Jonathan Mandell — Theater Critic

These are the moments that made it worth sitting through a production whose chaos, for all its inventive variation, requires some patience. The performers demonstrated an endurance far more impressive than my own; As they smothered each other with heavy mattresses, jumped on top of one another, rushed up and down stairs, it started to hurt my back just to watch them.

Much of the specific conversation in “Kramer/Fauci” is now out-of-date; little more than two years later, the development of protease inhibitors completely hanged the landscape of AIDS treatment. (It would have been useful to have a fact-based note in the program, updating their conversation.) But even the dozen callers into the program, whose comments range from passionate to supportive to ignorant, provide a glimpse into a parallel era of polarization over public health, even while actress Jennifer Seastone recites those comments in that chicken costume, or on roller skates.

If the way Shakespeare saved Jacob Ming-Trent’s life seems mostly by giving him a livelihood, and perhaps more amorphously an identity and a purpose, there is at least one tangible life lesson that he attributes to the Bard. It’s what at the end softens the harsh portraits and grim stories in the play: “Shakespeare usually ends his comedies with an act of forgiveness, and my life has been a comedy of errors. I’ve been walking around thinking nobody’s ever been hurt like me.” His ability to understand that others have hurt too – to believe in sweet mercy as nobility’s true badge that is reason (along with Basquiat, james Baldwin, and Biggie Small, and the teacher that made him read Henry the Fifth) that “I’m able to stand in front of you today to tell this story.”

The Broadway version has a longer running time, a more elaborate set and extravagant costume design, and a starrier cast than the original Off-Broadway production. But it also somehow feels slighter than it did when I saw it in 2017. I don’t think this has anything to do with it being swallowed up in a Broadway house more than twice the size of the original venue. It is more likely because Jocelyn Bioh has in the decade since written such acclaimed plays as “ “Merry Wives”,’ the prize-winning adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy that reopened the Delacorte in 2021, and especially“Jaja’s African Hair Salon,” the 2024 Tony-nominated play that brought us into the swirling world of struggling West African immigrants in Harlem. “Jaja” is also a comedy, but with more complexity and higher stakes, setting up expectations that this earlier play doesn’t quite meet.

Before the show began, an usher outside the auditorium pointed to a display that included an optional card to fill out – “Name a movement, gathering, or moment that is beautiful about America” – and two wicker chairs with “America the Beautiful” cushions festooned with some of the responses that audience members had already written. There was everything from the Knicks win bringing New Yorkers together to No Kings rallies to America’s rivers. It felt almost like a counterpoint to what unfolded on stage. Perhaps, depending on what happens in November, she can bring it all on stage in a sequel.

Lupita Nyong’o is a person of great natural grace, which might give a different spin on A than the actors who will succeed her. In the face of the lawyer’s blunt lack of interest, or the friend who tells her to move on, she seems less than humiliated, putting on a face that’s not quite dignity; something closer to bland courtesy. But there are moments in “Pre-Existing Condition” – moments of fury — that transcend any particular performance, and that defeat the playwright’s apparent effort to make this a study, rather than a howl.

But the more salient point about Trump’s appointees, both male and female, is that they are utterly unfit for office, while nobody questioned the professional competence of the women Clinton nominated. This makes the core plot of “An American Daughter” feel less than timely.

But one leaves “The Vessel” with the impression that the playwright felt required to put together a 90-minute play, but didn’t know how to fill it. So we get Viggo awkwardly flirting with Missy, which goes nowhere, and dissertations on dolphins, and on how pasture-raised chickens are better than merely cage-free chickens, and various long rants, and moments of stunned silence that are meant to be poignant. Only the one-named Sofonyas has the acting chops consistently to make the best of these digressions.

The revival of this 12-year-old English play about a closeted footballer might seem well-timed to take advantage of the heightened interest both in gay athletes (thanks to a certain TV series) and in the world of soccer (coming as it does in the tailwind of this year’s World Cup.) Jason (Matisse Ratron-Neal) and Ade (Terry Bell) start off as 17-year-old striving strikers on the eve of a career-making or -breaking match. But “The Pass” is something of a tease — sexy, twisty, suspenseful, but also downbeat and misleading. The play takes place over twelve years entirely in hotel rooms, and, although it is full of throwaway allusions to soccer (mentions of Ronaldo or “Becks in the States), it doesn’t ultimately have much compelling to say about the sport. It also doesn’t offer insights about closeted gay life, or about celebrity, that we haven’t seen better expressed elsewhere.

