Kyle Turner — Theater Critic

Early in David Finnigan’s autobiographical narrative Deep History, he recalls how his career path diverged from his family's: Finnigan's father is a climate scientist, and their shared care for the environment propelled Finnigan to make theatre about environmentalism. He says, “Art can change people’s minds in a way that science sometimes can’t.” A viable claim and certainly a noble pursuit. But Deep History is closer to a TED Talk than theatrical art.

There’s a potential version of Ghost of John McCain that’s closer to the incisiveness of a 30 Rock or maybe a Veep, but in neither the book nor the lyrics is there the rigor that could make the current show go from an intrusive thought to a steaming train.

The construction of the Empire State Building, flaws and all, makes for great theatrical material so long as the show knows how to handle the scale of the effort. Empire: The Musical attempts to memorialize the five workers’ lives lost during construction, while also highlighting the Indigenous Americans on the job, but it lacks precision and fun. Too many characters don’t get fleshed out, and the show's preoccupation with making secretary “Wally” Wolodsky a proto-feminist manager for architect Charles Kinney (Albert Guerzon) and politician Al Smith (Paul Savatoriello) sinks when Wally’s actual role is revealed in the last act.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball is one of the best musicals, revival or otherwise, to be staged in New York, not only for the ingenuity, dramaturgical soundness, and pure joy of its reimagining, but because it grounds the notion of the “dance musical” in an expansive history of queer joy, full of potential for nine lives and beyond.

It’s curious that Morgan depicts Putin as a man whose ambitions and cunning stays under wraps, Keen playing him with smaller gestures opposite Stuhlbarg’s heavily gesticulatory performance. But here, rather than a man who’s biding his time to get to a place where he can rule without consequence, Morgan’s Putin really is made by this version of Berezovsky, only intermittently trying to assert his own agency, but basically molded into something that his maker loses control of. It’s an easily digestible version of history, possibly problematic in its vision that Berezovsky, hungry only for power, is the only person with autonomy until the world of his making no longer has a use for him.

There’s a lot to enjoy in the revival of The Wiz, the “super soul musical” retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz first staged on Broadway in 1975. There are sparkling costumes by Sharen Davis, additional book material by Amber Ruffin, and a charming ensemble including Avery Wilson (Scarecrow), Phillip Johnson Richardons (Tinman), Kyle Ramar Freeman (Lion), and newcomer Nichelle Lewis (Dorothy). But the subtext is most compelling about this revival. .

Despite this clever self-reflexive streak – who doesn’t love a play within a play? – Parks may have bitten off a little more than we can chew. There are bursts of her usual brilliance: Sally & Tom's beautiful language, its grasp on the contradictions of history and emotion, its exploration of the often inadequate platforms Black people are given (if at all) to reckon with the past and hope for the future. But the meta-theatrical play stuffs in too many numerous character threads as Sally & Tom toggles between onstage and backstage at Good Company, where the character’s insights and anxieties come out.

It’s a strangely icy magic show, with none of the goth vibes of a Chris Angel or the whimsy of Penn and Teller. While framing a show around the lack of privacy in the modern age is compelling, Stalker emerges as muddled, split between wanting to demystify magic and still leave audiences in awe of it.

This compelling conceit gets weakened by a flat book and lyrics. Brunstetter and Michaelson aim for simplicity, but lyrics like a repeated “sadness and joy” fail to illuminate Noah and Allie's depth of character. The Notebook: The Musical can only compensate so much with Michaelson's strumming music, with repetitions that are pleasant but melt together, and some songs become indistinguishable from each other. Occasionally, a flourish in John Clancy and Carmel Dean's orchestrations grabs the attention.

The Seven Year Disappear circles around questions about artistic practice and purpose, growing up as if your life is not your own, and the conflation of identity and consumption. But Seavey seems uninterested in engaging with these ideas directly and thoroughly. The characters never share their views on the purpose of art, particularly in the context of using one’s own life as material. There’s no detailed engagement with art as processing or capital or exploitation. At most, Naphtali confesses he’s “fucked up” because of his relationship with his mother's work, but such a straightforward declaration betrays the play's lack of linguistic imagination.

Simone’s ghost haunts this work in a subtle way, shaping the rhythm of scenes and echoing in the actors’ voices. Ingram in particular, under director Steve H. Broadnax III’s elegant direction, makes you believe revolution is only a matter of time.

Daly’s Shannon is competent, but his jittery gruffness doesn’t leave enough room for sympathy, and it’s not exactly crazed enough to insert a sense of exciting theatricality in the midst of the more human (and maybe more banal) crisis of faith and sanity. Lichty’s Hannah, in comparison, is soft, gentle, perhaps prudish. She is supposed to be tender where Shannon is prickly, serene where he is sweaty. But her dramatic dilemma — her loneliness and the way in which her clear-eyed belief in connection contrasts with Shannon’s failure of faith — feel a bit undercooked. Her performance is reminiscent of Mia Farrow in Woody Allen movies, with the timbre of Jane Fonda’s voice, but without the forcefulness. Between the pair, there isn’t enough thrust, even if it’s to get through the evening with one’s scruples or heart intact.

Perhaps making sense of it all would be easier if the lead’s performance felt more grounded. Wiest is a legend, and there are glimmers of what makes her such, moments where the desperation to find a stable self amid the chaos feels real. But too often, she exhibits no strong persona for Scene Partners to destabilize. Tony Award-winning director Rachel Chavkin similarly cannot find an aesthetic throughline for the show, even with an overly generous helping of David Bengali’s projections.

The show makes it difficult to begrudge pointing out the occasional imprecise, maybe, I’ll say it, potentially transphobic “man in a dress” nature to some of the jokes because, after all, it advertises itself as a gender-bending reenvisioning of the text. But the jokes Harvey, who plays Renfield and Dr. Westfeldt, tells have more to do either with insanity or the doctor’s misogyny. Irony, certainly, but not necessarily the same as the joke being about Harvey crossing gender in her performance. It’s a shame to have to mildly take the show to task because, next to Daly, Burton has the most fun on stage, truly going buck wild with his expressions and gestures, pushing Dracula’s tone to its very limits. But, perhaps that’s the lesson of the Victorians after all: you push too hard against certain boundaries without having a plan for the consequences and get bitten.