John Simon

Even if, like me, you are no great fan of the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, you will find “A Behanding in Spokane,” in which Christopher Walken makes a triumphant return to the Broadway stage, insane yet also fiendishly funny. McDonagh is a specialist in unleashed violence, in which he shamelessly revels. Here the violence is comical, and we are kept guessing throughout a farce that is as irresistible as it is improbable.

What the set lacks, Nunn tries to make up for with business. Not so much stage movement as general heartiness, frolicsomeness, primping and posturing, inordinate onstage laughter and whatever it takes to goose elegant comedy into rude farce. Slimmer and coarser, the production will not supplant anyone’s memory of the visual and kinetic elegance of Hal Prince’s 1973 original. A mixed bag, then, made desirable by Sondheim’s music -- far from little and equally good for night and day.

Just as in “Oleanna,” Mamet latches on to a controversial issue, in this case the problem of race as it has affected American politics, jurisprudence, sexual relations and life in general. He has boldly asserted that our 230-year national experience has been a dialogue about race and that the theme of his new play is “race and the lies we tell each other on the subject.”

The 2 1/2 hours, cut from off-Broadway’s three, cannot tell the whole story. There is some glossing over; we never, for example, learn how Fela incurred AIDS. But there are Fela’s music and Jones’s equally matchless dances, uniquely combining earthiness with flight, dynamics with delicacy and drive to equal, if not surpass, Olympian ideals.

“Rock of Ages” is innovative even for the most experienced critics: For the first time, we are asked to review Noise. Not pure noise, to be sure, but noise encroached on by a smattering of unmusical music, stultifying lyrics, banal dialogue and a story that carries triviality to new heights, or lows. It is impure noise, against which the best earplugs offer only partial relief.

Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage,” with Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden, proves superior entertainment at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. What a pleasant surprise to share a walloping good time with the audience at this comedy, whose ferocious title paradoxically reinforces the subtly furibund fun.

In this staging, there are notable improvements, starting with the danced Prologue, in which the Jets and Sharks seem more numerous and threatening than ever before. Similarly, the near- rape of Maria’s friend Anita is more realistically terrifying. Maria and the Latino girls who sing the comic song “I Feel Pretty” are shown doing things, such as nail polishing. Each gang member now has more of an individual personality.

A show's claim to offer ``something for everyone' usually signals disaster: the lowest common denominator and the antithesis of art. Well, for once, the exception proves true: ``Billy Elliot' -- London's long-running hit with Elton John's music, finally replicated on Broadway -- really does have something for everyone, and that something is, gloriously, art.

The new -- and first! -- Broadway revival of ``South Pacific,' by Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont, pays homage to the original production in all the right ways. It should easily play for at least 1,925 performances -- the length of the original Broadway run.

But reality is not the issue here; rather, it is fantasy, music, singing and dancing, and some salty dialogue, as well as flawless production values and performance. And, not least, the chance for a more typically ignored minority to display Main Stem theatrical talents in the show, whose concept, book and lyrics are by Lin-Manuel Miranda and whose music is by Quiara Alegria Hudes.

`Jersey Boys,' at the August Wilson Theatre, is quite simply the best jukebox or song-catalog musical so far. It rousingly recreates the catchy songs, convoluted lives and roller-coaster careers of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Never having heard more of the group than their names, and lacking all interest in them and their music, I entered the theater a skeptic, but promptly turned believer.

The jerry-built result predictably leaves the show dependent on the songs, the production values, and the performers. The plot now has Donna's daughter, Sophie, getting married and, wanting to find her father, inviting all three men she finds in her mother's diary to the impending nuptials, unbeknown to Mom. All three show up, as do, for other reasons, the two female backup singers who, long ago, performed in Donna's trio. Since this meets most people's preposterousness quota, enough of plot summary, and on to more relevant matters. I did not grow up on Abba's music, but I didn't mind the songs Andersson and Ulvaeus wrote for the musical Chess, which were purposefully created for that show. Abba's music must have something to it: How can more than 350 million worldwide record sales be wrong? (Or can they?) The lyrics are good enough for Swedes writing in English; most of them cannot be heard over the din, anyway. If you happen to have a couple of spare eardrums, be sure to bring them along. That said, I found the score neither unbearable nor something I'd miss if I never heard it again.

Come to The Lion King with two pairs of eyes, one ear, and half a brain. You will be bombarded by some of the most beautiful and spectacular sights theater can offer from before and behind, so eyes in the back of the head will come in handy. You will be harangued by second-rate standard-show music and lyrics by Elton John and Tim Rice, and also by Lebo Mï's stirring African chants and ululations, to which your active ear should be cocked. Finally, you will be subjected to a well-worn, simplistic children's tale about a lion cub's hard road to adulthood and the throne of the animal kingdom, usurped by his wicked uncle in cahoots with some murderously laughing hyenas.

To look on the bright side first, The Phantom of the Opera is a terrific technical achievement. If you want scenery and costumes, sight gags and sight thrills, they're all there—$8.5 million worth of them—on the aptly named Majestic stage. And who doesn't want to see candles sprout all around an underground lake (even if it does not make technological sense) and a giant chandelier almost crash into the audience below (even if it looks more like a giant balloon changing courses in midair)? It is good, mindless fun, and costs less than a trip to Disney World... The only areas in which The Phantom of the Opera is deficient are book, music, and lyrics.