Jesse Green

Trophy Boys, which premiered in Australia in 2022, is satirical, not earnest, and in leaning too strongly into its manic theatricality, Taymor supports the playwright’s vision at the cost of coherence. The two events that should change the direction of the plot, bending it toward seriousness, do not successfully manage the turn.

That’s a lot of story to cram into two hours, and in some ways I’ve barely scratched the hot surface of Tannahill’s ambition, which far exceeds the zany rom-com kitsch of Matthew López’s “Red, White & Royal Blue” and other gay royal fantasias. But if the author’s focus is too broad for his plot, with detours into AIDS and addiction creating a sort of disputatious blur, Chowdhury’s staging is as lucid as an oratorio. He perfectly sets up each actor for bravura solos that make their group scenes feel lushly choral.

Though well-paced, Lapine’s staging doesn’t really fight that tendency, leaning into the pretty murk instead. Interstitial music by T Bone Burnett aptly suggests the Deep South but might as well be the soundtrack to an arty ghost story. Yet spousal abuse isn’t arty. As deep as Smart digs into the horror of it, the play and the production keep topping off the hole. That’s crushing in every sense.

Though Skinner never writes less than compellingly, and Krasinski is willing and able to go where she takes him, I wasn’t. Whether we are being asked to sympathize with Roger as a victim (doubtful) or to consider our own vulnerability to his brand of charming awfulness (no thanks), I could fathom no reason, beyond the intelligence of the performance and production, to spend 85 minutes with him. We already live with him 24/7.

And Iman is what joy sounds like: satiny, sultry, unpredictable, unforced. There is no tension in her steamroller belt. Her riffs and curlicues drop off her like cherry blossoms. If Thurber’s lyrics are too often generic, not repaying close attention, no matter; the star gets the big points across. That is, after all, what stars do, in heaven or on earth.

For an audience no less than an individual, the steep slope of powerful attraction is difficult to negotiate. Neither Macklem nor Annie (she’s given no last name) is sure-footed. He’s an overinflated balloon, blowing himself through life. She’s, well, 19. Beyond any other consideration — attraction, power, psychology, class — her absolute age, not the gap in their ages, is what Moscovitch wants us to consider. Annie is not yet a fully grown human; she barely has the emotional wherewithal to handle her impulses, to know which ones she can safely indulge.

The Encores! encore that opened on Wednesday at City Center — just the third time in 31 seasons that this invaluable series has returned to a former title — does not reach any of the highs of that earlier production. Anika Noni Rose as Ruth, the older sister, and Aisha Jackson as Eileen, the younger, are well cast, and each has endearing moments. The magazine editor both women fall for is beautifully sung by Javier Muñoz. The choral work is up to the high house standards. But except when it dances, the staging, by Zhailon Levingston, is shaggy and leaden and fatally lacking in laughs.

And in part it’s the respect the authors show the audience by leaving us to assemble the jokes for ourselves, using the components they provide: contrast, surprise, pattern and disruption. Though that is already surpassingly rare on Broadway, even rarer is the way the show forces us, through pure entertainment and with no pathos, to think about things our intelligence busily helps us avoid. Why are we alive? As long as we are, what should we do about it? And do we have our papers in order? “Dead Outlaw” does. It should have a hell of an afterlife.

By the time of his death, at 37, in 1973, the show’s final descent into lugubrious eulogy — “He finished six years of grammar school in four years and got a scholarship medal besides,” Nina says — has swamped its early buoyancy with platitudes. Yet Groff is still swimming, right to the end. Dismayed as I was to endure so much else, I have to admit he’s giving one of Broadway’s best performances. So who’s sorry now?

Despite such mismatches between the original and the remake, “Pirates!” is still a feather in the tricorn of the Roundabout Theater Company, which produced and nurtured it. Operettas don’t last 146 years just because they’re good. (I love Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Ruddigore” too, but have never seen it except at camp.) Longevity like that requires faith not only in the past but also in the future.

Her latest investigations take the form of a collection of four one-act plays at the Public Theater, under the portmanteau title “Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.” Written separately over the last few years, each is pointed enough on its own: short and edgy. But together, in a splendid and surprisingly emotional production directed by James Macdonald, a frequent Churchill collaborator, they are so sharp you hardly feel them slicing your skin.

*CRITIC'S PICK* No matter. “John Proctor Is the Villain” is too urgently necessary about its one thing to make it worth wishing it were even a little different. That the urgency comes in an often hilarious, often ecstatic, highly accessible package is all the better. I hope a lot of high school girls — and boys — see it. Both need to understand that the case against John Proctor is just beginning.

*CRITIC'S PICK* As the plot touches down for its perfect landing, I was surprised again by the turn of events. Not only the ones in the plot but also the ones well beyond it. ‘Smash’ the musical is a kind of reclamation of ‘Smash’ the series, and probably a kind of revenge as well. You won’t see the program credit for Theresa Rebeck, the series’ creator, without a microscope. For some fans, the changes may feel like a desecration. For the rest of us, a real musical comedy is a cause for celebration; most are either too tuneless to be musicals or too dull to be comedies. The true mystery of ‘Smash’ is how such a messy makeover produced such a sterling example of both.

