Joe Dziemianowicz — Theater Critic

Like his Oscar-winning screenplay for 'Moonstruck,' the play is a valentine to the wonder and weirdness of love. Instead of Cher shouting, 'Snap out of it!,' Debra Messing calls the shots - and with an Irish brogue.

Hall, known for films like 'The Town' and 'Iron Man 3,' hides her beauty and plummy English accent as Helen. She's sturdy at some times, singsong in others. Hall's stature and height allow her to strike a physical presence, but when it comes to Helen's freeform monologues, she's emotionally empty. 'Machinal' doesn't elicit strong reaction - but it's well served by the world and well-oiled machine created by Turner.

Even if you haven't memorized the King songbook, you will leave the Stephen Sondheim Theatre humming. Too bad a great musical isn't only about the music. The book is crucial, too - and this show's connect-the-dots story line is so simplistic that the extravagantly talented King's life emerges as a mundane version of the long-suffering little woman.

Even if you haven't memorized the King songbook, you will leave the Stephen Sondheim Theatre humming. Too bad a great musical isn't only about the music. The book is crucial, too - and this show's connect-the-dots story line is so simplistic that the extravagantly talented King's life emerges as a mundane version of the long-suffering little woman.

“Nothing to be done,” says Estragon. That goes for getting stood up, painful shoes, life and death — or this show’s exaggerated goofy takes on Pozzo (Hensley) and his servile Lucky (Crudup, a dead ringer for Riff Raff from “Rocky Horror”). Attention goes slack as a result. Fortunately the stars grip tight. Stewart is hearty and game. McKellen, even better, is hilarious and heartbreaking. It’s a fine bromance — Broadway is lucky to have it.

The whisky flows, served neat. The conversation, like the wall, is curvy. It’s unclear if Hirst and Spooner really know each other from university. Also uncertain: Did Hirst, as he blithely recalls, bed Spooner’s girl? McKellen’s silent slow-burn response speaks volumes. He’s got one of the most expressive faces, voices and command of body language on the planet. Stewart gets Hirst’s imperiousness and vulnerability just right.

The best part: the two leads. Bryce Pinkham sings like a dream and brings great appeal to the murderous Monty. 'I Am My Own Wife' Tony winner Jefferson Mays musters big laughs as Monty's victims. Casualty number one, a bucktoothed priest, croaks with just the right mix of hilarity and the macabre...Finally, there's the score, and, alas, it's a bit of bore. Composer Steven Lutvak wrote lyrics with Freedman. Their songs are consistently cute - and that's it. There's not one number that really stands out and at times the music actually slows down the action.

The best part: the two leads. Bryce Pinkham sings like a dream and brings great appeal to the murderous Monty. 'I Am My Own Wife' Tony winner Jefferson Mays musters big laughs as Monty's victims. Casualty number one, a bucktoothed priest, croaks with just the right mix of hilarity and the macabre...Finally, there's the score, and, alas, it's a bit of bore. Composer Steven Lutvak wrote lyrics with Freedman. Their songs are consistently cute - and that's it. There's not one number that really stands out and at times the music actually slows down the action.

No need for faking it during '700 Sundays,' Crystal's big-hearted and seat-shakingly funny one-man memoir. The laughter and poignance he generates are the real deal.

it takes more than one great actor to make Shakespeare really click. Rylance is surrounded by a sublime company, who move seamlessly between the plays. In “Twelfth Night” Samuel Barnett’s endearing Viola; Paul Chahidi’s foxy Maria; Stephen Fry’s maligned Malvolio and Angus Wright’s absurd Andrew Aguecheek are invaluable.

In “Richard III,” Joseph Timms and Liam Brennan stand out, respectively, as Lady Anne and the doomed Clarence.

Like cheaters slinking around in the night, Nichols’ production moves quietly and purposefully. During his long career, Nichols has proven himself a master of intricate intimacy. He knows how to zero in on humor and pain and make it all burrow deep into your skin. And into your brain. It’s a play in which everyone loses — except the audience.

Sharr White's World War I-era drama, 'The Snow Geese,' is a low-flying work. Presented by Manhattan Theatre Club and MCC Theater, the play is interesting, but too diffuse to satisfy fully. Some compensation comes from a fine-tuned cast led by Mary-Louise Parker, who's at her signature idiosyncratic best...White raises lots of ideas - about parental favoritism, culture clashes and sibling rivalries. He doesn't fully develop any of these notions. And Arnold's 11th-hour solution to money woes should have been obvious to the whole family from the get-go. But the play is less about action and more about developing a group portrait. Another draft could have brought things into better focus.

