Linda Winer — Theater Critic

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.

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.

'Twelfth Night' is the centerpiece that gives the most chances for nuanced sexuality and comic delight. In 'Richard,' Rylance chooses to play a villain who dissembles as a joking bumpkin, his guileless eyes betrayed by sinister eyebrows. Still, an almost cuddly Richard, despite his creepily effective dead and withered hand, lowers the stakes of the tragedy.

'Twelfth Night' is the centerpiece that gives the most chances for nuanced sexuality and comic delight. In 'Richard,' Rylance chooses to play a villain who dissembles as a joking bumpkin, his guileless eyes betrayed by sinister eyebrows. Still, an almost cuddly Richard, despite his creepily effective dead and withered hand, lowers the stakes of the tragedy.

To everyone's credit, Barrino is not cordoned off from the company like a traveling VIP. The singer, who catapulted from 'American Idol' popularity to Broadway respect in 'The Color Purple,' primarily does greatest-hits songs -- 'Stormy Weather.' She has a tangy baby/woman voice, a slow and clear scat and the ability to say a lot with stillness and a pout.

As [Daniel] Craig proved to Broadway when he played a quietly desperate cop in 'A Steady Rain' in 2009, the actor is far more than Bond, James Bond. As Robert, a book publisher, he begins with a dapper, sardonic edge and lets us watch that famous granite profile crumble...If Pinter wrote in cool, witty line drawings, Nichols colors them in with robust clarity and broadens the wit to sex-comedy humor. Where Pinter leaves us to question the depth of Robert's distress, Nichols clears that up by having Craig sloppy drunk by the time Jerry arrives for lunch. When we finally see the first frisson of Jerry and Emma's affair in 1968, Nichols piles on the time-machine cliches by getting them high on marijuana...Pinter liked to say that 'life is more mysterious than plays make it out to be.' By probing too many psychological motivations, Nichols makes these people understandable but awfully ordinary.

As [Daniel] Craig proved to Broadway when he played a quietly desperate cop in 'A Steady Rain' in 2009, the actor is far more than Bond, James Bond. As Robert, a book publisher, he begins with a dapper, sardonic edge and lets us watch that famous granite profile crumble...If Pinter wrote in cool, witty line drawings, Nichols colors them in with robust clarity and broadens the wit to sex-comedy humor. Where Pinter leaves us to question the depth of Robert's distress, Nichols clears that up by having Craig sloppy drunk by the time Jerry arrives for lunch. When we finally see the first frisson of Jerry and Emma's affair in 1968, Nichols piles on the time-machine cliches by getting them high on marijuana...Pinter liked to say that 'life is more mysterious than plays make it out to be.' By probing too many psychological motivations, Nichols makes these people understandable but awfully ordinary.

How sad, then, that the play is such a muddle. It's an interesting neo-Chekhovian muddle, mind you, and I'm not a bit sorry to have shared the time with White, 43, a late-blooming playwright whose corporate job has been supporting his family in their Hudson Valley home. Given the rich situation and director Daniel Sullivan's darkly luscious production, however, the disappointments hurt. Parker, whose extensive theater career includes her Tony-winning performance in Sullivan's staging of 'Proof,' makes a fascinating, poignant wraith -- a lost soul in silky black mourning gowns (by Jane Greenwood), just beginning to realize how much is lost. But her voice is sometimes hard to hear, especially in the wordy exposition when everyone in the family is babbling at the same time about many important plot points. Victoria Clark is exquisitely down to earth as the pious sister, while Danny Burstein has touching fury as the German-born doctor enduring wartime xenophobia.

Courtroom dramas once had a long, respectable tradition as entertaining, easy-mark theater. After decades of legal procedurals on TV and film, however, it takes fresh urgency, irresistible casting and a real pulse to justify a big-ticket Broadway version. Under Ethan McSweeny's conscientious direction, what we get instead is 2 1/2 hours of competent acting and monotonous storytelling that seldom elevate the serious plot -- a black man shoots the white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter -- from the genre of theatrical hokum.

Directed with exquisite nuance by Lindsay Posner, the production -- Broadway's first since 1947 -- runs two and three-quarter talky hours and employs 11 delightfully stylish actors to make something magnificently satisfying from a petty, basically irrelevant very English story...Roger Rees is wonderful as father of the boy (Spencer Davis Milford)...But this is a genuine ensemble that makes incredulity seem real and very human.

Well, so much for hopes about 'A Night With Janis Joplin.' Goodbye to a glimmer of faith that, just maybe, Broadway might restrain itself from flattening this formative rock outlaw into another cheese-ball tribute like the ones that mass-market the singularity of Elvis and The Beatles...Writer-director Randy Johnson and the siblings Joplin left behind in Port Arthur, Texas, have scrubbed her up and domesticated her into just another ordinary '60s chick who idolized black women blues singers, loved literature, sang loud and died fast...Mary Bridget Davies has the lungs, the notes and the screaming moan in the back of the throat to suggest the real thing in 'Cry Baby,' 'Me and Bobby McGee' and 'Ball and Chain.' But the actress, who also toured in a different Janis revue, is too externalized (and badly costumed) to touch the layers of vulnerability, much less the brazen sexuality that helped galvanize the adventures of a generation.

..it's a pleasure to watch [Norbert Leo Butz] engage in the fantastical adventures of both the healthy and the dying Edward Bloom, irrepressible teller of tall stories and bad jokes in 'Big Fish.' In fact, there are many pleasures in this ambitious but disappointing adaptation of Daniel Wallace's Walter Mitty-esque novel and Tim Burton's 2003 movie about a father's inability to make a truthful connection with his serious son...So it's crushing to realize, early on, that this gentle, sincere, beautiful-looking show is deadly dull. Author John August, who also wrote the screenplay, strings sentimentality and hackneyed picaresque escapades together as if they were equivalent balls on a string. Tension never builds, even when Edward's son Will (Bobby Steggert) tries to unravel the father's secret life.

People actually seem to hang there on the stage, as selective and eccentric as memory, in director John Tiffany's unsettling, viscerally powerful revival of Tennessee Williams' 1944 masterwork, 'The Glass Menagerie.'...What could be ridiculous and mannered is, instead, bold and terrifically effective in this willful but fascinating vision by Tiffany and much of the team responsible for the enchanting Tony-winning 'Once.' It helps that Zachary Quinto portrays Tom with the wary, restless humanity of a trapped poet, while Cherry Jones carves out a less delusional, more sturdy Amanda with kaleidoscopic layers of hope and bile.

People actually seem to hang there on the stage, as selective and eccentric as memory, in director John Tiffany's unsettling, viscerally powerful revival of Tennessee Williams' 1944 masterwork, 'The Glass Menagerie.'...What could be ridiculous and mannered is, instead, bold and terrifically effective in this willful but fascinating vision by Tiffany and much of the team responsible for the enchanting Tony-winning 'Once.' It helps that Zachary Quinto portrays Tom with the wary, restless humanity of a trapped poet, while Cherry Jones carves out a less delusional, more sturdy Amanda with kaleidoscopic layers of hope and bile.

People actually seem to hang there on the stage, as selective and eccentric as memory, in director John Tiffany's unsettling, viscerally powerful revival of Tennessee Williams' 1944 masterwork, 'The Glass Menagerie.'...What could be ridiculous and mannered is, instead, bold and terrifically effective in this willful but fascinating vision by Tiffany and much of the team responsible for the enchanting Tony-winning 'Once.' It helps that Zachary Quinto portrays Tom with the wary, restless humanity of a trapped poet, while Cherry Jones carves out a less delusional, more sturdy Amanda with kaleidoscopic layers of hope and bile.