Jesse Hassenger — Theater Critic

Even more egregious, several emotional turns depend on offstage action that, through its on-stage unveiling, feel like cheap gotchas. Is this a multifaceted discussion or a series of cute writers’ tricks? The Balusters feels more like the latter – which makes it both more fun and less resonant than it probably should be.

With these zingy supporting performances, it’s entirely possible that those who haven’t seen the TV show will receive Schmigadoon! as an uncomplicated good time, both an affectionate send-up of shows still performed at American high schools everywhere and a tribute to why they endure despite outdated elements. But even without watching the original version, some viewers will probably anticipate certain jokes and turns – at this point, revelations of chaste queerness are practically obligatory in a Broadway showstopper, and even the friendly brand of satire on offer here ultimately feels a little soft. The non-musical portions of the TV show were sometimes at odd angles with the pure homage but also lent the characters a tension that often feels missing here. Schmigadoon! has been properly prepped and restructured for the stage. But apart from those cosmetic changes, it’s in the same boat as any number of less honorable adaptations: failing to offer much that’s truly new.

The new stage version of Dog Day Afternoon runs up against the unintended speed bump of hindsight. Details that in the film felt like canny, offhand snapshots of the 1970s now come across as self-conscious in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s production, and even cutesy as the play attempts to re-create famous scenes from the movie with greater retrospective context (to say nothing of eye-rolling additional historical color, like having characters mention that this dirty movie called Deep Throat is now playing at a theater near them). At times, it’s hard not to think of Wes Anderson’s film Rushmore, in which the precocious Max Fischer Players put on a theatrical version of Pacino’s similarly true-life thriller Serpico.

Like a lot of Every Brilliant Thing, this trick doubles as a lesson – in this case, about the power of just listening, in performing and in real life. That alertness keeps the show humming for its single 70-minute act, even as its straight text reads like something a precocious college student might write. Basically, the show works because Radcliffe more or less wills it to. It would be misleading to call his performance a high-wire act, because he intentionally stays closer to the audience’s level. As a medium-wire act, though, it’s still plenty brilliant.

Audiences seeing Bug for the first time, then, may well be transfixed, albeit temporarily. Anyone familiar with an earlier production or the William Friedkin film (which introduces some ambiguities to the story’s ending) might start to wonder if maybe Agnes and Peter are ultimately a little thin as characters – if they’re worth the intensity that Coon and Smallwood invest into this production. It’s probably not fair to compare a 100-minute early work from Letts to a towering masterpiece like August: Osage County, his Broadway debut from 2007. At the same time, Letts has clearly evolved as a writer since Bug, and it’s hard not to come away from this production wondering how he might address the contemporary version of this drug-addled psychological unmooring. It’s not so much that this production of Bug is outdated; more accurately, it’s got way too much competition, on stage and off.

Anyone put off by the theme-parkification of theater – spectacle! Gimmickry! Intellectual property! – would probably do well to just ignore Masquerade, a new immersive-experience off-Broadway version of The Phantom of the Opera. It has an unavoidable resemblance to next-gen ride experiences like Disney’s Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance or Universal’s Monsters Unchained (the latter of which even features a cameo from the Phantom himself, albeit in a different incarnation) that make patrons feel as if they’re being ushered through a famous fictional world. But a lot of skill goes into high-end theme park attractions, and like those, Masquerade is a lot of fun if you’re in the right mood.

In the end, John Proctor Is the Villain doesn’t feel like a show designed to goose youth-audience ticket sales; it feels like one that will engage and electrify a teenage audience, and plenty of adults too.

Glengarry Glen Ross may have lost some of its capacity to surprise over the past four decades, but the new revival offers a tribute to its durability. The setting, the lines and the tragedy of normal men attempting to hard-charge their way through decaying capitalism can remain the same, while the actors find new ways to sell it.

What tunes, though, and what a thrill to see these particular live performances. Obviously, there are plenty of venues for live music in New York and elsewhere, but the precise experience of watching actors, dancers, and a full razor-sharp band all integrated on stage together is difficult to replicate.

There’s so much of this direct-address material that its effectiveness can vary wildly from moment to moment. At the outset, it’s helpful scene-setting, and once the family sparks start to fly, Hill manages some quick asides that bring the house down. But Jacobs-Jenkins also uses Nazareth’s soliloquies to explain character motivations, fill in brief time jumps, underline themes, and sometimes just flat-out describe scenes that aren’t actually dramatized. If this self-interrupting technique functioned as a running commentary more consistently, it might feel like a subversion of familiar melodrama. Instead, these moments often bear so much weight that they come across like a hasty solution to writing problems that Jacobs-Jenkins couldn’t quite crack.

Cult of Love is at least in part about how deeply family ties can become embedded in our identities, even if it happens against our will, and/or outstays its welcome – hence the cult comparison, never over-explicated in the text of the play itself, but a brilliant running metaphor that echoes after the final curtain. Headland’s work as a playwright reflects her broader interest in the social components of religion; this play is the final entry in her Seven Deadly Sins cycle, each work addressing (if sometimes obliquely) a particular transgression. As such, she finds herself in an awkward position: Cult of Love is designated to represent the sin of pride, yet it’s a work to be proud of, nonetheless.

It’s possible that the incompleteness is the point. It’s possible, too, that The Ally would still come across as unwieldy even if it had premiered one year ago, or five. As the more fraught second act continues, the everyone-gets-a-turn speechifying starts to crowd out the cathartic laughs that punctuate the serious business back in the first act. (When a few of those sharp, petty lines return toward the end, the relief of actual laughter, however quasi-inappropriate, is palpable.) The pre-existing relationship between Asaf and Nakia sometimes feels like a writer’s conceit more than something lived-in, with perfectly illustrative anecdotes related at key moments. Maybe that’s an inevitable byproduct of a play that dedicates so much time and energy to the act of debate. Even if the pin-drop intensity of The Ally dissipates quickly afterward, there’s something admirable about a play in which so many of its characters appear ready to make a didactic case against its very existence.

Perhaps the confusion is understandable; the musical has been on its way to Broadway for a quarter-century at this point, with Manilow and Sussman running versions of the show in San Diego, Atlanta and Los Angeles. (An earlier Broadway bid was canceled 20 years ago, and an off-Broadway production ran for a month in 2022 after several Covid delays.) The production that’s finally arrived feels like it’s had plenty of time to marinate in its own importance.

The production, directed by Kenny Leon, never turns as grim as its undercurrents – or, for that matter, as its ruefully stated grievances. For one thing, it’s too fleet: the three-act original has been condensed into a 105-minute sprint sans intermission. Moreover, the cast is a joy to watch, seamlessly blending righteous passion and practical laughs, even as the play’s torrents of dialogue threaten to overwhelm them. Though Odom is the top-billed star attraction here, it takes Young all of about 30 seconds to start stealing scenes. She gives Luttiebelle a slightly cracked voice and, when she’s called upon to perform as a college-educated Cousin Bee, a teetering case of nerves; it adds up to a perfectly judged case of playing daft but not dumb. Davis’s script has funny lines for everyone, but it’s Young who earns the biggest guffaws from pure performance, like her pronunciation of “obliged” or her uneasiness in high heels.