Linda Winer

Cumming, who began his huge American career with this Tony-winning pansexual ghoul of a performance, seems older, seedier, more used up than he did back when Sam Mendes' you-are-there environmental staging of the 1966 Kander/Ebb masterwork was so new and dangerous and radical. In other words, Cumming is better than ever -- wiser, more dissipated, even more deeply entertaining in the role he stunningly recreated from Joel Grey's iconic original. And that freshness is so infectious it spills over into a landmark production that closed in 2004 but feels, with one uneasy exception, as confident -- and about as dangerous -- as if it has been running ever since. The exception, alas, is Michelle Williams, making her Broadway and musical debut as Sally Bowles...Her Sally is timid, bland and covered up in costumes that make her seem almost chaste.

Never underestimate Harvey Fierstein's gift for revealing new worlds within worlds we think we know well...Here he is back without a band with his first nonmusical in decades. And it's moving, beguiling and, yes, again historically significant without lecturing or threatening...The pitch-perfect cast has been directed by Joe Mantello with equal parts joy, anxiety and understanding of just the right handbags... Fierstein wants us to understand the vast spectrum of gender and sexuality. Along the way, bless him, he understands how to entertain.

Harris, who has triumphed in serious musicals, light TV, and award-show hosting, may not be the strongest rock howler who ever sang Stephen Trask's thrashing, unpredictably touching songs. Nor is Harris, 40, the most effortless dancer to ever climb into the torn fishnets of John Cameron Mitchell's Obie-winning, transgender diva of a show. But he is extraordinarily lithe and buff, irresistibly endearing and way beyond merely game as Hedwig, who takes us on his journey of self-discovery in the guise of an autobiographical concert.

The production, a success at Washington's Arena Stage, has been directed with an admirable minimum of sentimentality by that theater's artistic director, Molly Smith. Even with actors the caliber of Parsons and Spinella, however, this is a once-over-lightly insult to a subject that deserves so much more than a mechanical showcase for gold-standard performers.

So here it finally is, 17 years later and officially considered a revival, in a taut, vibrant, dirt-kicking show directed with exuberance and minimal fuss by Leigh Silverman...Colin Donnell plays the hunk, surprised to find himself drawn to her. Joshua Henry portrays the black man, the first Violet ever knew, who sings that he wants her to 'see me the way I see you'...In the middle of it all is Foster's Violet, with lank hair and lanky limbs and a glorious voice that cuts through complicated emotions without ever belting. She embodies both Violet's defensive armor and the childlike trust in a miracle that will give her 'Gene Tierney's eyes and Ava Gardner's eyebrows'...Yes, this is an ugly-duckling Cinderella tale about beauty being skin deep. But it is filled with unexpected details, compassion for its quirky characters and, especially, a rigorous score that reaches its own destinations through gospel, bluegrass and heart-aching anthems to tentative hopes.

Michael Grandage, the Tony-winning director of 'Red,' directs a lovely cast in the gleeful poetry of outcast inhumanity...The play is subtler than McDonagh's more melodramatic hit gore-fests, especially The Beauty Queen of Leenane. The worst these townfolk do -- except for the blunt insults -- is 'peg' one another with stones and break raw eggs on unsuspecting heads. The work also has none of the political chill of his masterwork, The Pillowman. He seems here to be both satirizing and celebrating the cliches about primitive Ireland and primal Hollywood, sending up the cruelties and seductions of the parallel universes as mutually exploitable pleasures. How right to have a real movie star as its heart.

So much love and care and ambition have been poured into 'Act One,' playwright/director James Lapine's sprawling stage adaptation of playwright/director Moss Hart's celebrated 1959 memoir. But as the Lincoln Center Theater's in-house magazine reminds us, Hart himself wrote, 'Playwrighting is not a gentle or sentimental profession, nor, may I add, is any part or portion of the theater.' Putting gentleness aside, one therefore must report that this play about the theater has a dazzling theatrical set but a dispiriting lack of drama. Autobiographical peaks and valleys that read with such charm and intensity in Hart's words are translated here into almost three hours of busy, flatline narrative.

The inevitable headline is that James Franco...is making his Broadway debut in John Steinbeck's 1937 'Of Mice and Men.' But the real news is that Franco is just one fine element in this straightforward powerhouse of a revival, directed by Anna D. Shapiro with inspiring trust in the impact of classic storytelling...Franco has an easygoing presence and a dark, cranky, cowboy voice and, except perhaps for overly manicured facial hair, never suggests he might be smarter or hipper than his character. O'Dowd's Lennie is a big, childlike mouth-breather whose deliberate speech contrasts touchingly with his delicate fingers, which appear to dance -- at times too heavily -- with a mind of their own...No matter how well we know the story, it is hard not to hope that, just maybe, things will turn out better this time. This may be one good definition of a classic.

In Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, a late entry in the Broadway season, McDonald has taken on the task of impersonating a real person in what's virtually a solo show about the late jazz singer Billie Holiday, whose rough life story is almost as familiar as her distinctive sound...McDonald doesn't let Holiday wallow as she tells us, almost offhandedly, about her rape at 10, her prostitution at 14, the macabre death of her great-grandmother, a slave, and the racism that haunted her career. Long before we are shocked, yet again, by the haunting images of her great song about racism, 'Strange Fruit,' this amazing actress and this jazz icon are indivisible.

