Johnny Oleksinski

Arden, who delivered a brilliant new musical with “Maybe Happy Ending” last season, drops the ball by juggling too many. The sub-Zoom call live videos as the documentary filmmakers shoot, an intellectually lazy 1661 frame story at the French court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette that should’ve gotten the guillotine in early development and unappealing staging on a drab construction site all come to naught.

Acting aside, this is one of Lloyd’s better dramatic efforts. He boldly does away with the typical “Godot” aesthetic of gray emptiness and an ominous tree in the back. Instead, designer Soutra Gilmour’s set is a bright, giant wooden cylinder that looks like something Timothee Chalamet might pilot in “Dune.” There are none of Lloyd’s usual screens or al fresco adventures, either. Unlike what the director did to Jessica Chastain in “A Doll’s House,” he generally allows Reeves and Winter to actually walk around. But cool scenery doesn’t go very far when one of the actors on it simply cannot handle Beckett.

The Orpheum’s most famous tenant, “Stomp,” opened years before “The Parent Trap” hit theaters, and closed in 2023 after nearly three decades. Since then, the tricky venue has been something of a Goldilocks. Some shows have proved too boffo. Others have been too amateurish or niche. While I don’t suspect “Ginger Twinsies” will find much of an audience beyond Disney+ subscriber millennials or curious St. Mark’s bar-flies, it’s the first tenant there in two years to strike me as just right.

Krasiniski is a much more commanding stage performer than I ever thought he’d be, and he capably freight-trains through his almost-monologue while never sacrificing nuance or beats of the story. Gold, who theatergoers tend to associate with pregnant pauses, does just as well with Skinner’s gap-free dash as he does with Annie Baker’s pot-head grazes.

“Outlaw” reminds me of the rebel rock musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” crossed with a bone-dry Coen Brothers film. There’s room for something ​s​o subversive on Broadway. But not when the production’s energy level is that of a funeral parlor at 8 a.m.

For a little over two hours, there’s nowhere you’d rather be than at this dazzling dream of a New York that truly never slept, presided over by a Harlem-born singer whose output was so rich and rapid-fire that the man must have been fueled by the dire prognosis he received as a child: Darin wasn’t supposed to live past 16.

After an evening of hurt, heart and hilarity, the moving climax is a slideshow of images of Sondheim, who died in 2021, next to his old friends as the cast wails gorgeous arrangements of “Not a Day Goes By” and “Being Alive.” Sondheim and a fantastic company of actors, standing side by side by side.

Audiences always deserve clarity, but “The Last Five Years” must be especially well-defined in its staging and performances, since the weird structure is jarring to the uninitiated. You see, Jamie tells the couple’s tale in sequential order, from meeting gentile Cathy, his “Shiksa Goddess” who’s a struggling actress, to their breakup. Cathy’s songs, meanwhile, occur in reverse. She begins “hurting” from the split and ventures backwards to the elation of their first date — a la “Merrily We Roll Along.” Well, best of luck figuring any of that out. The first Broadway bow of Brown’s semi-autobiographical musical is almost impossible to follow, and the viewer gives up on it quickly.

The audience giggles a fair amount at this story that ends in brutal deaths — from start to finish. It’s weird. “Othello” isn’t witty “Hamlet.” The play is not even as funny as “Macbeth.” Maybe it’s because they’re in the presence of celebrities. But I get the sense that the viewers are searching for something — anything — to grasp onto on this long, chilly ride they maxed out their credit cards to sit through. And they choose laughter. Laughs in lieu of gasps or tears.

I howled all the way through Jacobs-Jenkins’ clever and venomous spin on the story: This particular bombshell-littered house belongs to the Jaspers, a powerful black political dynasty whose controversies and scandals come down faster than the blizzard outside their window. If your family is anything like them, I’d recommend emancipation.

Stanley and Blanche are gunpowder and match. And while a drummer pounds upstage, sometimes joined by an ethereal singer, explosive Ferran and Mescal go thrillingly head-to-head. I can’t remember Mescal ever being so loud before. The Oscar nominee is typically soft-spoken, bashful almost, in so many films and TV shows. He was even polite in “Gladiator.” But the guy wails “Stellaaaaa!” here with the roar of a provoked grizzly. Ferran, meanwhile, is mesmerizing as she descends further into madness.

Well, at the Broadway show “All In: Comedy About Love,” the audience does the very same with their hard-earned money — and loses big-time. Ticket-buyers are being charged as much as $800 a pop some weeks for what is little more than a sedate staged reading of New Yorker cartoon captions uttered by celebrities.