But playwright Benedict Lombe, whose debut play four years ago, “Lava,” won the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, clearly wants “Shifters” to be something deeper and more distinctive than a typical romcom. She attempts this in various ways, some more successful than others.

There seems an effort in the musical to imply a similar transformation through psychedelic elements in Tal Yarden’s scenic and video design. But I detected no such effort in the score. There are a couple of cheerfully over-the-top musical numbers that I found outright annoying, but the score is mostly quite pleasant. Compared to the sounds of the 60s, however, it feels positively generic.

After leaving New York City Center, I looked again at the original French movie, which is available on Amazon Prime (there is also a 1996 American movie adaptation, The Birdcage, with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.) There is something of a surreal tone to the presentation of Albin and Georges world,as if the filmmaker acknowledges it to be upside-down from reality. But also in this film version, it is not the son’s idea to have his parents pretend to be straight; his girlfriend inadvertently traps him into going along. This makes more sense to me, especially if this is now supposed to be taking place in the present. How can we be asked to accept a plot premised on such a cruel act by such an inexplicably callow young man? That same son, as it happens, offers one of the bright moments in a production that is colorfully designed, and carefully tuned, but is still finding its legs.

“A Woman Among Women” is not just an exercise in transposition; it takes on a life of its own. When I saw this production in Brooklyn in 2024, I wondered whether I enjoyed it more because it was the first show in the Bushwick Starr’s new permanent venue — clean, open, well-lit, welcoming, yet an adventure (at least for me) to get to, on a dark and forbidding-looking block. I’ll admit that there is less of an adventure to go to a show at Lincoln Center. But as in Bushwick, under Sarah Hughes direction, the cast seems just to be hanging out in a backyard, sitting right next to members of the audience; they are able to seem casual during most of their time on stage, and playful during sudden, joyful musical interludes, as if they’re just living their lives. But they are at the same time persuasively inhabiting their characters. This makes a difference when the set suddenly transforms into something more formal, and the characters confront one another, revealing the kind of intractable moral dilemma to which Jonas is most drawn — which is how (as she tells us in her note) she and Miller “most align as artists.”

One might argue that this comic routine is an oblique effort to be part of the show’s effort to comment on masculinity. But there are more direct ways, some of them non-verbal. A couple of times, Xhloe as Dale wipes his nose with his knuckle. This simple, precisely observed gesture winds up illuminating the entire macho culture of the American West.

“Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody” is of course exploiting the popularity of the TV series about two rival hockey players who over six episodes late last year had hot, sweaty sex then fell in love. And yes, it’s a campy show of raunchy puns and ill-fitting wigs, served with a side of beefcake. But the Ilya and Shane on stage are Broadway veterans Jay Armstrong Johnson and Jimin Moon, and they not only offer spot-on impersonations of the cocky Russian and the amiable Canadian; there are moments when their talent helps turn this lark into satisfying — even serious — musical theater. But only moments. I doubt that much of “Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody” would greatly appeal to anybody who isn’t already at least acquainted with the series.

“KENREX” may not be as poor a fit for American audiences as previous UK efforts to put American dysfunction on stage (such as “Enron” and “Tammy Faye”), but Holden’s rocking performance does tend to put the spotlight more on him than the people of Skidmore.

The play gets its title from a century-old blues song by WC Handy, which is inspired by the true story of a man named Joe Turney. At the turn of the twentieth century, he would snatch Black men to work on a plantation, in effect turning them back into slaves. Joe Turney was the brother of the governor of Tennessee, a state that currently allows local officers to assist ICE in arresting people during routine traffic patrols. This second Broadway production of August Wilson’s 1988 play, in other words, is well-timed. It’s also well-cast.

