Kristy Puchko — Theater Critic

Arden's production marries light, sound, sets, and blocking to a miraculous effect, using not just the stage but the whole of that big box to tell this story to its fullest. The Lost Boys operates not only on the X and Z axis of the stage, but on Y as well, through the wire work and a three-story set design that constantly shifts with details and company.

All in all, Beaches is a profound disappointment. Vosk gives her all to racy jokes, high notes, and an iconically bold heroine. The supporting cast is asked to sing, dance, and play a bevy of small parts and thinly written characters. The directors try to weave in elements from the movie and Midler's broader impact to appeal to fans of her and the film. But in the end, this show is doomed by Dart's underwhelming writing.

From there, the reveal of the stage is bigger and bolder, recalling the metal and flashing lights design of reality TV competition shows like The Voice. There's a cheerful campiness to the design, and this glow-up doesn't detach Titanique from its ludicrousness or lewdness. Instead, it allows Mindelle to bloom, and her co-stars too. Together, they create a musical, magical epic, sure to please, but likely to make you want to shout, "I'm alive!"

To be clear, I'm not sure any actor could make this Dog Day Afternoon work. It's not just that Bernthal will be compared to Pacino. It's that a stage performance is being asked to do what a film performance only did with one of the greatest actors of a generation. Bernthal is a great actor, as seen in The Bear, The Punisher, and The Accountant 2. He's dynamic, complex, exciting, and charming, with a sense of danger. On paper, he's perfect for this attempt. But he cannot fill this Broadway theater with the energy of desperation, outrage, and life-or-death terror.

Heathers: The Musical isn't just a clever interpretation of the 1989 black comedy Heathers. This stage show is a rock show, thanks to a gutsy revival production and an audience bursting to experience it.

In the end, Cellino V. Barnes is sublimely stupid and a bit brilliant. Relishing in the tabloid elements of the true story, its playwrights spin a yarn that doesn't lean so hard into the real attorneys that an unfamiliar audience might be left in the cold. Committed and kooky, Morris and Weisberg create characters whole cloth that are as hilarious as they are compelling. Combined with a snappy direction, this play's humor hits so fast and hard, it's not just thrilling. It might be exactly the kind of the shock to the system its crooked counselors would drool to litigate over.

Incredibly, The Shark Is Broken aspires to similar depths despite its comedic trappings. On its surface, the 95-minute play is about the frustrations, petty rivalries, and not-so-secret vices that Scheider, Dreyfuss, and Shaw may have gotten up to while waiting for cameras to roll on Jaws. But in between jokes, fan service, and some tasty movie trivia, a story of fathers, sons, mortality, and legacy begins to rise. Fittingly, the late Robert Shaw's son Ian Shaw, who visited the Jaws set when he was just a child, is the play's co-writer and co-star. He nimbly steps into the soggy shoes of his father, lending an undercurrent of poignancy to the broader comedic strokes.