Jonathan Mandell — Theater Critic

“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.

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.

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.

Under the direction of David Cromer, the theatrical production expands the one-man movie with a 12-member cast portraying dozens of characters, with dark and fluid staging, and a theatrical flair that even includes some gospel singing (led, no less, by Tony nominee Ephraim Sykes.) But the focus largely stays on Nick. How could it be otherwise, given Adrien Brody’s skill in embodying the storyteller’s gifts of passion, precision, and charm? Brody has won two Oscars for portraying intense characters of great resilience and endurance in the face of unimaginable brutality — Polish pianist Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist (2002) and as Hungarian architect László Tóth in The Brutalist (2024). But he has also exhibited a dry sense of humor in a series of Wes Anderson’s quirky comedies. He brings all this to bear in a performance that goes beyond the thrill of seeing a movie star’s first time on stage.

“Titanique” is probably not meant to inspire reflection about the world we live in. But I was struck by how much the show dips into nostalgia for the 1990s: The blockbuster movie was released in 1997; that was the decade in which Céline Dion reached the peak of her popularity. The musical also has throwaway jokey references involving the 90’s TV series Full House, the movie franchise “Scream,” which began in 1996, the “Super Mario Kart video game, first released in 1992. The 1990s had less inflation, lower prices, less polarization; Americans were far more satisfied with the direction of the country, Can that help explain why so many theatergoers have wanted to escape into “Titanique”?

There are lessons aplenty and breathtaking moments in this production, as in almost any production of “Death of a Salesman” since its debut in 1949. That was just the third year of the Tony Awards, and it won six of them, plus the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The first Broadway revival, 26 years later, didn’t win any Tonys, although George C. Scott was nominated. I don’t know the reasons why the current producers have decided to mount this seventh production of the play on Broadway so soon after the sixth. But surely there is a relevant cautionary lesson right in the play, maybe that line that Biff finally says to Willy about prizes.

That’s the production that’s opening tonight at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theater. Its transfer to Broadway from downtown makes it a different experience, given the symbolic importance of the Great White Way. But the new venue also makes it a different experience in more practical ways, for better and for worse.

The audience gasped almost as frequently as it laughed during the performance I attended of “Becky Shaw,” Gina Gionfriddo’s fierce, funny comedy that revolves around a bad blind date. What audibly startled the audience wasn’t what happens to the characters, which is one disaster after another, all skillfully plotted, but what some of the characters say to one another. In the play’s complicated web of relationships, these characters feel free to deliver what they consider the truth, but what they say often sounds more like insult than insight. That theatergoers are unlikely to wind up dismissing any of these blunt-speaking characters as complete boors is a testament to the playwright’s rich, nuanced writing, and the layered portrayals by the stellar five-member cast, three of whom are making impressive Broadway debuts. “Becky Shaw” is opening tonight at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater on Broadway, one block north and seventeen years after Second Stage’s Off-Broadway production of the play, which has not lost its sting.

Compared to the movie, the playwright has given many of the other characters more lines, backstories and heightened personalities. The head teller Colleen (the always reliable Jessica Hecht) is even more forward and fearless, arguing with her captors, even outright reprimanding them like a dean of discipline (“Is she always like this? With the stick up her ass?” Sonny asks her co-worker plaintively.) Ortiz as the detective is a talkative mensch, the FBI agent Sheldon (Spence Garrett) harshly condescending to him. In general, the production plays up the comedy in the first act — The bank robbers are now far more clownishly inept — which at times feels overdone, as if the creative team is straining to distinguish itself from the movie. Certain scenes also have been altered, mostly to reflect the difference in what’s do-able live on stage versus on film, although David Korins set, which revolves to show the inside and the outside of the bank, largely keeps the action flowing, and the sound design by Cody Spencer fills in for the montage of street scene in the movie.

Conceived and directed by MacArthur “genius” Martha Clarke, who is herself 81, and is best known for her having created a vivid work of dance theater from Hieronymus Bosch’s painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” the play has a script by Beth Henley, Pulitzer-winning playwright of “Crimes of the Heart,” based on Darger’s own writing. It stars John Kelly, an Obie-winning actor and himself a visual artist. Yet despite its near-legendary creative team, its short running time and some moments of visual invention, “Bughouse” failed to keep my interest, much less convince me of Darger’s greatness in “the art brut canon” or anywhere else.

I can see three main reasons why some theatergoers might want to sympathize with the antisemite at the center of the incendiary true incident being dramatized in “Giant.” The man, for one, is Roald Dahl, the children’s book author whose titles (including “Matilda” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) many have read and loved since childhood. Dahl is being portrayed in another virtuoso performance by John Lithgow, the fine eighty-year-old actor who has been able to locate the humanity in such insufferable villains as the Trinity Killer in Dexter, Lord Farquaad in Shrek and Roger Ailes in Bombshell. Then, some might agree with Dahl’s criticism of Israel, which he made four decades ago, but that is even more commonly heard in March of 2026 — that Israel has exhibited “appalling behavior” and exerted “powerful influence over the US treasury [and] over the presidency.”