Much of “Tammy Faye” is uncomfortable. Lynne Page’s ‘80s grab-bag choreography is me at a wedding. Staging aside, narratively the whole point of the Bakkers is largely missed. Go in cold, and you’ll leave with no idea about how famous Jim and Tammy were or why you’ve just sat through a musical about them.Where Graham and Shears try to force in some 2024 depth is an overwrought thesis on how television evangelicals impacted American politics and forged the path of the modern-day Republican Party.

The entire production leaves you breathless. We’re transfixed from the moment the giant video screen — this staging’s chandelier — descends from the rafters bearing the image of actor Tom Francis’ dangerous eyes as struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis drives toward his doom.

It’s not the playwright’s best (that’s “Jerusalem,” which Mark Rylance was explosive in on Broadway) or his grandest (that’d be “The Ferryman”). But “Hills” has an appealing haunted atmosphere, even if the ghosts aren’t specters, but traumas. And in its dreamy third act, the play distinguishes itself from the many, many dramas about kids caught in the web of their parent’s pipe dream.

The musical, a patchwork quilt of discordant styles that belongs in a box, becomes the latest in a long line of adaptions of this beloved novel to mess up a story that’s far more satisfying to read and imagine. It completely misses its intoxicating atmosphere, meaning and layered characters. One of the rare smart decisions of the night is the casting of Noah J. Ricketts as our man Nick Carraway, a modest Midwesterner who moves to a Long Island cottage in “new money” West Egg.

“Mary Jane” is not a vehicle for showboating, or some explosive Mom vs. Society battle, and rightly so. Herzog’s drama is calm, and made up of slice-of-life conversations familiar to anybody who’s been a caretaker or knows one. And at times, I found director Anne Kauffman’s production too quiet for the Friedman, intimate though the venue is. Even a simmering show needs to build, and the middle of “Mary Jane” leans static.

Yet the pricey bells and whistles distract from what is a so-so, overly dreary staging that is often undermined by its own overwrought machinations. Undeniably slick and handsome, this two-hour-and-forty-five-minute musical feels much longer than it should. That’s because, bizarrely for a production that is so determined to get its audience wasted, it’s hesitant to have too much fun itself.

Along with choreographer Camille A. Brown, whose dances burst with unrestrained youth and Manhattan chutzpah, the director gives Ninth Ave’s unique bustle energy without resorting to old cliches. It’s a show that’s true to its city. And at the end, when the cast sings the lyric “concrete jungle where dreams are made of,” the crowd walks out into Times Square fully believing it.

Still, “Stereophonic,” directed by Daniel Aukin, is undeniably transportive, and it’s a pleasure to be immersed in this creatively robust decade for a while. David Zinn’s neat set is the control room of a recording studio, with a soundproof booth upstage behind glass. It casually evokes the ‘70s without going full-blown “Brady Bunch” kitchen.

Unfortunately, having garishly blared open Sunday night at the Longacre Theatre, it’s far too late for the creators to start over again on a blank canvas. And so, the ugly splatter that audiences are left to parse is a ridiculous two-and-half-hour Eurovision act with stratospheric delusions of grandeur.

“Water” has more exuberance than wit; more catchphrases than character. While the second half lumbers along like a pre-flight Dumbo, the wrong scenes and songs are given too much breathing room and important events such as, you know, murders and catastrophic stampedes are raced through to curtain call. Although “Water” is a love story, that becomes one of its less appealing aspects.

Outrageously funny Mindelle plays Celine as an omniscient narrator who, we learn during a Titanic museum tour at the start, is actually 150 years old and was onboard the ship with our favorite characters. Sure! She pops in every so often to gloriously upstage everybody else. Mindelle’s performance is a sensational, hilarious and deranged turn that rises above a 2 a.m. Las Vegas impression. Yes, if you are a big Celine fan like, ahem, a certain tabloid newspaper critic is, you’ll howl at the actress’ borrowed Celine-isms from old viral YouTube videos and banter from the “A New Day Live” album. But the performance — conversational, occasionally improvised and quite affectionate — is more than mockery.

And, yes, Michael Mayer's production - with its blood and death set to bouncy tunes - is still hilarious. Borle's dentist leaves you gasping for breath when he inhales nitrous oxide for kicks. His erratic energy is that of Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining.' And there are laughs to be had at how perfectly big Audrey II (voiced by Kingsley Leggs) is puppeteered as Leggs croons 'Feed Me.'

More than once during “Oh, Mary!,” which opened Thursday night off-Broadway, it hits you: How am I laughing so uncontrollably at a play about Mary Todd Lincoln? Yes, Abraham Lincoln’s wife is the subject of this riotous new comedy at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, written by and starring Cole Escola, that definitely does not aim to teach your anything or challenge your brain cells. Rather, the campy “Oh, Mary!” is too busy daring your lungs to stay full of air for more than a few seconds. Like the Confederacy, your lungs lose.