Jonathan Mandell — Theater Critic

The last time “Elf: The Musical” was on Broadway, during the holiday season a dozen years ago, I saw an autism-friendly performance of it. This turned out to be a great way to view this stage adaptation of the 2003 Will Ferrell movie, since my attention was directed almost entirely to the dexterity and decency with which the cast delighted the sometimes-unpredictable audience. That fond memory began fading before the end of the first song of this new revival, which opens tonight at the Marquis Theater for another holiday run.

The last time “Elf: The Musical” was on Broadway, during the holiday season a dozen years ago, I saw an autism-friendly performance of it. This turned out to be a great way to view this stage adaptation of the 2003 Will Ferrell movie, since my attention was directed almost entirely to the dexterity and decency with which the cast delighted the sometimes-unpredictable audience. That fond memory began fading before the end of the first song of this new revival, which opens tonight at the Marquis Theater for another holiday run.

“We Live in Cairo” itself doesn’t seem to have an end – or, rather, it has several. Most of Act 3 feels unnecessary. Despite this misstep, there is great value in the deep dive into Egyptian history and politics. The specific arguments among the characters are often, in effect, resonant debates over the limits and requirements of democracy.

My inner English teacher is grateful to director Sam Gold for drawing a younger crowd (voluntarily, eagerly!) to Shakespeare. The production sometimes thrilled my outer theatergoer too. Sometimes, but not always. There are downsides to Gold’s presenting the tale of star-crossed lovers primarily through youthful energy. This is most apparent after intermission, when the action turns to quiet gravity and grief, and Shakespeare’s words matter more. The cast’s relative lack of stage experience is manifest in a flattening of both the poetry and the tragedy.

Despite a fine cast and some good laughs, three hours is too long for what “Hold On To Me Darling” winds up being, which is a strange, slight if appealing comedy that strains to be pointed and poignant.

Running parallel to Finnigan’s explication of thousands of years of human history is a moment-by-moment account of out-of-control fires in 2019 surrounding his hometown of Canberra that threatened his best friend and his family. This didn’t really achieve the tension and suspense that it was clearly meant to inject into “Deep History.” But it did not need to; members of the audience already have tension aplenty from the current news reports full of climate emergencies.

Kennedy seems to be attempting something poignant and hopeful, close in tone to Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” an unlikely connection between two regular people; or perhaps even Samuel D. Hunter’s “A Case for the Existence of God,” which explores the extraordinary that exists within the sadness of the ordinary, the cosmic that can be revealed in the everyday. The production even has the right director to effect such a tone: Cromer helmed Hunter’s play Off-Broadway, and achieved something similar in the memorable 2009 Off Broadway production of “Our Town.”

No, there is no direct connection. Yes, “Yellow Face” is specific to the Asian-American experience, and much of it (the first two-thirds) happens just within the theater world. But the misunderstanding, hate, fear, suspicion, and outrage surrounding issues of identity seem to have taken center stage in this country. This might well make audiences find new relevance in Hwang’s comedy, which is opening tonight at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theater. Mixing fact with fantasy, “Yellow Face” is as thoughtful as it is playful, not the self-indulgent autobiography that “DHH” himself calls it in the play itself – one of its many mischievous meta-theatrical touches.

“Good Bones,” by James Ljames, the Pulitzer-winning author of “Fat Ham,” is essentially a debate about gentrification, with sharply different views expressed by the characters, and also, perhaps unintentionally, by the set – which winds up the most persuasive of the arguments, and is frankly the freshest aspect of the production.

“McNeal” is a great showcase for Robert Downey Jr., making his Broadway debut as the novelist Jacob McNeal, who is unraveling just at the moment of his greatest acclaim. But Downey also seems a vehicle by which playwright Ayad Akhtar attempts to address some age-old questions about the creative process, with a new twist:

The problem is not that the story is familiar, although in many ways it is; the overbearing stage mother overseeing dated routines (Madame Rose in “Gypsy,” anyone?) It’s that Butterworth’s three previous productions were so memorable. “The Hills of California” doesn’t have a “once-in-a-lifetime” performance like Mark Rylance’s in “Jerusalem” (2011.) “The Ferryman,” which won the Tony for Best Play in 2019, offered not just an epic connection to the real-life Troubles in Belfast; it featured a live baby, bunny, and goose.

This mix works best when past and present exist side by side (by side), such as when Danny Hayward performs the song “Wilkommen” from “Cabaret.” He is first an elegant Joel Grey in 1966 (“You would adore/Our catchy score/and beg for more”), then strips off his tuxedo to portray Alan Cumming in suspenders and black cap (“My show was dark/As a black hearse/But scream in pain/Eddie Redmayne/Is even worse”), then strips even further and sticks on a stupid party hat and yellow kitchen gloves (“I’m Eddie Redmayne/And I have no charm/I will repulse you/Sniff my underarm – and lick it.”) As in most of the funniest parodies in the show, it’s the costumes designed by Dustin Cross and wigs by Ian Joseph most likely to provoke a laugh-out-loud reaction.

This mix works best when past and present exist side by side (by side), such as when Danny Hayward performs the song “Wilkommen” from “Cabaret.” He is first an elegant Joel Grey in 1966 (“You would adore/Our catchy score/and beg for more”), then strips off his tuxedo to portray Alan Cumming in suspenders and black cap (“My show was dark/As a black hearse/But scream in pain/Eddie Redmayne/Is even worse”), then strips even further and sticks on a stupid party hat and yellow kitchen gloves (“I’m Eddie Redmayne/And I have no charm/I will repulse you/Sniff my underarm – and lick it.”) As in most of the funniest parodies in the show, it’s the costumes designed by Dustin Cross and wigs by Ian Joseph most likely to provoke a laugh-out-loud reaction.

