Marilyn Stasio — Theater Critic

The lighting (by UK designer Charles Balfour) is subtly seductive, and the ever-inventive sound maven Ian Dickinson (of the Autograph design team), who also did the fancy work on 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' and 'Jerusalem,' has invented a symphony of provocative night sounds that sustains the mood of the play from beginning to end, even when the human voices start to grate on the ear. Things start to go south when the Woman opens her mouth to reveal a shallow, rather silly character who gains no stature from Jumbo's perky performance. And while Jackman puts heart and soul into Butterworth's mystical meditations on the spiritual properties of trout fishing (even as he efficiently guts and cooks a very real fish on stage), fishing is still fishing and after a while you feel the urge to throw these fishy speeches back into the water.

Roundabout rounded up name players for this revival of 'The Real Thing,' Tom Stoppard's meditation on the vagaries of love and the elusive nature of reality. Ewan McGregor makes an impressive Broadway debut as a British playwright whose new play reflects both his own rocky relationship with his cool and distant wife (Cynthia Nixon) as well as his affair with the vivacious wife (a radiant Maggie Gyllenhaal) of the star of his play. Stoppard is a witty brainiac who likes to tease and torment an audience, but helmer Sam Gold's mannered production is so steeped in artifice, it's almost antagonistic to the text.

Issue-driven plays are thought to be relatively impervious to production vagaries. That's generally true of Akhtar's perhaps overly schematic play, which is constructed like a house of cards, its highly civilized human relationships in perfect harmony until someone breaks out of character and throws them all off balance...Some of the production alterations for Broadway are purely cosmetic. Being more elaborate, John Lee Beatty's set design of a stylish Manhattan apartment (a terrace!) and Jennifer Von Mayrhauser's fashionable costumes put more emphasis on the elegant life style of the characters. The new cast, including Josh Radnor as the curator, is perfectly satisfactory, but so was the original one that played in the smaller-scale production at Lincoln Center...But it must be said that replacing Aasif Mandvi...as Amir with Dhillon...puts a new perspective on the central character.

Sting lives up to his nickname, 'the King of Pain,' with 'The Last Ship.' Melancholy tones of sorrow and regret saturate this highly personal and intensely felt musical play, which is set in Wallsend, the industrial town in the north of England where the singer-songwriter grew up. The somber book by John Logan and Brian Yorkey takes place in 2007, the year the historic shipyard closed and the town lost its purpose and identity. The lyrical language of Sting's mournful score gives poetic voice to the distressed shipbuilders, but depicting their story as a heroic allegory is regrettably alienating.

'On the Town' is back on Broadway, and whaddya know, it's still a helluva show. Helmer John Rando (who directed the musical at Barrington Stage last year) has given the kid-glove treatment to this 1944 musical salute to New York...Joshua Bergasse's choreography, classic in design and elegant in form, pays its respects to Jerome Robbins' groundbreaking choreography, and although the young and vital cast is light on acting chops, the dancing is sensational.

Nobody does mean-nasty-vicious like Terrence McNally, bless his black heart. The pitiless playwright has exhumed 'It's Only a Play,' his 1986 love-hate letter to those big babies who work and play on Broadway, and updated it for today -- and for the timely if schmaltzy reunion of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. The comedy's slight plot, about the high drama (and low comedy) of the opening night of a new Broadway show, is still a trifle. But the well-aimed and highly personal zingers are more malicious, and delicious, this time out.

Believe the buzz. The National Theater Production of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' is spectacular, like Cirque du Soleil with brains. Scribe Simon Stephens has made sensitive work of adapting Mark Haddon's bestselling book about a high-functioning boy with Asperger's Syndrome who learns to use his uncanny genius for math to navigate the world. Under Marianne Elliott's imaginative direction, a brilliant design team allows us to inhabit the boy's consciousness on a terrifying journey that begins with the death of a dog and ends with his discovery of the power of his own mind.

Donald Margulies gets a big, sloppy kiss from leading lady Blythe Danner, who is effortlessly lovely and irresistibly charismatic as the queenly head of a fractious theatrical family in his new play, 'The Country House.' The scribe also gets a big hug from Daniel Sullivan's buttery direction, which slathers a golden gloss over the plot holes and character cracks in his pleasant but hardly earth-moving play.