The last times Woody Allen wrote plays for Broadway, his single drama suggested he hadn't seen one since middle-period Arthur Miller and his comedies were a tired throwback to Neil Simon. But with 'Bullets Over Broadway,' his first Broadway musical, Allen has created an old-fashioned, madcap lark of a show that seems precisely where it belongs. Director-choreographer Susan Stroman is back in idea-crazy form in Allen's adaptation of his 1994 backstage-Broadway movie about gangsters and tootsies and self-serious thespians in the '20s. The show takes a while to hit its stride, feeling competent but mechanical at first, as if the job could only get done if everyone bellows and hard-sells the lamest jokes. But once inspiration strikes -- and it eventually does -- the smartly cast, good-looking production relaxes into the confidence of its own gleeful, high-gloss ridiculousness.

In The Realistic Joneses, the world is familiar and, then again, very scary. It's also weird and cruel and profound in all sorts of unexpected places -- as sad as life but a whole lot funnier. Provocative playwright Will Eno, whose dry and odd work has tended to cause the theatrical equivalent of fistfights Off-Broadway, has come to Broadway with a macabre and melancholy yet strangely delightful comedy...At its most basic, the play can be reduced to a drama about caregivers and the different ways people deal with illness and mortality. But much like work by Edward Albee and Samuel Beckett, Eno's closest forbearers in existential absurdity, there's a challenge in keeping up with these Joneses. As John says, 'This was fun -- I mean, not fun, but some other word.' Indeed.

Remember the questions raised about Denzel Washington being too old to play Walter Lee Younger...Forget all that. Forget any and all reservations, except the kind that are so hard to get for director Kenny Leon's shattering revival of Lorraine Hansberry's seminal 1959 drama about a struggling black family in Chicago. Washington, 59, is magnificent -- disaffected, exuberant, heart-shredding -- as the character Sidney Poitier created on Broadway when just 32. Yes, this Walter Lee now says he is 40, not 35, in one of his raw and bruised laments about a life that never really began. But the numbers mean nothing in this devastating portrayal, except to deepen it.

We are meant to feel a bit off-balance, a little disoriented, maybe even confused in parts of 'If/Then' -- and that's the sharp point. In this intelligent, surprising, altogether original new musical, the main character is a 39-year-old divorced woman, Elizabeth, who returns to New York after 12 years as a wife in Phoenix. This is a fork-in-the-road show, a back-to-the-future entertainment in which we briefly see the consequences of different roads taken...Greif's gleaming, inventive production has lots of moving parts, including double-decker sets by Mark Wendland that add more levels with a mirror that adds layers of ceiling and sky. Disorienting? Indeed, but in attractive, unpredictable ways.

Terrence McNally, who has astutely chronicled the thrills, the taboos and the tragedies of gay life since the mid-'60s, feels a bit too much like a playwright on a mission this time...This is a 'never forget' message that McNally surrounds with a sentimental, four-generation family story with plenty of his sharp observations and wit, but not enough to disguise the mechanics and contrivances that drive his worthy intentions.

But nothing in this return of the Victor Hugo popera has the musty feel of the road. The chorus has been impeccably drilled and, except for a few ragged voices at the barricades, the whores, beggars and ruffians of pre-revolutionary France keep a fine balance between robust singing and acting. And speaking of real finds, Gaten Matarazzo, who played little Gavroche at the preview I saw, is a star. And then there is Karimloo, whose Valjean evolves from a feral, hotheaded convict into a dashing, dignified hero without a shadow of Hugh Jackman from the 2012 movie on his brow. Karimloo's voice has a rare purity and focus and, though we would expect his low tenor to strain for the stratospheric notes in 'Bring Him Home,' he even finds the finesse and stamina to be tender in it...Nikki M. James shows vast range in her a touching, street-wise Eponine, with a lush yet piercing voice. Caissie Levy makes a poignant Fantine...For those of us in the minority, 'Les Miz' remains Masterpiece Musical at its most earnest, marred by cumulative bellowing and politics so fuzzy-edged that they never get beyond a generic storm-the-barricades fervor. But if we need to have 'Les Miz' -- and obviously, we do -- I pick this one.

The carpet flies, kids, and it's awesome. Aladdin, an urchin from the streets, and Princess Jasmine float far away into the extremely twinkly sky. Such awesomeness, of course, is to be expected from 'Aladdin,' Disney's latest Broadway translation of a beloved animated fantasy. But what's a whole new world, as the song promises, is the almost modest, down-to-earth human scale of director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw's big, cheerful production -- an enjoyable throwback to old-time musical comedy.

