Jonathan Mandell — Theater Critic

The producers apparently believe that showstoppers sell a show. But it’s unreasonable to expect cast members, no matter how capable, to deliver one number after another that outshine the iconic performances with which Sondheim-lovers in New York are well-acquainted. And there’s that problem of a lack of context. Too many of these numbers, revved up from nothing, start to make the revue feel like a singing competition. Everybody is supposed to be old friends, no?

Little of it feels original, and none of it feels necessary. But just like actual Betty Boop merchandise — the many toys, t-shirts, scrunchies and socks covered with her image – ‘Boop!’ doesn’t have to feel necessary; it’s fun. And the main reason for that is Jasmine Amy Rogers.

Little of it feels original, and none of it feels necessary. But just like actual Betty Boop merchandise — the many toys, t-shirts, scrunchies and socks covered with her image – ‘Boop!’ doesn’t have to feel necessary; it’s fun. And the main reason for that is Jasmine Amy Rogers.

Little of it feels original, and none of it feels necessary. But just like actual Betty Boop merchandise — the many toys, t-shirts, scrunchies and socks covered with her image – ‘Boop!’ doesn’t have to feel necessary; it’s fun. And the main reason for that is Jasmine Amy Rogers.

But novelty and cleverness are not enough to turn “The Last Five Years” into a fully realized musical, and neither is Brown’s score, although many of the songs, ranging from catchy to lilting, have become beloved singalong and audition material. What has made “The Last Five Years” hold together as more than a pleasant-enough collection of show songs was a credible sense of connection between the two characters. Of the several productions of the show that I’ve seen, the one in 2021 achieved this best — through the staging, which circumvented the script by placing the two together in the scenes, and through the palpable chemistry of the two performers, Nicholas Edwards and Nasia Thomas (who, intriguingly, is the standby for Cathy in the current production.)

If there’s not much change in content, ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ is transformed by its context. On the night I attended, the audience treated the play like the gathering of the like-minded at a public square, responding to this real-life drama from the 1950s as if a comment on life in America under Donald Trump.

If there’s not much change in content, ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ is transformed by its context. On the night I attended, the audience treated the play like the gathering of the like-minded at a public square, responding to this real-life drama from the 1950s as if a comment on life in America under Donald Trump.

Sarah Snook portrays some 25 characters as well as the narrator in this dazzling and sometimes dizzying stage-and-video adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel, but at the curtain call, she is far from alone: Fourteen other people, all dressed in black, take their bows with her...They, and especially video designer David Bergman, also help turn writer and director Kip Williams’s adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” into a visually clever, technically sophisticated production for which “solo play” feels like an inadequate description.

At one point, Malone as the older secretary Hester Leggett sings “Dear Bill,” a sweet ballad in which she’s trying to create a fictional love letter to the fictional dead officer to lend his existence more credibility. It becomes clear she is really thinking about her own love, lost in the war. In a show that works so hard to be entertaining, it’s the song that brings the story home.

At one point, Malone as the older secretary Hester Leggett sings “Dear Bill,” a sweet ballad in which she’s trying to create a fictional love letter to the fictional dead officer to lend his existence more credibility. It becomes clear she is really thinking about her own love, lost in the war. In a show that works so hard to be entertaining, it’s the song that brings the story home.

As a band and a brand, “Buena Vista Social Club” has been gold from the get-go: It was a hit Grammy-winning album that in 1996 had brought together an impromptu group of old-time Cuban musicians into a vintage 1950s recording studio in Havana. The album’s popularity turned some long-forgotten musicians into stars, which led to international tours, an acclaimed 1999 documentary, and then another film 18 years later. In 2023, it became an exciting Off-Broadway musical. “Buena Vista Social Club” is now an even better Broadway musical, opening tonight at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.

Too much of We Had A World is taken up with plaintive anecdotes and petty squabbles. Some of these are amusing. Some exhibit a refreshing self-awareness, such as the time when Josh in college was irrationally ranting against his mother for having bought him a mirror when she noticed the one in his dorm was broken. But the scenes play out over three decades (more in a hodgepodge than with a clear chronology), and start to feel not exactly redundant, but static.

Andrew Scott is rarely lugubrious, and never stilted in the roles. He’s sometimes riveting. He is almost always busy. Busy changing voices and accents, bouncing a tennis ball, taking on and off hip sunglasses, playing a piano, jumping on and off a swing, smoking and not smoking, drinking an entire bottle of vodka, shooting a rifle.

Slowly we learn what the issues are in “Grangeville,” the latest play by Samuel D. Hunter that is, much like his others, quiet, insightful, ultimately moving. If your relationship with a sibling is complicated – and whose isn’t? – it hits home. At the same time, though, the production, which opens tonight at Signature Theater, might require a little more work on the part of the audience, thanks to a few challenging choices by both Hunter and director Jack Serio.

That awesome and fascinating tree turns “Redwood” into a kind of poetry, albeit a lyrical poem rather than a narrative one. Which is a sensitive way of saying, no, “Redwood” is not a wholly satisfying Broadway musical, despite those striking visuals, as well some unusual vertical choreography and the glorious voices of the five talented cast members, who make the most of Broadway newcomer Kate Diaz’s 19 mostly serviceable musical numbers.

