Linda Winer — Theater Critic

It's possible to imagine a mood that may only be satisfied by a couple of hours of watching really good performers having a lark with really bad material. It is harder, however, to guess why 'Disaster!,' an intentionally tacky and silly hit in a cabaret several years ago, would stretch its amiable cheese-ball foolishness into a Broadway theater at no-joke prices. To fault the show for lacking substance would be as nonsensical as expecting 'Mamma Mia!' to be thought-provoking. And yet, given the flock of genuine experts who signed on for the spree, it does seem fair to expect more than this sporadically clever, sweetly produced, fantastically performed spoof of a passe genre -- the '70s disaster movie -- in overdone jukebox musical style.

Indeed, Nyong'o proved as compelling and radiant in person as on screen. But the play, despite other enthusiastic reviews, struck me as an earnest, heavy-handed labor of love - sincere and worthy but a dramatically simplistic look at the oppression of women as a weapon of war. Gurira - who, incidentally, plays Michonne in 'The Walking Dead' - wrote this after interviewing women in Liberia. Nyong'o was an understudy in a 2009 Yale Repertory Theatre production while still a student.

Fortunately for us, Oscar winner Forest Whitaker sees enough in the down-and-out loser to make him the daunting challenge and justification for his Broadway debut. And what a quietly satisfying, touching pleasure this production...turns out to be...Whitaker, who hasn't been onstage since the movies snared him after college, brings a buoyant, sweet, almost delicate sensibility to the breakable soul in the baggy suit and bow tie who has grandiose self-delusions...it is hard to imagine a more compelling, almost silent, witness than Frank Wood as the new clerk. With little more than a disbelieving blink and a dry stare, Wood dares us not to acknowledge this as a two-character drama.

There is so much love, dread, tenderness and brutality in 'The Humans' that it is hard to believe just 90 minutes pass through Stephen Karam's deeply-felt family tragicomedy thriller...The move to a larger showcase feels right, enlarging the impact without losing the nuances of light and dark...On second viewing, the retelling of bad dreams now seems woven into a richer psychological carpet and the few plot threads that seemed undeveloped now feel beautifully wrought...Last season, there was talk about initiating a new Tony category that would honor an acting ensemble instead of singling out individuals. If ever a cast deserved an award for sublime ensemble interdependence, this is it.

To describe Linda Lavin as flawless in 'Our Mother's Brief Affair' suggests we went looking for flaws, which could hardly be less true. Lavin's singular qualities - the voice that grates and comforts at the same time, the way she expresses an aside with little more than a deep sigh - could, at this point in her rich career, have frozen into a kind of tragicomic Kabuki. Instead, once again, the actress has channeled her special gifts into another in a seemingly infinite variety of smart, disappointed grown-ups who, in lesser hands, might just be Jewish monster-moms. Best of all, Lavin is challenged here by playwright Richard Greenberg's lean, lush dialogue, an intimate plot that goes in surprising directions and a character written with as much underlying compassion as overriding impatience.

The comedy in the first of three acts feels a little forced. But Herrin - not incidentally, artistic director of a company named Headlong - soon catapults the physical and verbal humor headlong into increasingly inspired opportunities to watch characters who play second-rate actors play out their real lives while trying to perform the complications of their second-rate play. Slippery sardines have seldomed seemed as ominous as when Jeremy Shamos, terrific as a hapless neurotic, flops around on them.

In perfect sync with that balancing act is Danny Burstein's portrayal of Tevye, the philosopher milkman first defined by the fabulously eccentric Zero Mostel and reconsidered in countless variations. Burstein, heretofore a star only to New York theater lovers, embodies a gentle, sweet yet powerful, profoundly likable man whose debates with God have the bemused inevitability of truth. Burstein also sings the role better than any Tevye in my experience.

Genuine showstoppers rarely happen in the musical theater, especially in the middle of an act. But when they do, something happens -- maybe to the air pressure in the lungs of theatergoers -- which seems to buoy whole groups of disparate audiences to their feet. It happened at a recent preview of 'The Color Purple' and, chances are, it's happening every night. Edging toward the finale of the show, Cynthia Erivo, a British actress in her thrilling Broadway debut, lays into a song...full of defiant realization for her character Celie after a lifetime of insult, drudgery and self-sacrifice...Director John Doyle's passionate, scaled-down, streamlined, low-frills revival of the 2005 musical adaptation of Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer-winning novel is not priming us for big musical-theater gestures. And Erivo, who also played Celie in Doyle's hit London reduction, exquisitely paces the understated character through 40 tumultuous years of male-dominated, post-slavery African-American culture.

The first thing to know is that the kids, cast through a high-profile talent search, are genuine children who play their own instruments, and they're all terrific. The other essential fact is that the substitute teacher, a character indelibly stamped on the film by Jack Black, has been shrewdly honored here by Alex Brightman, a helium balloon of a force that can bounce off walls and manage tender emotions with equal conviction.