Courtroom claustrophobia can create drama. But there's no tension here. Worse, there's no context. Clanton is roiling with racial hate. Jake risks his career, his wife and child (never seen in the play) and his life for the case. That doesn't come through. We're told about a burned-down house. We're given a report about racist chants. But we don't see or hear them. Charged with the dramatic felony of telling instead of showing, 'A Time to Kill' is guilty. Throw the book at it.

In 'The Winslow Boy,' Terence Rattigan's compelling 1946 drama about family and justice, that declaration echoes loudly. How great it is that the Roundabout revival - Broadway's one and only - gets things so right. Credit director Lindsay Posner, who staged the play at London's Old Vic and recast it for New York. Scrupulously acted and handsomely designed, the show vibrates with humor and genuine emotion.

Where the script goes irritatingly wrong is Joplin's near-lecturing on the blues. 'I got the blues because I don't have my baby,' she says. 'I got the blues because I don't have the quarter for a bottle of wine, I got the blues because they won't let me in that bar ...' Enough. She brings up the blues so much that she wrings the color and potency out of the idea and has you seeing red. Better to let the music do the talking.

Stroman's dances - tap, waltz, hoedowns - are polished but a bit pedestrian. She's famous for wild imagination, but she serves her 'Big Fish' without a showstopper. Lucky for us, she managed to reel in a winner by casting Butz.

No ifs, ands or buts - 'The Glass Menagerie' should break your heart. The new Broadway revival starring Cherry Jones and Zachary Quinto cracks it wide open. The striking production also opens your eyes to fresh insights in Tennessee Williams' mid-'40s breakthrough. It's a remarkable achievement, considering how familiar we've become with the drama of overbearing Amanda Wingfield, her fragile daughter, Laura, and restless son, Tom...In keeping with the strong, spare scenery, performances are lean and natural. Jones, a stage great who's won Tonys for 'The Heiress' and 'Doubt,' endows Amanda with potent vitality. She can lose herself in the sweet-scented memories of jonquils and gentility, but she's no shrinking violet. She's fiercely maternal. Quinto, of the 'Star Trek' reboot, streaks Tom, the stand-in for Williams, with exasperation and surliness. His cruel abandonment of his family in the dark is all the more credible. As the delicate Laura, Celia Keenan-Bolger draws you in with her transparent honesty.

Bloom throws himself thoroughly into the role of the lovestruck Italian - ticket-holders get to see him shirtless, climbing walls and flexing his gymnastic abilities. More importantly, he speaks Shakespeare's poetry capably. But he lacks the gravity to really grab you. Together, he and Rashad are warm, not hot. If Romeo and Juliet don't blaze, why bother?

The show never moves beyond the basic chronology. Carlebach's precise place and significance in history remain as fuzzy as his bearded face, even after spending hours with him. Yes, he cut some records and gave concerts, and, like everyone, his life was a bumpy journey. While it's certainly not the aim of the creative team, Carlebach emerges as a novelty, a footnote in both the Jewish faith and folk-rock.

Let's just say it: The mating-game musical 'First Date' isn't first-rate. Third-tier is more like it. Or below-deck, since this singing catalogue of cliches by a team of Broadway rookies would fit better on a cruise ship than the Great White Way...The songs are peppy but generic. The script boasts a couple of laughs...But that's a bright spot amid buzzkill...[Berry's] strategy: Throw in lots of tricks to see what sticks - megaphones, a leaf blower and talking video screens...Despite such clunkers, Rodgriguez cuts a strong presence. She has a pretty, but not especially colorful, voice. Levi, who sang in the cartoon 'Tangled,' is a pleasant enough singer and does the required geeky self-deprecation very well. All fine, but not enough to recommend the show.

It's a bare-bones show. No sets, just a stage full of 11 musicians, with Grammy-winning Latin crooner Gilberto Santa Rosa as a guest vocalist through July 28. On the cello is Luis Bravo, the show's creator and director, who's already brought this show to Broadway in 1997 and 2004. When he called it 'Forever,' he meant it.

The brilliant new production of 'Pippin,' a 1972 coming-of-age tale, boasts everything you could dream of in a musical - including Stephen Schwartz's terrifically tuneful songs - and a few things you couldn't even imagine.

But Midler is delicious and worth crossing the playground to get a ticket.

The wonderful veteran actress Cicely Tyson packs plenty of that playing Carrie Watts, a homesick woman who goes to great lengths to remedy her ache. Tyson slowly but surely drives her way into your heart in a Broadway revival that casts the Watts family as African-American.