John Simon

The producers and press agent urgently request reviewers not to give away the final twists. They are pretty shoddy, preposterous twists, too costly even gratis. So instead of discussing the ending, which, phony as it is, is still the only thing of interest here (other than, perhaps, the revelation that God is female), let me focus on the beginning.

Maria Aitken has decently directed a highly competent cast, all of them, however, suffering from not enough to work with. What comes off best is Derek McLane’s brilliant design of a Greenwich Village basement pad in 1934. But this not being a musical, you can’t exit humming the scenery.

Courageously, director Daniel Sullivan avoids making the revenge-thirsty moneylender more assimilated and sympathetic, or the duplicitous Christians less anti-Semitic. Essentially, we have here a comedic Jew, as the playwright no doubt intended him, in a part that today comes close to the tragic.

Typical scenes concern Pee-wee's love affair with Chairry, the female armchair our boy sits on, embraces and is hugged by; Jambi, the bodiless swami's head that lives in a box; and Pterri the Pterodactyl, who flits about arousing Pee-wee's yearning to fly. The plot, such as it is, hinges on the possible wiring of The Playhouse for Pee-wee's computer, which turns out to be a very bad idea indeed.

Heroic efforts from the remarkable singing actresses Laura Benanti, Patti LuPone and Sherie Rene Scott and the equally accomplished Brian Stokes Mitchell can't disguise the fact that 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' is an unholy mess.

With three great actors -- Vanessa Redgrave, James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines -- at their apogee, the enchanting revival of 'Driving Miss Daisy' is the best theater can be.

But a book is one thing and a play quite another. And theater in the round, where minimal scenery must come up from below the stage and sink back again in order not to block anyone's view, is another tough nut to crack. Especially if there are only three football players along with the journalist and Marie, the coach's stoical wife, to lend support to the protagonist. There are some slide projections, to be sure, but much -- perhaps too much -- is left to the imagination.

I must confess that the folks around me seemed to find most of it hilarious. Much as I wished to, I couldn't join them.

What is sorely lacking is a plot or character development, and certainly affection for the hapless actors which might enlist our empathy. What action there is mostly involves stagehands moving scenery around, so much so, and so visibly, that I wondered whether they shouldn’t be listed as cast.

On second viewing, I found the play even more satisfying. Margulies, a gifted playwright, tells the story of a photojournalist Sarah Goodwin (Linney) and reporter James Dodd (d'Arcy James), who have been collaborating and cohabiting for 8 1/2 unwed years and are just back in their Brooklyn loft.

Doug Hughes, a talented director, given his two leads, was unable to create the right atmosphere of decorum punctured by the one’s laissez faire and the other’s rebellion needed for the proper dramatic momentum. Contributing to this failure are the good Catherine Zuber’s uncharacteristically unbecoming costumes, the gifted David Van Tieghem’s inappropriate music, and Tom Watson’s unfortunate hair and wig design, which, for example, makes Mrs. Warren look rather like Sweeney Todd’s Mrs. Lovett.

The language can suddenly switch from country bumpkin to a level of sophistication well beyond the credible, as when Harry, a Marxist, says one moment, “Nebody’s deing what we de”; at the next, “This is just the start. This place’ll be an academy. In years to come it’ll be teeming with artists in here.” And George proclaims, “They’re not ganna leave yer Shakespeare and Goethe just for the upper classes now -- it’s ganna belang to us.”

Pity the actors caught in this bastardization, especially Yelland and Sturrock, fighting memories of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, unsurpassable in the movie version. Also Alessi, saddled with conspicuously doubling Albert and Fred, Laura’s husband.

It is lucky enough when a replacement cast can match the original one; it is more than serendipitous when the newcomers surpass their predecessors. That is the case with “A Little Night Music,” which resumes after a recess, with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch taking over for Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, respectively.

Problematic with such a show is whether to accept its oddities as peculiar but true or to question them as fabrications usurping the privilege of facts. The show’s solution is to postulate a heroine called “Sherie Rene,” who both is and isn’t Scott. To which I say that “Everyday Rapture” both is and isn’t a show.

he semi-factual drama by Lucy Prebble (28 when she wrote it) will appeal to those familiar with the case and knowledgeable of the most esoteric aspects of accounting. The rest of us, lacking total comprehension, can revel in the racy dialogue, remarkable visuals and frequent humor delivered by a virtuosic ensemble. I can’t say where actual quotation and verifiable fact commingle with the author’s lively imagination. Nevertheless, Prebble’s writing and the production dreamed up by director Rupert Goold are stunning enough to provide steady wonder, involvement and delight.

Troy Maxson deserves a place alongside Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman as a towering figure in American drama, and Denzel Washington is showing us why with a commanding performance in the Broadway revival of August Wilson’s 1987 “Fences.”

This brings us to the director-choreographer Rob Ashford, who has given us too much choreography and not enough direction, or the wrong kind. Ballet invades the action at almost every step, and farce is doggedly squeezed out of every conceivable moment. Such hyperactivity makes jokes cancel out one another, and doesn’t allow musical numbers to provide sufficient respite.

“Sondheim on Sondheim,” the revue put together by James Lapine from Stephen Sondheim’s songs, confirms enchantingly what we already know but can gladly bear such eloquent repeating of: that Sondheim is the best composer- lyricist we’ve got. To have it incarnated on Broadway by a cast headed by Barbara Cook, Vanessa Williams, Tom Wopat and five personable others leaves us, after two-and-a-half hours, only hungry for more. Every item in this expansive, diverse catalog seems to claim swift recognition: “I am a Sondheim song, and could be no other’s.”

Admittedly no fan of rock ‘n’ roll, I assume that only the most monomaniacal rocker could find the pseudo-musical “Million Dollar Quartet” anything more than a jam session periodically interrupted by desperate attempts to whip up some drama. The amplification to arena volume shoehorned into a mere Broadway theater treats one’s eardrums as percussion instruments.

McDermott and Crouch’s sets and costumes achieve both hilarity and charm. (Morticia’s decolletage stops precisely short of her nipples, while the cast moves from the fog-draped exterior of the family’s gothic pile, with prominent moon, to the heavy furnishings of gloomy interiors.) They are staunchly abetted by Basil Twist’s polymorphously perverse puppets and Natasha Katz’s cheeky lighting. The whole show is a menage a trois of the ghastly, the ghostly and the side-splitting. And you know what? Unlike in most current musicals, the songs really shine: Melody, too, has risen from the dead.

Ken Ludwig’s quarter-century old “Lend Me a Tenor” is revived on Broadway with a deft cast including Tony Shalhoub, Anthony LaPaglia and Jan Maxwell, under the direction of that expert comedian Stanley Tucci. And as before, it entertains.

“Red” is a compelling example of how a thinking theater can simultaneously entertain and educate. And to think that such a fine play should have been elicited by such an overrated painter.

Because the nine main dancers are remarkable -- the women extremely “ballon” (i.e., floating on air) and the men robustly intense (a double tour en l’air is child’s play to them) -- one can live with a certain amount of repetitiousness. We are duly tickled, fascinated and stunned by what we see, but almost never moved, for excitement is not tantamount to beauty. With Balanchine, say, the music dictates the choreography; with Tharp, the choreography lords it over the music.

Sheryl Kaller’s direction is savvy enough, as are Jess Goldstein’s costumes. Wilson Chin’s set design contends valiantly with the frequent changes of locale, and the acting is mostly good. Only Adam’s intended charm seems to me undercut by Patrick Breen’s machine-gun delivery and cadaverous looks. Patrick Heusinger, however, is thoroughly appealing as the boyishly affectionate and fearful Luke.