'You Can't Take It With You' declares itself in a stage direction: 'This is a house where you do as you like, and no questions asked.' That license to live the carefree life of children at play, extended by this 1936 comedy classic by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, appealed to a nation sunk in the Great Depression. But for a modern audience paranoid about 'entitlements,' not so much. That's one excuse, anyway, for this curiously inert revival helmed by Scott Ellis. Toplined by the great James Earl Jones and Rose Byrne, a perfectly swell cast can't convince us that they're having fun living the life of social parasites.

Although still a popular regional attraction, this 1989 two-hander has been largely forgotten by Gotham. Or maybe not so much forgotten as deemed irrelevant for a culture that doesn't get the point of love letters, or any kind of letters, or maybe even love itself. Older theatergoers who remember those quaint artifacts should turn out for stars of their own generation who also remember.

Steppenwolf's revival of 'This Is Our Youth,' Kenneth Lonergan's 1996 play about disaffected rich kids in the Reagan era, might be re-titled (or marketed as) 'These Are Your Parents.' These post-adolescent slackers living on Manhattan's Upper West Side in 1982 could easily have grown up to reproduce themselves as our current crop of privileged youth. In fact, this demographic is turning out in strong numbers for the show, drawn by its cast of baby stars Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin and Tavi Gevinson. That makes two generations of potential ticket buyers for this superbly directed staging. We can see the family theater parties now.

Here's the big question that should be on the minds of the producers of 'Holler If Ya Hear Me': Now that we've built it, will they come? The quick answer: Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the marketing campaign. That's the gamble investors took on this musical treatment of works left behind by Tupac Shakur, the now-sainted rap artist who died at the age of 25 in a 1996 drive-by shooting. Despite a clunky book, this show is on fire. But it's going to be a hard sell with traditional auds, and can the real fans spring for Broadway ticket prices?

Alan Cumming must have sold his soul to the devil to acquire his divinely debauched persona as the Emcee of the Kit Kat Klub in 'Cabaret.' It seemed nuts, but proved shrewd of Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall to retool their dazzling 1998 revival of the Kander and Ebb masterpiece, fit Cumming with a new trenchcoat for his triumphant return, and bring the decadent netherworld of 1920s Berlin back to Studio 54, the revival's ideal venue. Inspiration flagged, however, in casting Michelle Williams, so soft and vulnerable in 'My Week With Marilyn,' as wild and reckless party girl Sally Bowles.

The inspiration for Harvey Fierstein's 'Casa Valentina' was a discreet sanctuary in the Catskills where manly men (with wives and children and other baggage) could get their kicks in the bottled-up postwar era of the 50s by dressing up like girly-girls. But the play doesn't venture much beyond the facade of its true-life model. Fierstein vividly captures a group of these brave pioneers with their girdles on, and a trim ensemble helmed by Joe Mantello lends them character. But the plot is messy, the action static, and attempts to probe the psychosexual dynamic of transvestism are tentative and superficial.

The screaming starts when a bespangled Neil Patrick Harris parachutes onstage in 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' and doesn't stop until he's back in his dressing room. That's the kind of rock-star performance he gives in this spectacular revival -- helmed with fabulous flash by Michael Mayer -- of the 1998 musical (and later movie) by John Cameron Mitchell (book) and Stephen Trask (music & lyrics). Harris' Hedwig is an imperfectly transformed transvestite who grew up in East Berlin before the wall came down, resplendent in the punk drag of a nihilistic rocker but still concealing a heap of hurt under her wig.

Maybe it takes a black Irish heart to fully appreciate McDonagh's savage humor. But from bizarre stage plays like The Lieutenant of Inishmore to a psychotic film like Seven Psychopaths, the scribe always tempers his killing wit with affection, and even sympathy for his victims. That's the way it works with The Cripple of Inishmaan...McDonagh's sly point here seems to be that Irish humor, so wickedly cutting and clever, doesn't always mean to inflict pain. There are times when the marvelous musical verbiage that rolls off the silver tongues of the Irish can serve as secretive, even protective camouflage for truths better not spoken.

Moss Hart has a lot to answer for. Just think how many future brain surgeons and rocket scientists were lost, lured to Gotham to pursue a theater career after reading 'Act One,' the eminent Broadway playwright-director's captivating 1959 showbiz autobiography. Still, Hart can't be blamed for the missteps of playwright-director James Lapine in adapting that seminal book. Having learned the tricks of the trade from the great George S. Kaufman, Hart would surely have taken a scalpel to this verbose, unwieldy, overacted production -- but kept the spotlight on winning star turns by Santino Fontana and Tony Shalhoub.