*CRITIC'S PICK* Old Friends,” which opened on Tuesday at Manhattan Theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater, is in that sense a lot like its predecessors. The 41 numbers it features come from the main pool, with an emphasis on songs from Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Company, Follies and Into the Woods. Most of them were brilliant in their original context; many remain so outside it. Some are sung spectacularly by a bigger-than-usual cast of 17, led by Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga. Others are middling, a few are misfires. [...] Though directed by the British choreographer Matthew Bourne — the show began life as a one-night gala in London — Old Friends has a stodgy quality that I find surprising. A couple of boxy towers [...] dominate Matt Kinley’s set design, moving back and forth as if in a very slow chess endgame.

But none of that explains or justifies the show’s existence. Nor, despite enormous effort, can the book by Bob Martin. In building a case for a vintage piece of intellectual property — Betty was born as a half-dog in 1930 — Martin winds up replicating the kind of musical he roasted in ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’... That show’s imaginary ‘Eleanor! The Eleanor Roosevelt Musical,’ is no less ludicrous than the real-life ‘Boop! The Musical.’

But in the show’s first Broadway incarnation, starring the resplendent Adrienne Warren and an underpowered Nick Jonas, the structure (along with the balance) has been compromised. The production, which opened on Sunday at the Hudson Theater, muddies the show’s temporal ironies and flattens its emotional topography. Its meaning and thus its impact are short-circuited.

*CRITICS PICK* Rather it is a slender, swift and healthy exercise in hagiography, burnishing its saints and martyrs to a high sheen. Clooney’s glamour, abetted by David Cromer’s suave direction, does a lot of that work... Clooney performs them with wit, integrity and charming modesty.

Or so I thought. But in the weirdly limp revival that opened on Monday at the Palace Theater, something has flipped. As played by Kieran Culkin, leading a sales team that also features Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr and Michael McKean, Roma is no longer the master of everyone else’s neuroses; he’s neurotic himself. Especially in the scene that ends the first act, as he winds up for a pitch into the soul of a schlub, he is so deeply weird and interior that any semblance of a confident exterior evaporates. The man couldn’t sell a dollar for a dime.

Yet it’s not technology itself that leaves “Dorian Gray” feeling so brittle where “Vanya” is a tear fest. It’s that the technology dominates all other values, including Wilde’s, often denying the human contact, and contract, that are at the heart of theater’s effectiveness. Some important scenes, though shot live onstage, must be watched onscreen because the screen itself blocks the upper half of Snook’s body. Her giant face is rendered in such super close-up that you might as well be an otolaryngologist; only her legs are left to do IRL acting.

In short, as I felt the production’s blunt force more and more, I grasped its aura and aims less and less. “Othello,” unique among Shakespeare’s tragedies, is lean. (It’s even leaner in this production, thanks to some judicious cutting.) It has fewer major characters than most, and fewer sideshows. (Among the cuts: the annoying clown.) Its poetry is extraordinary. And though four principals die, all ultimately by Iago’s hand or influence, it does not tumble indiscriminately toward the blood bath. The deaths are specific and necessary to its themes. Leon’s “Othello” gets all that, except the themes. A good enough bargain, I suppose — or would be, except that center orchestra tickets are selling for $921. You could spend a lot less — or a lot more — to learn the sad truth “Othello” dramatizes: that those who choose to assume the best in people are most vulnerable to the worst. Innocence is ignorance, certainty a death wish. In a world (and on a stage) that loves not wisely but too well, Iago will always win.

I enjoyed ‘Operation Mincemeat’ well enough, but I would have enjoyed it much more if I thought that were true onstage.

What makes the production exemplary, like the play itself, is the emotion. I hate to think why Scott is such a sadness machine, but the tears (and blushes and glows and sneers) lie very shallow under his skin. He only rarely raises his voice. As the feelings are evidently coming directly and carefully from his heart, he narrowcasts them directly and carefully at yours.

This family, as Aziza realizes too late to escape, is off the rails. That’s exciting while the story remains in midair in Act 1, less so upon landing in a heap in Act 2. By then the dials set for bright comedy are stuck way too high for serious retribution; Solomon especially behaves so abominably that the playwright’s attempt to rehabilitate him cannot succeed.

This is all compelling; the play is so brilliantly conceived and plotted it can hardly be anything else. While Blanche, with her airs and long baths, works Stanley’s last nerve, he mercilessly needles her and debunks her claims. (She is no virgin, even aside from her early marriage to a doomed gay man.) Trying to keep the peace is Stella, who despite everything still loves her sister. (In Anjana Vasan’s excellent performance, we sense that love, even more than the usual weak-tea toleration.) But as Blanche’s options foreclose on her — Stanley foils her chance to snag his one halfway-decent poker buddy as a husband — even Stella grows fearful, and the balance tips disastrously."

Distasteful though that is, it’s good drama, and 'Ghosts' remains a provocative, engrossing work, to which O’Brien’s production does justice. It also does justice to the idea of provocative, engrossing work in the first place. 'Ghosts' is the 14th and presumably final collaboration between O’Brien and André Bishop, Lincoln Center Theater’s producing artistic director, who is stepping down at the end of this season after 33 years with the company. Their notable productions of Hellman, Stoppard, Shakespeare and others have earned them this warm valedictory moment. And yet not totally valedictory. As 'Ghosts' demonstrates, men’s imprints do not fade so easily. And nothing is ever as haunted as a stage.