Johnny Oleksinki — Theater Critic

That is the unshakable feeling at the revival of his “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” that opened Saturday night at the Barrymore Theatre. You’re never less than pleased you’ve come, and yet you’re constantly aware that something’s gone. What thrives in director Debbie Allen’s production of one of the writer’s best works is the drama’s musical conversationality and boisterous spirit. How could it not when the 1911 Pittsburgh boarding house it’s set in is run by Cedric the Entertainer?

Still, there’s much to like, even adore, in Pinkleton’s revival — from its Fritz Lang-y metallic manikins to a dark and seductive castle set that feels ripped from a Jim Steinman music video to two knockout performances from Luke Evans as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and Hsu as Janet. Yet when the plot practically disappears midway through Act 2, and the crowd’s lips are zipped, you just crave something more, more, more.

Line by line and moment by moment, “The Balusters” is an engrossing and enjoyable watch, fueled by Lindsay-Abaire’s impolite humor and the cast’s sparky connectivity and willing embrace of the bonkers. Director Kenny Leon precisely paces the comedy and gets a string of howls for his efforts. When more broadly considered, as the writer turns his attention to serious issues rather than quick jabs at the culture wars, the play falters some. Because of all the giggles, I almost forgot the show was building to anything of substance. Well, it tries to, and that is “The Balusters” at its least satisfying. The conclusions are obvious because they’ve been arrived at many, many times before, and the two main opponents are pancake flat. One is good, one is bad, bingo bango. I got the sense that Lindsay-Abaire, who has no fear with his punchlines, was reluctant to give Kyra any flaws at all.

For a musical that’s been squatting in various cities for more than 10 years, it’s hard to believe that so many crummy songs have stuck around all this time. The melodies range from forgettable to bouncy-house random. And the lyrics are, well, they’re by a novelist.

As the second half leaps to a close, “Schmigadoon!” shifts from a cotton candy freight train to a sentimentality dump truck. But the touching McCalla, as Marion-the-librarian-inspired Emma, makes the change-up work by giving one of the few performances with some intellect and nuance behind it. Playing Emma’s shy younger brother Carson at select performances, little comedian Ayaan Diop steals the show.

It speaks volumes about Adrien Brody’s choice of roles that next to his anguished, Oscar-winning turns in “The Pianist” and “The Brutalist,” his Broadway debut as a wronged man who spends 22 years on death row comes off as positively chipper. Cracking jokes and animatedly telling stories in a sing-song street-corner voice, our Sufferer Laureate plays Pennsylvania inmate Nick Yarris in “The Fear of 13,” Lindsey Ferrentino’s curiously unmoving and talky, talky, talky play that opened Wednesday night at the James Earl Jones Theatre.

Yet director Joe Mantello’s pummeling revival, which opened Thursday night, accomplishes what this play at its most potent should. Yes, you leave raving about the sterling performances of Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf and the striking stagecraft. But, for more than a few people I overheard on the way out, it also powerfully summoned a tougher topic: their own lives.

Without fail, the best Broadway shows are the off-the-charts inventive ones that could not have possibly originated anywhere else but the five boroughs. This season, that’s “The Jellicle Ball.”

Gionfriddo’s play clearly covers a lot of risky ground — gender, race, politics, money — only it’s so relentlessly hysterical you barely notice the mark it leaves until the appetizers arrive. Adding to the entertainment, director Trip Cullman’s direction is sexy, light and swift.

First off, the towering 80-year-old Tony winner bears a striking resemblance to the man, right out the box. But it’s Lithgow’s ability to be quiet and sweet and seconds later booming and scary that makes us squirm in our seats over our own feelings toward the writer. At times, we really do like him. The actor’s well-rounded, seismic Roald will be on the defensive, weaponizing his over-6-foot frame, massive intellect and huge temper. All giant, indeed. And right away he’ll snap into a kindhearted old man — the nurturing papa who Dahl readers dream is behind the prose. A camouflage, perhaps.

It’s Radcliffe’s vitalizing and vulnerable performance, a cardio workout both physically and emotionally, that’s the reason to go. He’s its most brilliant thing.

Is imitation the highest form of flattery? Maybe. But “The Unknown” is simply flat.

Harrison’s story is topical, that’s for sure. Frighteningly so. What elevates it above the ripped-from-the-headlines hackery of, say, so many political dramas co-written by Wikipedia is that it’s also profoundly human and lump-in-the-throat relatable without ever toppling over into boo-hoo sentimentality. The play exposes its audience’s emotional weaknesses like few others do. I reckon that most ticket-buyers will silently ask themselves if they would buy a Prime if they had the chance. And they’d probably be uncomfortable with their honest answer.

The musical comes dangerously close to cloying sentimentality at times, but Dougal’s dry sense of humor and Tutty’s first-class delivery prevents the story from ever getting too soupy.

Reid, Strong and Manville are transfixing as awful revelation after revelation comes to light. Strong’s nice guy gives way to brutishness and boiling blood, and Manville’s heretofore stalwart Jocasta crushingly crumples when the grotesque truth is finally revealed.

It’s a hard-hitting, hard-laughing show that combines topics that you arrive at the theater not itching to confront — the COVID pandemic, meth addiction, health insurance, shift pay — into an absorbing story you leave wanting much more of.

The sorry excuse for a stage adaptation, which opened Tuesday at Stage 42, takes a quirky 90-minute film that was completely reliant on the charm and chemistry of its leads Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, pumps in almost an hour of formless filler and pulverizes its personality to the point of being practically unrecognizable.

It still is. She doesn’t have a mastery of the Beaumont’s huge thrust yet. And so this is an overly presentational staging in which actors other than Ross struggle to connect to one another, which is partly why the experience is mostly unmoving even as songs desperately beg us to cry.

A few smart, artful additions raise “Masquerade” to something far greater than a jolly tourist attraction. Paulus, when she’s firing on all cylinders, knows how to fuse the commercial with the profound.

French writer Yasmina Reza’s 1998 whine-and-cheese comedy, which opened at the Music Box Theatre on Tuesday night in an askew revival starring Neil Patrick Harris, James Corden and Bobby Cannavale, remains a slim, one-joke, pseudo-intellectual affair that gratingly and exhaustingly works to send up fellow pseudo intellectuals.

Well, I say, 'thank you for the musical.' 'Mamma Mia!' is a much-needed vacation from all the seriousness and drear. And its foundations could withstand a nuclear blast. The foremother of the old-pop-songs-in-a-new-story genre is still the very best in the game.

The entire off-its-rocker off-Broadway show, whose sole sin is occasionally trying too hard, is lovably loony.

Smart is funnier, deeper and, well, smarter than anything in playwright Jamie Wax’s mummified one-woman show that opened Thursday night at Studio 54. Yet she’s relegated to cracking “Moby Dick” jokes next to a toilet. This Wax work, a musty quilt of cliches, is about a Louisiana woman who lives in a trailer with her abusive, deadbeat, hard-drinking husband. Essentially alone, Izzy writes poetry on two-ply as an escape. She then hides it away in a Tampax box that no one dare open.

Director Scott Ellis’ boisterous romp is not groundbreaking in the way the Joseph Papp-produced 1980 revival was, but it has the same irreverent spirit — and perpetually ridiculous tale.

All of the expensive visuals are in service of a throwaway play in which the real villain ain’t Vecna — it’s the writing.