James Franco and Chris O'Dowd may be the big draws (and well deserving of all their kudos) in this emotionally devastating revival of John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men.' But the other star of the show is helmer Anna D. Shapiro, who turns in an impeccably mounted production without a single blemish. The ensemble acting is flawless. The design work is breathtaking. And Steinbeck's Depression-based views on the human connections that are our only hope of survival in desperate times are just as relevant -- even imperative -- for living through our own cruel times.

The ungainly stage at Broadway's Circle in the Square has proved an inspiration for set designer James Noone to recreate Emerson's Bar & Grill, the seedy joint in North Philadelphia where Billie Holiday played one of her last club dates in 1959, three months before she died...It's a known fact that McDonald is a majestic singer. (Maybe the best Bess, of 'Porgy and Bess,' our modern stage has seen.) In more than a dozen songs, she captures the plaintive sound, the eccentric phrasing and all the little vocal catches that identify Billie Holiday's unique style. But it's her extraordinary sensitivity as an actor that makes McDonald's interpretation memorable.

The ungainly stage at Broadway's Circle in the Square has proved an inspiration for set designer James Noone to recreate Emerson's Bar & Grill, the seedy joint in North Philadelphia where Billie Holiday played one of her last club dates in 1959, three months before she died...It's a known fact that McDonald is a majestic singer. (Maybe the best Bess, of 'Porgy and Bess,' our modern stage has seen.) In more than a dozen songs, she captures the plaintive sound, the eccentric phrasing and all the little vocal catches that identify Billie Holiday's unique style. But it's her extraordinary sensitivity as an actor that makes McDonald's interpretation memorable.

'Bullets Over Broadway' is the show everyone hoped would get those flickering Broadway lights blazing again. In certain wonderful ways -- Susan Stroman's happy-tappy dance rhythms, the dazzling design work on everything from proscenium curtain to wigs, and a fabulous chorus line of dancing dolls, molls and gangsters -- Woody Allen's showbiz musical is the answer to a Broadway tinhorn's prayer. Surprisingly, though, the book (from Allen's own screenplay for his 1994 film) is feeble on laughs, and certain key performers don't seem comfortable navigating the earthy comic idiom of burlesque. So, let's call it close -- but no cigar.

'Bullets Over Broadway' is the show everyone hoped would get those flickering Broadway lights blazing again. In certain wonderful ways -- Susan Stroman's happy-tappy dance rhythms, the dazzling design work on everything from proscenium curtain to wigs, and a fabulous chorus line of dancing dolls, molls and gangsters -- Woody Allen's showbiz musical is the answer to a Broadway tinhorn's prayer. Surprisingly, though, the book (from Allen's own screenplay for his 1994 film) is feeble on laughs, and certain key performers don't seem comfortable navigating the earthy comic idiom of burlesque. So, let's call it close -- but no cigar.

Unfortunately, this kind of cutting wit, snappily delivered by a couple of certifiable stars like Collette and Letts, lulls the aud into thinking they have walked into a brittle comedy of manners. (Cue the patters of applause for every damned laugh line and, less plausibly, the knee-jerk impulse to clap after every scene, however brief.) Eno does write comical lines and witty exchanges, but his humor is not the reassuring stuff of sitcoms. It's the desperately funny chitchat of political prisoners awaiting the hangman...The all-star cast not only brings out character nuances that would be lost in a less savvy production, they might even manage to keep the house open for much if not most of the show's limited run. But word is bound to get out that Eno's tragi-comic sensibility is hard to digest for anyone who hasn't already acquired a taste for it. So, while there's an air of mystery about this piece, the biggest mystery is what this downtown show is doing on Broadway in the first place.

Denzel Washington's rabid fans won't be seeing their idol in this heart-stopping revival of Lorraine Hansberry's ground-breaking 1959 play, 'A Raisin in the Sun.' They'll be seeing Walter Lee Younger, the scion of a hard-working black family who sees his dreams of success slipping away on the post-WWII racial battlefront of Chicago's South Side. The performance is a personal triumph for Washington, who refrains from star-strutting to fold himself into a tight-knit ensemble of committed stage thesps who treat this revival like a labor of love.

Terrence McNally tries to cover a lot of territory in 'Mothers and Sons': the relationships between mothers and their gay sons; the satisfactions of gay marriage; the dark, enduring legacy of AIDS; and the generation gap within the gay community. Lucky for this high-profile scribe, he has sensitive interpreters of these themes in thesps Frederick Weller and the ever-astonishing Tyne Daly. But the ideas are so diffuse and the dramatic structure so disjointed, there's no cohesion to the material and no point to the plot.