Laura Collins-Hughes — Theater Critic

An impressive rotation of actresses — Maslany, Dizzia, Deirdre O’Connell, Tavi Gevinson and Julia Chan — is slated to inhabit A during the run: a clever way of signaling universality while adding box-office cachet in these uncertain times for theater. (More on that below.) An equally strong lure is, frankly, the gossip factor: Ireland’s own experience of domestic violence a dozen years ago in her relationship with the actor Scott Shepherd, when they were appearing in a show with the venerable Wooster Group. What makes “Pre-Existing Condition” so powerful, though, has nothing to do with that. It is A’s Everywoman nature, combined with the vulnerable physicality that’s so evident in such an intimate space: her breath, her welling tears, the placating smile she puts on like a demure piece of armor when she runs the risk of upsetting a man.

The darker elements of “The Great Gatsby” prove more elusive, which blunts the impact overall. So does the show’s anodyne Broadway sound, which is poppy and pleasant without being memorable. It summons neither the Jazz Age, like the soundtrack to Jack Clayton’s 1974 movie adaptation did, nor a spirit of wild abandon, like the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 take. The score to this “Great Gatsby” is missing a vital urgency.

As a news story evolving in real time, the scandal made for jaw-dropping reading. As a play, though, “Corruption” is uncompelling — counterintuitively so, given the inherent drama: the crimes, the coverup, the comeuppance (or not), the clashes of personality. Also the stakes, which include the well-being of a democracy in which one culture-shaping media magnate holds too much sway.

The show, an earlier version of which was presented online in 2021, is smartly structured and frequently fascinating, as in a scene between Othello — honorable, deep-voiced — and Iago, feigning guilelessness, whom Page gives a lighter tone. His Malvolio, more narcissist than villain, is comic, then moving; his Ariel, not villainous at all, is ethereal and excellent.

It would be easy to exploit Elmer’s story, to play it entirely for laughs. “Dead Outlaw” has lots of those, as well as a healthy sense of absurdity. But if it forgot Elmer’s humanity — and it never does — it would lose its soul.

Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times: I wonder what “Brooklyn Laundry” might have become if Shanley hadn’t staged it himself — if there had been a director to push him where text needs strengthening; to find a tone that breathes life into Fran’s one scene with Trish; to steer away from visual grimness in design rather than, with the exception of the restaurant scene, straight into it. That, however, is not on the menu.

All of that can leave a theatergoer in a state of wariness — which, it turns out, is a great way to watch this play: trusting nothing, unsure where reality lies, guard firmly raised against any kind of charm. Mind you, “Jonah” will charm you anyway, and make you laugh. So will Jonah, the adorable day student (or is he?) whom Ana, our teenage heroine, meets at her boarding school (or does she?). Who and what is illusory here?

What's astonishing about this show, though — aside from the central performances, which are superb, and Guettel’s anxious, spiky, sumptuous score, which grabs hold of us and doesn’t let go — is the way its devastating chic snuggles right up to catastrophic self-destruction.

Superficiality is a bane of this uncertain show, for which Creel wrote the book, lyrics and soft-pop music. Commissioned by the Met’s Live Arts Department, and performed at the museum in 2021, it has the dispiriting feel of an advertisement for the Met’s collections — and despite the dozens of artworks projected upstage, not a persuasive one. Try though Creel does to convince us that he eventually succumbed to the museum’s magic, little of “Walk on Through” seems heartfelt. A lot of it seems forced, as if he is trying to deliver what he thinks is expected in response to the art: profundity, epiphany.

I have no idea whether I caught the show on an off night, or if after merely a week of previews the production was still somewhat underbaked. But the inertness of Act I gave way to a high-energy Act II — rather denting the idea that one day in the nearly featureless void of Didi and Gogo’s existence is practically indistinguishable from another, but thank goodness anyway.

Share it she does, superbly, in “Melissa Etheridge: My Window,” which opened Thursday at Circle in the Square Theater, just one block east of where an earlier version of the show ran Off Broadway last fall. On Broadway, this rock concert spliced with memoir has gained a striking intimacy, as if Etheridge had shrunk an arena to fit in the palm of her hand.

Sidney Brustein, whom she has placed at the center of this crowded tragicomedy, is not an interesting person. This is not Isaac’s fault, although he ignores Hansberry’s stipulation that Sidney “laughs at himself as much as the world.” Isaac’s performance is mostly unremarkable but fine, sparking fully to life only in Sidney’s scenes with Iris’s wealthy, conventional sister, Mavis — the best role in the show, and the best played, by a thoroughly captivating Miriam Silverman. (The play is a Tony nominee for best revival; Silverman is its only acting nominee.)

If “Summer, 1976” feels too comfortable to be fashionable, it’s sharply observant, too, and subtly, insistently feminist - more than the wisp of a two-hander that it might first appear to be. Auburn, who at 53 was about Holly and Gretchen’s age during the Bicentennial, has once again sown a script with riches for actors. Linney and Hecht mine them for all they’re worth.

Onstage, though, “The Collaboration” feels emptily formulaic — less like an insider’s view of its famous subjects’ lives than a kind of biographical tourism that gets into serious gawking in its second half. It doesn’t bring us any insight into whatever closeness Warhol and Basquiat had.

Three decades later, Crystal too is in his 70s, and in the new musical comedy 'Mr. Saturday Night,' which opened on Wednesday night, he slips much more naturally into Buddy's skin. As a piece of theater, the show is a bit of a mess; the jokes, even some of the hoary ones, work better than the storytelling, and the acting styles are all over the place. Still, it makes for a diverting evening - because it will almost surely make you laugh, and because of how acutely tuned into the audience Crystal is.

Brown's staging is so attuned to the words and cadences of Shange's choreopoem, yet so confident in its own interpretive vision, that the characters blossom into their full vibrancy. If you've never thought of 'For Colored Girls' as a funny show, be prepared for Brown's seven splendid performers to persuade you otherwise. They will also pierce your heart, because this production does not shy from the emotional and existential lows that coexist with the play's highs.

'Snowshow' excels at the sort of giddy physical humor that tickles belly laughter from children. A clown with a torso pierced by arrows dies extravagantly, and bloodlessly; the clown culprit, bow in hand, is darling anyway. But this piece isn't only for kids, and it's not all frivolity. There's a forlornness to some of these clowns, and a loneliness. Sometimes they're scared, too, though they give us no cause to be.

Directed by Carrie Cracknell, 'Sea Wall/A Life' - a hit downtown early this year, at the Public Theater - is the most stripped-down storytelling on Broadway right now. The quiet spectacle these plays offer is in the acting of tragicomedies of love and loss, young men's stories about fatherhood and family, and about the hole that grief can blast right through a person's center.