For a show that ends with the most impressive 20-minute boxing match ever seen in a Broadway musical, 'Rocky' lacks conflict. Everyone is basically nice, even the gangsters, especially Andy Karl in a career-breakthrough performance as Rocky Balboa. And Apollo Creed, the heavyweight champ who plucks Rocky from loser-ville to manipulate an easy killing in the ring, isn't such a bad guy, either. Oh, there is plenty of punch in the finale of Sylvester Stallone's adaptation of his iconic triumph-of-the-little-guy 1976 movie, which spawned five sequels. But we wouldn't call that drama...in this earnest show, co-written by Stallone and Broadway veteran Thomas Meehan and directed with more conscientiousness than flair by Alex Timbers, one of the theater's most inventive forces...But there is a sweet center here: Karl, who imbues the Cinderella-guy story with enormous reserves of macho sensitivity and the big heart that denizens of the South Philly gym keep describing.

There is something courageous and very smart about the three-time Emmy winner's decision to make his Broadway debut in a big ensemble vehicle so far away from Walter White, beloved and complex meth cooker in 'Breaking Bad.' And yet, for all the villains and heroes and sprawling ideals in the play, which began at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival without Cranston, this feels like a fascinating one-man show in a high school history pamphlet...Through it all, Cranston's LBJ feels a bit like a caricature, but one that's compelling and fun to watch. And every time the president made a big point at a recent preview, the audience clapped as if the actor were a tenor singing a high C. We suspect the unflashy Walter White would not have approved.

'The Bridges of Madison County' is a ravishingly beautiful musical play based on the phenomenally popular 1992 weeper about a four-day love affair between an Iowa farm wife from Italy and a worldly photographer. In other words, this is unblushing Harlequin Romance-style material bound in top-quality leather. So many intelligent, gifted artists are involved in this adaptation that we wish the objective were deeper than a high-toned bodice ripper with comic-relief detours into conventional Broadway. But Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale, magnificently magnetic as Francesca and Robert, make the ripping feel like real heartbreak. And director Bartlett Sher and his creative team from 'South Pacific' are storytellers who understand the luscious power of simplicity.

Scolari plays Yogi with obvious affection for a legend bent with age but unbowed in team loyalty, a man panicked at the sense of the team ever splitting apart. There is plenty of inside-baseball inside-stuff, explained with relative grace. And for those of us who don't much care, designer David C. Woolard amuses us with the changing styles of the uniforms.

Debra Messing and Brian F. O'Byrne are so, what's a more grown-up word for adorable? -- charming? irresistible? combustible? -- together that we wish this romantic comedy would go on for hours. The problem is that 'Outside Mullingar' is only a romantic comedy for the last altogether enchanting scene. For the rest of John Patrick Shanley's 95-minute oddity, we are thrust into some cartoon universe, where rural Irish folk speak wisdom in kooky locutions, fester on peculiar grudges and debate whether shy, middle-aged, hardworking Anthony Reilly (O'Byrne) loves the farm enough to inherit it from his cranky old dad.

Describing 'Machinal' as ahead of its time is just the tip of the revelations in Sophie Treadwell's 1928 expressionist stunner. This little-known adventure in psychological, sociological and stylistic boundary-pushing -- not on Broadway in 86 years -- has been given a dazzling, daring revival that feels especially startling in the doggedly conventional environs of the Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre...It cannot be easy to play a character so tightly trapped behind society's facade. But Hall -- with a beanpole body like an exclamation point and a face of a thousand worried looks -- brings us deep inside the long, virtuosic bursts of halting half-sentences and tangled mazes of internal monologues.

I prefer my 'Godot' to be more of a lean intellectual vaudeville than this antic production, but little matter. This one, with more song-and-dance clowning, is also true to tradition of these existential tramps waiting for a Godot who never comes. More puzzling is the set (sets and costumes for both plays are by the versatile Stephen Brimson Lewis). Instead of Beckett's demands for just a tree and a country road, there are broken building facades that suggest crumbling urban ruin.

McKellen has a flashier physical role than does Stewart in Pinter's 1975 power play about Hirst, a successful alcoholic writer (Stewart, almost unrecognizable with his shaved head covered with a blond toupee). He has brought a seedy gadfly poet (McKellen) named Spooner home to his handsome, sparsely furnished house with the well-stocked liquor cabinet. They may have known each other at Oxford, or maybe not. In fact, the poet -- if, indeed, he is a poet -- may, or may not, have had an affair with the host's wife, taking 'simply that portion of herself all women keep in reserve for a rainy day.'

A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder' is, at heart, a clever and jolly 90-minute frolic about a mouse of a disinherited Brit who kills his way up the noble Edwardian family tree until he becomes lord of the manor...Alas, this musical-comedy trifle runs a very leisurely 2-1 / 2 hours, not 90 minutes. This fact should not dissuade patient theatergoers who want to relish Jefferson Mays in one of those performances that people will be talking about all season...composer-lyricist Steven Lutvak and author-lyricist Robert L. Freedman deliver saucy impudence of bright operetta pastiche...inkham's Monty seems awfully dull in early flashbacks, but gets more dashing as the character gets sure of himself. Lisa O'Hare, a big talent, brings fascinating confidence and comic timing as Monty's married lover, while Lauren Worsham matches her aplomb as his aristocratic fiancee.