It shouldn’t be a terrible surprise that Farrow and LuPone, the ultimate pros with a combined total of 117 years experience as professional performers, keep our attention at all times. It may well be that our appreciation comes as much from memories of their great roles from the past, as from these characters, who are neither greatly nuanced, nor roll-on-the-floor hilarious, although they have their moments. It seems fitting that Bob Crowley’s set of an airy Iowa house feels unfinished, like an outline of a house, or one under construction.

“Once Upon A Mattress” opened tonight for its third turn on Broadway, with Sutton Foster’s performance as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone the same goofy and intense workout that proved a draw earlier this year in a two-week run of the 1959 musical comedy as part of the Encores! concert series at New York City Center. The production, which has replaced four of the eight principal cast members, is otherwise largely unchanged now that it has transferred to the Hudson Theater. It is still tuneful, fun, well-sung. But it plays differently for me now. On Broadway, it feels like high school.

The playwright can’t seem to decide whether “The Meeting: The Interpreter” is about the meeting or about the life-story of the interpreter (hence the awkward title) – or for that matter about human rights abuses in Russia, or about the relationship between the interpreter and the journalist, or about the continuing threat to American democracy. She doesn’t even seem sure it should be a play: “The Meeting: The Interpreter” ends with an “Epilogue” — words projected onto a screen, some twenty paragraphs’ worth – summing up the Mueller Report (which wasn’t mentioned at all on stage), as well as reports from the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee (without mentioning the Trump Tower meeting and how it figures in), and telling us at length what’s happened to some of the people involved (“Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016…”)

The playwright can’t seem to decide whether “The Meeting: The Interpreter” is about the meeting or about the life-story of the interpreter (hence the awkward title) – or for that matter about human rights abuses in Russia, or about the relationship between the interpreter and the journalist, or about the continuing threat to American democracy. She doesn’t even seem sure it should be a play: “The Meeting: The Interpreter” ends with an “Epilogue” — words projected onto a screen, some twenty paragraphs’ worth – summing up the Mueller Report (which wasn’t mentioned at all on stage), as well as reports from the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee (without mentioning the Trump Tower meeting and how it figures in), and telling us at length what’s happened to some of the people involved (“Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016…”)

This twist apparently disturbs me more than other theatergoers, even those who agree it is misguided. But to me it fits into a pattern I’ve noticed among emerging playwrights that arguably reflects the pernicious influence of film and TV. The play is full of tension, and twists, in a way that reminded me of several plays over the past few years – such as Small Engine Repair by John Pollano, Office Hour by Julia Cho, Blackbird by David Harrower – that offered shock for shock’s sake. Ironically, the effect of “Job” on the audience feels analogous to something that Loyd warns happens to people who spend too much time with their smart phones — the “slow drip of dopamine” that stimulates them with sensation but stops them from thinking.

I’m not sure whether I’ve done justice to these scenes or, conversely, told you too much. For what it’s worth, the cast is game, and the design is meticulous — right down to those yellow wristbands.

“N/A” may not be a political play for the ages. As the playwright himself acknowledges, it’s only “lightly imagined.” It doesn’t quite go anywhere. The ending feels almost arbitrary. Nothing is really resolved. But isn’t that exactly where we are right now?

“N/A” may not be a political play for the ages. As the playwright himself acknowledges, it’s only “lightly imagined.” It doesn’t quite go anywhere. The ending feels almost arbitrary. Nothing is really resolved. But isn’t that exactly where we are right now?

Samm-Art Williams was born in Burgaw, North Carolina seventy-eight years ago, and died in that same small rural town last month; he liked to tell people he was “just a country boy.” Actually, though, in between his birth and his death, Williams lived large in the big city – an actor in Hollywood movies, executive producer of the hit TV series “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” and a playwright who was best-known for “Home,” which was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Play after it transferred from The Negro Ensemble Company to Broadway in 1980. “Home,” a story about a son of the South who not-so-briefly loses his way, is opening tonight on Broadway in a revival directed by Kenny Leon; Williams died four days before its first preview.

I gained a whole new understanding of “The Three Little Piggies” at the end of Dave Malloy’s latest sing-through musical theater piece, which has a lively score and a gifted cast, but largely falls short of its effort — seemingly inspired by Sondheim’s approach in “Into The Woods” — to say something significant about life during the pandemic. Still, the ending is a revelation.

Taube eventually takes up as a personal mission to contact and convince other relatives, as it turns out, to little avail. The scenes with these others, in avoidance or in denial, are among the most difficult – until the end, when the show moves from this album, to a different set of photographs. These are among the very few taken of the Jews at the camp, and includes testimony by one of the survivors who is pictured in one of them, alongside her family members who did not survive. It is as if Moisés Kaufman, who is the son of Holocaust survivors, and his co-writer Amanda Gronich, shared some of the initial concerns of the Holocaust museum staff: A play about the Holocaust, even one that focuses on its perpetrators, cannot completely exclude its victims.

There is near total overlap with the queer love story, involving Ben Cook as Carl, Henry’s small town friend and first love; Gaby Diaz as Shelby, Carl’s first love; and Ahmad Simmons as Douglas, Henry’s big-city mature love. If love suffuses the tale, it is as much about risk, adventure, loss and grief. This overwhelming jumble of emotions is expressed through an impressive synthesis of classical, modern and street choreography, accompanying an eclectic and pleasing mix of orchestral music, jazz, electronica, indie folk-rock – and sounds in-between.