“Trash” has a plot with several strands, a number of surprises and a couple of meta-theatrical touches, involving all five cast members; much of what unfolds is determined by the audience voting (via the red/yellow cards) at crucial crossroads. It’s a lot to take in; maybe too much. That may be the point; the message that Caverly and Morrill most want to make: Look how much the Deaf have to deal with. If “Trash” is eye-opening for hearing audiences, it is also likely one of the few entertainments that Deaf people can enjoy without compromise. Captions are provided whenever the hearing characters speak in English. Even the music and the sound effects are captioned.

What’s not lost is Radcliffe’s performance. Jonny Donahoe, the co-creator of the show and originator of the role, had experience as a stand-up comedian; he was also a big guy who looks as if he’s about to give you a bear hug. These would not likely be among the top attributes of his Broadway successor in the role. But Daniel Radcliffe is also a witty, energetic and generous host, a cool hand at comedy (as we saw in “Franklin Shepard INC”) and something more. When his character says things like: “If you got all the way through life without ever being heart crushingly depressed, you probably haven’t been paying attention,” the pain he communicates makes it clear that he’s been paying attention.

Luckily, Reddick, director Knud Adams and the rest of the creative team stick to history in some small but satisfying ways – the way the ensemble skates on the roller rink (guided by Baye and Asa’s movement direction), albeit without skates; that Speak & Spell (an actual handheld electronic educational toy introduced by Texas Instruments in 1978), and, above all, the cinnamon-flavored jawbreakers invented in 1954 that Meek gobbles up from the neighborhood candy shop – the Atomic Fireballs.

Patrick Lazour and Daniel Lazour, the brother songwriting team who call themselves The Lazours, have composed twelve songs for their show. Eight of them have a choral part for the audience; the cast members hand out a booklet with our parts, and Robin de Jesús serves as our choral director for the refrains, while one or more of the other cast members sing the verses, accompanied by Kris Saint-Louis on guitar and Alex Bechtel on piano. Most of the songs have generic lyrics. This doesn’t necessarily make them less powerful. It was terribly moving to sing, over and over again (after Yasmine learns of the results of a biopsy)

It might baffle people to learn that Amber Ruffin, celebrated comedy talk show writer and host as well as Tony-nominated librettist for “Some Like It Hot,” spent a dozen years with two co-creators putting together “Bigfoot.’ I wondered whether it was the creative team’s reputation that drew in performers with such impressive track records – Henson, Tony nominee for Mean Girls, and the last Elf; Crystal Lucas-Perry, Tony nominee for Ain’t No Mo, and a revelation as John Adams in 1776; Jason Tam, six-time Broadway veteran, last seen as the Squip in Be More Chill. They do a fine job with parts that are just not as good as their best material. I remember when Alex Moffat, SNL alumnus, made his Broadway debut in “The Cottage” three years ago, how his aberrant acrobatics were among the highlights of that comedy. But in a scene in “Bigfoot” that sounds similar – the mayor keeps on shooting himself by accident all over his body – it was not so much a moment of low comedy, as just a low moment.

Much of “Chinese Republicans” provides a deepening and ultimately poignant portrait of four distinct characters, made all the more palpable by a first-rate cast. At the same time, through subplots or brief scenes or just a throwaway line here or there, the play touches lightly on a bracingly wide range of topical issues – the corrupting nature of corporate culture, anti-Asian violence, the costs of assimilation, female camaraderie and competition, sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace, abortion, immigration anxiety.

Directed fluidly by Shelley Butler with a minimal design, the production relies on ensemble acting; both Heidi Armbruster and Matthew Saldívar portraying multiple characters (among others, she’s Josh’s mother and a rabbi; he’s Josh’s co-worker and a neurologist), and the four grandparents moonlight as the crowd in scenes of a support group and others. But “The Reservoir” is inescapably the Noah Galvin show, and he makes the most of it. Galvin (best-known for Dear Evan Hansen and the short-lived TV series “The Real McNeal”) has fine comic timing, charm, and physical grace. But he is most impressive for the moments that his face registers, briefly but persuasively, Josh’s pain and sorrow.

But the frame of the play is the train ride, and the longer it went on, the more it felt to me like a children’s adventure story, albeit one not suitable for children. (The production is recommended for age 13+.) This is largely, I think, because the dialogue is neither as natural nor as precise as the physical movement, and because each of the children is a type.

The awkwardness between father and adult daughter is a sound insight, but did we need quite so much banal chatter? These scenes might have been more effective had Shawkat portrayed Mae more expressively; as less of a cipher.