Little wonder there were rumors that Al Pacino couldn't remember his lines in David Mamet's new 'China Doll'...The playwright has given Pacino, apparently one of his favorite actors, almost no story to build around his character and given him lines that pick over the same obvious plot points, mostly with the same barking emphasis, to nonexistent people supposedly on the other end of his phone's Bluetooth earpiece...Pacino is legendary for his obsessive work for years on the same handful of plays, including Mamet's 'American Buffalo.' It is always a kick to watch him wrestle with a character - and this one is a beast...With his unsettling gray bouffant, his lizard eyes and his wrinkled black power suit, he cuts a scary yet baleful figure in a penthouse as big and cold as an airplane hangar...He yells at Carson, wheedles and hollers and goes mock-humble on the phone. Every so often, Mamet gives him a wonderful line that sums up the dark side of humanity. More often, however, the writing is as lazy as Mickey calling someone 'more fun than a Swiss Army Knife.'

From those first moments, it is clear that the people behind Broadway's adaptation of Stephen King's popular thriller and the hit 1990 movie know exactly what they are doing. They know that the bulk of their audience - anyone who didn't just come to see the very good Bruce Willis - is wise to the plot turns and blunt-force terrors in their modern-gothic junk-food entertainment... The box-office catnip is Willis, totally convincing in his first play since his early off-Broadway days in the '80s.

The show isn't bombastic or preachy, though some may find the well-structured book -- written by Marc Acito, Jay Kuo and Lorenzo Thione -- too earnest. Kuo's serviceable score is loaded with anthems, simple melodic lines and some obvious rhymes, with a few lighthearted '40s boogie-woogy numbers to signify Americana. Although we hear enticing Japanese flute and percussion between scenes, this more 'Le Miz'-lite pop opera than a fusion of musical cultures.

What Broadway's newest entry in our unofficial personal-history-of-pop-music series has are lots of much-loved Grammy-winning songs by arguably America's most successful Latin crossover team. Significantly, the Estefans are a major producer of the show. There is also an excellent portrayal of Gloria by Ana Villafañe, complete with iconic toreador outfits and big luscious hair, and a really fine onstage orchestra driven by brass and Latin percussion.

One of the mourners at Queen Elizabeth's funeral says 'I never thought I would see her pass away,' to which an aging Prince Charles, finally preparing to ascend to the throne, answers 'I felt the same.' Are we meant to laugh at that line, as many did at the preview I saw of 'King Charles III'? Does playwright Mike Bartlett want the exchange to be a cheap joke, a camped-up wink at the tabloid-ready burdens of the royal family? ... This is just the first of many perplexing moments in the Olivier-winning London smash, times when I felt tossed around by the inconsistent tone and confusing intentions in what is cleverly subtitled 'a future history play.'

Knightley's Thérèse has the passive, chiseled face of a cameo or a woman frozen on an old coin. Just watching her watch the others is meaningful...Director Evan Cabnet, in his highest-profile assignment as a Roundabout associate artist, meticulously sculpts the many scenes into a seamless, multi-textured, closed universe that opens up when characters venture into the perilous outside world with its beckoning river...There are enough red herrings for a sneaky, old-time mystery, enough steamy clutches for a modern bodice-ripper and plenty of Knightley to cement her reputation here as a serious stage actress.

Despite increasingly annoying directorial exaggeration as Daniel Sullivan's production progresses, this one is another anthropomorphic lovefest on Broadway, now with an equally spectacular Annaleigh Ashford as the rescued talking pup. In the opening scene in Central Park, she puts her nose into the hand of a midlife-conflicted man named Greg -- portrayed with the utmost clueless sweetness by Mathew Broderick in his most engaged and endearing performance in a long time...Ashford...creates her physically irresistible doggy self, as did Parker, without a fake tail or phony ears...If only Daniel Sullivan, best known for staging sensitive and serious dramas, did not crush the charm by having Robert Sella overplay the supposed hilarity of four increasingly obnoxious minor characters. Sylvia...should tell him who's the star here.

So the current big-time revival does what its late creators -- composer Jim Wise, author/lyricists George Haimsohn and Robin Miller -- apparently wanted their modest takeoff to accomplish. The production, directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner, has a hard-tapping, hardworking cast of six and enough varieties of I-love-to-dance smiles to become their own emoticons. What the musical does not have -- in addition to a breakout ingénue to elevate the unrelentingly, cheerfully lame nonsense -- is charm. This is, to put it gently, a one-joke show. And we get the joke -- we get it, we get it -- over and over the tap-happy two hours.

