunny, dressed a la Jackie Kennedy, in David Cromer's sensitive x-ray of a production. It's Edie Falco who will steal your heart as Bananas...Gaunt, stringy and practically translucent, she's so emotionally open that it may be all you can do to keep from running onstage to wraps your arms around her.

A three-hour epic, “Jerusalem” begins with a fairy singing the lovely poem set to music by Sir Hubert Parry, which is shattered by rock music blaring from the speakers atop Rooster’s home. From there we’re off on a harrowing but frequently hilarious ride, staged with compulsive energy by Ian Rickson in a setting by Ultz that combines nature in bloom and humanity in wreckage, lit with dappling realism by Mimi Jordan Sherin. We know it will not end well. It’s to Butterworth’s credit that we are left so conflicted by this meeting with a force of nature, in the best play of the season.

Lombardo, a recovering addict, has written an imitation of a play, and not a very good one. Kunken is petulant as Father Delpapp. Jonigkeit plays Cody with such incoherent gruffness suggesting he never gave up dope long enough even to get into the center. Under Rob Ruggiero's overwrought direction, 'High' plays more like an early workshop than a polished Broadway production.