But this history of audience involvement – not just interaction but parallel creation – is surely the main reason this show is still around. One can still enjoy “The Rocky Horror Show,” especially Richard O’Brien’s 15 songs, most of which are catchy. But its shock value has largely worn off (at least for the people who would be interested in attending), and, let’s be honest, without that, what is there? The plot is a jumble, the characters are with little exception deliberately shallow archetypes, the employment of horror movie and sci fi tropes is not especially clever or funny or spooky. The show’s message, to the extent that there is an explicit one, is pablum (“Don’t dream it. Be it,” which doesn’t resonate any more deeply because the Roundabout management has placed it in neon in the lobby.) “The Rocky Horror Show” is, above all, an excuse for a party – or, more precisely for me at Studio 54, the triggering of the memory of having enjoyed the audience-created party at a showing of Rocky Horror.

“Beaches, A New Musical” opened tonight at Broadway’s Majestic Theater thirty-eight years after the movie “Beaches” left critics largely unimpressed (“a movie completely constructed… out of cliches,” Roger Ebert wrote), but won over the public, with its story of a lifelong, loving friendship between two women, Cee Cee and her polar opposite Hillary (portrayed by Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey.) It’s possible that the stage version (starring Jessica Vosk and Kelli Barrett) will also find its audience. But it’s hard to see why we needed it.

“Beaches, A New Musical” opened tonight at Broadway’s Majestic Theater thirty-eight years after the movie “Beaches” left critics largely unimpressed (“a movie completely constructed… out of cliches,” Roger Ebert wrote), but won over the public, with its story of a lifelong, loving friendship between two women, Cee Cee and her polar opposite Hillary (portrayed by Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey.) It’s possible that the stage version (starring Jessica Vosk and Kelli Barrett) will also find its audience. But it’s hard to see why we needed it.

For the record, the playwright also said in that interview that he lives in a Victorian home in the relatively affluent Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where his wife served on the board of the local neighborhood association. Whether or not it was real conflicts in the past that informed the hilarious and pointed squabbling in “The Balusters,” it won’t be too surprising if the play causes some squabbling in the future.

Five years later, that first season of “Schmigadoon” has itself been turned into a Broadway musical, opening tonight at the Nederlander with little changed. If there’s an entirely new cast (with the exception of Ann Harada, who is reprising the part of the mayor’s wife), and it’s no longer six episodes of thirty minutes apiece (its total running time is now about 45 minutes shorter), the stage show retains co-creator Cinco Paul’s songs, characters, plot, most of the dialogue verbatim, and much of the choreography by Christopher Gattelli, who is now also the director. There are different designers, but the stage show has the same look as the TV series: cheery, pastel-colored, painted-on. Did this need to be brought to the stage? Maybe not, but it was probably inevitable, and I’m glad for it.

Five years later, that first season of “Schmigadoon” has itself been turned into a Broadway musical, opening tonight at the Nederlander with little changed. If there’s an entirely new cast (with the exception of Ann Harada, who is reprising the part of the mayor’s wife), and it’s no longer six episodes of thirty minutes apiece (its total running time is now about 45 minutes shorter), the stage show retains co-creator Cinco Paul’s songs, characters, plot, most of the dialogue verbatim, and much of the choreography by Christopher Gattelli, who is now also the director. There are different designers, but the stage show has the same look as the TV series: cheery, pastel-colored, painted-on. Did this need to be brought to the stage? Maybe not, but it was probably inevitable, and I’m glad for it.

If Noel Coward’s play can be credited as proto-feminist for depicting women with sexual desire that is just as strong as a man’s (certainly stronger than their husbands’), could director Scott Ellis be trying to prove that graceful, beautiful actresses are equal to any male clown in their ability to plotz?

An odd feature of the set is that the old-fashioned back porch during scene changes is suddenly outlined in lights that travel along rectangular path — the window frames, and doorways, etc. This may be an effort to evoke modern tech (much like the design of the recent play “Data”) and thus give the production a more up-to-date feel. But it’s the casting that helps bring “Proof” genuinely up to date. Since the play’s original run, we’ve become more aware real-life pioneers, such as in the the 2016 book and movie “Hidden Figures,” based on the true story of the accomplishments made by, and discrimination faced by, Katherine Johnson, a mathematician and two colleagues, all of them Black women, who worked for NASA. It feels worth mentioning that, if there is such a thing as a famous mathematician these days (presently alive, as opposed to, say, Pythagoras or Euclid, or Isaac Newton) it would Terence Tao, a naturalized American citizen born of Chinese immigrant parents in Australia, who is a professor at UCLA.