The multi-award-winning virtuosos, who have worked together at least five other times, manage to play off the intimate rhythms of one another while still making us believe that their characters begin as strangers...Directed with leisurely sensitivity by Leonard Foglia, the production lets the balance of powers shift and flow through the games of gin that Coburn uses as a device to weave the characters' bond. Tyson, in fuzzy light brown curls and an omnipresent handbag, has a simplicity that makes everything look easy. Jones, mostly in old windbreakers and a scowl, uses a showy technique to suggest how hard the volatile Weller works to hide his own isolation. Both are estranged from their families and, after a while, we start to understand why.

Everything is in place for what really ought to have been a deeply scary, even deliriously entertaining visit back to midcareer Shepard-land. We have Tony winner Nina Arianda as an impossibly slinky, outrageously bold May and Sam Rockwell as a dirt-kicking Eddie who makes the most out of cleaning his rifle and can lasso a cheap dinette chair until you almost feel sorry for it. In fact, Rockwell doesn't just rope the furniture in director Daniel Aukin's hardworking physical production. The actor, who has clearly been practicing, also lassos Arianda...Although Arianda and Rockwell have the looks, the presence and the guts, there isn't the down-and-dirty chemistry that makes the fate of the lovers' long and conflicted relationship feel inevitable and dangerous...Suffice it to say that the violence feels phony and it's hard to get overheated about the fate of the characters.

s it possible to be dazzled by the cast, especially by Clive Owen in his Broadway debut, stunned anew by the elusive meanings of Pinter's 'Old Times' and yet appalled by the production?...Let's say that director Douglas Hodge's tricked-up staging of this 65-minute 1971 gem is bizarre, at best, and betrays a lack of trust in the lean, unnerving brilliance we know as Pinteresque. Hodge...chose to superimpose an over-animated, high-concept spectacle on a playwright whose menace radiates from silence and things unsaid...The drama, such as it is, is built on innuendo and insinuation, not overacting and special effects. Owen is deliciously slick, but not too slick, and, every so often, intentionally, fantastically obnoxious as Deeley...Eve Best...has an imposing elegance as the guest who married well, and Kelly Reilly, as the wife, has the quiet feline languor of one who feels the desire simmer off the others in the room...Printed scripts are not holy writs but, at least in this case, Pinter knew best.

The results are moving and both visually and musically impressive, if ultimately a bit repetitious. Although the production never quite delivers the knotted punch of the sharp-edged original, the teens' stifled internal lives roil with the power of outsider-ness and communication crises that transcend straightforward storytelling.

Instead, the show -- which tells early American history in its own time but shot through with multicultural urban sensibility -- is even more nuanced, more cohesive in individual performances and its more focused finale. Most important, Miranda and director Thomas Kail have fine-tuned it without losing a shiver of its audacity and thrill. The musical -- written and composed by its star -- manages to be radical and satirical, yet good-hearted...The jagged, sly poetry and overlapping storytelling barrel through, dense and fast, except when choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler's lusciously visceral dancers shock us in slow motion. Miranda, who plays Hamilton with wit and an exquisitely endearing inelegance, doesn't preach...However, this is anything but a one-man show. Every supporting character is a vivid personality.

...is it possible today to tell another slave history through the eyes of a white man and the noble woman who believes in him? So much effort, sincerity and talent -- not to mention cash -- have been funneled into 'Amazing Grace' that it would be nice to be able to answer yes to any of that...The production has been confidently directed by Gabriel Barre, with a first-class creative team and a large, excellent cast -- most impressively, Chuck Cooper and Laiona Michelle in supporting roles as the families' favorite slaves.

D'Amour's heart is with the eloquence of marginalized people -- the strippers, addicts, hookers and, naturally, a drag queen, who live, almost as a messy family, in the Hummingbird Motel, a dilapidated, post-Katrina New Orleans flophouse along the road in the title. But, really, we have been down such a road far too often before...This story has less original characters and a forced peg...Director Joe Mantello wrings poignant performances from the familiar types with their formulaic tragic backgrounds...Julie White finds genuine new dark corners as the aging prostitute who wonders 'who is gonna remember us?' K. Todd Freeman does the same as the wise, smart-talking drag queen, as does Caroline Neff as the melancholy young stripper.

'The Visit' is a haunting, haunted knot of Expressionist storytelling, a masterly 100-minute powerhouse with liltingly gruesome songs that create their own macabre world unlike anything onstage in recent memory. This will not be everyone's idea of a night on the town. But Rivera, an astonishing 82, is riveting as the mysterious, vengeful grand dame...Roger Rees is shattering, brimming with hapless vanity, as the pathetic shopkeeper who broke her heart so many years ago. Under John Doyle's taut, unflinching and strangely enchanting direction...the chamber work has the feel of a dark European fable -- albeit one with timeless theatricality. The music is woozy with disturbing dance rhythms, dripping with music-box sarcasm...Then there is Rivera, with her steely, gravelly voice and the resolve of a character who says, 'I am unkillable.' We dare you to take your eyes off her.