“Still” largely works for me, in no small measure because of the two performances. These are pros. They make the most of Romeo’s crackling back-and-forth. Every pause, every switch in tone feels just right; their timing is exquisite.The timing of the production as a whole, however, is more problematic for me. Colt Coeur produced the same play ten months ago at a different New York venue, with the same creative team but a different cast. Much has happened in the last ten months – must has happened in the last ten days! – to make most New York theatergoers surely view Mark’s arguments on behalf of “moderate” Republicans as outdated and delusional.

There are then three increasingly dystopian scenes in the future, before the one displaying the artifacts.After that, “The Antiquities” backtracks, going back to the previous stories and finishing them up. This is surely well-meaning, an effort to give us fuller stories rather than just a theme, and some of the individual stories do wrap up in a satisfying way. But it all started to feel too much. “The Antiquities,” which imagines a future in which human beings are no longer welcome by the creatures they created, started to outwear its own.

It is possible, I suppose – if you know nothing and/or care nothing about the real-life Tennessee Williams or Marlon Brando – to find “Kowalski” a fully satisfying theatrical experience. This would largely be because of Brandon Flynn. Flynn is now best-known for his role in the TV series “13 Reasons Why,” but I remember him vividly portraying the kidnapped child at the center of “Kid Victory,” the 2017 John Kander and Greg Pierce musical. Flynn’s performance moved us to identify with his character’s suffering, and joy, and confusion.The writing in “Kowalski” doesn’t get inside the characters in the same way, and when Flynn first appears, my main reaction was to size him up based on how accurately his voice and manner and appearance correlated to the real Brando. But by the end, his performance seemed less an impersonation, and more an argument for the power of a magnetic actor.

Those awards, and the move now to Broadway, where it’s opening tonight at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theater, puts the pressure of heightened expectations on “English.” And, although only three years have passed, we arguably have entered a new era, politically and culturally. The result is that “English,” transferring essentially intact — including the same first-rate cast (all now making their Broadway debuts) – plays differently for me. It’s still a lovely, low-key comedy about learning a second language. It just doesn’t feel as deep as it did in 2022. There is too much left unexplained, too much unsaid.

The marquee says it all: “AudraGypsy.” With less brass and more heart, Audra McDonald’s distinctive portrayal of Madam Rose, the mother of all stage mothers, is the reason to see this sixth Broadway production of the 1959 musical inspired by the memoir of Gypsy Rose Lee, the (s)mothered childhood vaudevillian turned famous adult stripper. Some people have called “Gypsy” the greatest musical ever written. “But some people ain’t me” — to quote a Stephen Sondheim lyric from one of Jule Styne’s many tuneful melodies in the show, which opened tonight at the Majestic.

“Eureka Day” begins as a stock satire of the painstakingly earnest progressives at a small private elementary school in Berkeley, California, leading to one of the most hilarious scenes of the year, before it settles into a serious, thought-provoking exploration of an alarmingly relevant issue: vaccines. Indeed, despite the stellar cast and director Anne D. Shapiro’s solid direction, the issue has become so newsworthy that Jonathan Spector’s play lands differently now – less comfortably – than when it was first produced in Berkeley in 2018 (the time and place where the play is still set.) What then might have seemed admirably balanced now seems dangerously so.

There is no such clear resolution in “Cult of Love,” and no unambiguous message, although Mark gets a near-sermon towards the end that spells out a possible point to the play. If anything, despite the Christmas carols sung from beginning to end, the playwright seems intent on subverting the formula of the Christmas story. But she replaces it with another formula, that of the dysfunctional family drama. This genre at its best can generate shattering moments and fresh insights, and I kept on expecting “Cult of Love” to deliver them. This is thanks to the one undeniable strength of the production: the fine ensemble acting of the cast, six of whose ten members are making their Broadway debuts.

“Death Becomes Her,” a stylishly macabre Broadway musical comedy about a love/hate triangle, has much the same plot, catty repartee, and even some of the same comically gruesome special effects as the 1992 Meryl Streep/Goldie Hawn/Bruce Willis movie on which it is based. Although not as starry a draw as their cinematic predecessors, Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard and Christopher Sieber — all Broadway favorites — do a fine job in the principal roles, and there are several memorable supporting players. But if I’m being honest, one theater artist stood out for me: Paul Tazewell, the costume designer.

In any case, if the play’s point is unclear, the production has its pleasure, not least seeing Marisa Tomei on stage express an impressive range of emotions, from ecstasy to fury to resignation and regret to… rock n roll. She and Gracie McGraw dance to snippets of original rock music composed for the production by the group BETTY.

In thinking about “Swept Away” afterwards, and casually researching the story, I landed on a fascinating tidbit: The 17-year-old cabin boy who was murdered aboard the Mignonette was named Richard Parker, which is the name that Yann Martel gave to the shipwrecked tiger in “The Life of Pi.” This led me to realize that Martel’s novel, ,turned into a Broadway musical of its own, was one of the many works of literature, theater, movies and music that “Swept Away” evoked for me in one way or another. Among these were Moby Dick, Traffic’s John Barleycorn is Dead, Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, Sting’s The Last Ship, Dylan’s Girl from the North Country. These inadvertent evocations didn’t make me view “Swept Away” as derivative. Rather, it left me aware of the qualities that were in insufficient supply – tension and details and meaning.