Mark Kennedy — Theater Critic

During a two-hour concert at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, the four - Felix Cavaliere on keyboard and vocals, singer Eddie Brigati, drummer Dino Danelli and guitarist Gene Cornish - seem to have taken musical Viagra. Brigati gleefully smashed two tambourines against his thigh and Cornish playfully threw guitar picks into the crowd. These pioneers of blue-eyed soul were having fun and that became infectious.

During a two-hour concert at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, the four - Felix Cavaliere on keyboard and vocals, singer Eddie Brigati, drummer Dino Danelli and guitarist Gene Cornish - seem to have taken musical Viagra. Brigati gleefully smashed two tambourines against his thigh and Cornish playfully threw guitar picks into the crowd. These pioneers of blue-eyed soul were having fun and that became infectious.

Being true to oneself is a key issue in Clifford Odets' dark play, 'The Big Knife,' written in 1948 during the flush of postwar success, when America's focus turned toward capitalism. A strong, noirish production starring Bobby Cannavale opened Tuesday night on Broadway, presented by Roundabout Theatre Company. Doug Hughes stages repeated dynamic moments during the period drama, smartly retaining much of Odets' stilted yet colorful dialogue. The more seasoned cast members relish their opportunities to melodramatically sneer, flounce and bluster as required.

Directed with subtlety and tenderness by Jack O'Brien, this is a bittersweet tale of repression and rebellion wrapped up in a valentine to a lost theatrical art form...Lane as the tortured soul at the play's heart is magnificent -- showing sides that are charming, witty, savage, self-destructive and yearning...One of the best scenes is toward the end when a self-loathing Miles returns to the stage in full-on drag. He has dropped The Nance act and is playing an old whore named Hortense. Lane is still funny but seems thoroughly and unbearably broken. It is heartbreaking.

The 2 1/2-hour show, about Motown Records under founder Berry Gordy, opened Sunday at The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre completely unbalanced: The songs are staggering, the book utterly flimsy. Both are due to one man: Gordy, who clearly knows what makes an indelible hit song, but also has an inability to write objectively about that skill. As the book writer, Gordy comes across almost divine, a true visionary who literally changed the world and race relations but was eventually abandoned by the artists he made stars when they sought to cash in. There are parts of the show that even a North Korean dictator would find excessively flattering.

The English hit 'Matilda,' which opened Thursday at Shubert Theatre, is a witty musical adaptation of the beloved novel by Roald Dahl and is true to his bleak vision of childhood as a savage battleground. The musical arrives in New York with plenty of hype and awards, and it mostly delivers a thrilling blast of nasty fun, even if it's a bit swollen and in need of some fine-tuning. It also has come with perhaps its most grotesque masterstroke: Bertie Carvel as the fearsome cross-dressing school headmistress Miss Trunchbull.

The show that opened Thursday at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre is so full of good will - did you expect anything less from Lauper or Fierstein? - that only a curmudgeon could walk out and not want to hug the crowds in Times Square, even the sketchy ones in cartoon costumes. True, the second half is almost completely unnecessary, the English accents are laughable and the footwear puns are relentless. But who cares? This is a big ol' sweet love story about sons, the families we make and red patent leather...the real star is Porter, who delivers a touching, sassy, nuanced performance, often in 8-inch heels. One character sums up his importance to this show by saying, 'Whenever you leave a room, there's always a great big gaping gap.' Amen.

Nora Ephron's last play is about the world of New York tabloids, and it's a lot like the messy subject she looks at - overindulgent, overstuffed and raucous. That's its charm as well as its undoing...Hanks, making his Broadway debut, is classic Hanks - lovable, touching and funny...After 16 scenes over two hours, McAlary emerges as a complex figure, both self-aggrandizing and yet also someone who genuinely seems to want to 'right wrongs'...Ephron seems to be bewitched by this lovable scamp. But the play leaves little lasting impression, like a day-old tabloid.

'Hands on a Hardbody,' a seemingly far-fetched stage show based on a documentary that features songs co-written by Phish frontman Trey Anastasio, stars a modified Aztec red Nissan. By the end of the show, you'll swear that truck can dance. You might, too. Anastasio and Broadway veteran Amanda Green have written a soundtrack of mostly fine songs in a nice mix of styles - blues, gospel, country and honky-tonk - that will fire you right up. Playwright Doug Wright has had some fun himself, the cast is committed and realistic, and the whole thing is a pleasing, tuneful, heart-filled ode to small towns and American dreams.

The cat is just one of the problems in this ill-conceived and poorly executed adaptation of a classic American tale that opened Wednesday at the Cort Theatre...The many scenes stubbornly refuse to add up to much and it remains as flat as Golightly is supposed to be effervescent. Richard Greenberg's adaptation of Truman Capote's classic 1958 novella is extremely faithful - some chunks of dialogue have been lifted directly from the book - without adding much. Actually, director Sean Mathias has tacked on more complexity to scenes for reasons that are unclear...Come to think of it, maybe the cat can be forgiven for bad behavior. It has, after all, had to sit through too much of this.

Sigourney Weaver, a longtime collaborator with Durang, plays Masha with flamboyant overacting. She's clearly having a ball; the whole cast is.... Director Nicholas Martin thankfully doesn't rush things, allowing the actors the freedom to extend a scene just a little further with merely a look....It's all a bit silly, a tad daffy and very, very sweet. Thankfully, for a show that both lampoons and honors Chekhov's themes, it doesn't end with the sadness that usually dominates that revered playwright's work. In fact, you can hear the Beatles sing 'Here Comes the Sun.'

Taylor's Richards is a hoot yet she almost gets upstaged by another character, which is hard to do in a one-woman show. But two purring phone calls between her and Clinton are some of the play's highlights, perhaps proving that only Clinton can outshine Ann Richards.

What's this happening in Cinderella's magical kingdom? Is that a challenge to absolute monarchy we hear amid the romance and dancing? My goodness, it is: There's a demand for democracy. Children, there's even a call for economic justice. What kind of fairy tale is this? In the hands of playwright Douglas Carter Beane, a quite fine one actually.... Beane has succeeded, proving he may be Cinderella's real fairy godmother. His script crackles with sweetness and freshness, combining a little 'Monty Python's Spamalot' with some 'Les Miserables.'

What's this happening in Cinderella's magical kingdom? Is that a challenge to absolute monarchy we hear amid the romance and dancing? My goodness, it is: There's a demand for democracy. Children, there's even a call for economic justice. What kind of fairy tale is this? In the hands of playwright Douglas Carter Beane, a quite fine one actually.... Beane has succeeded, proving he may be Cinderella's real fairy godmother. His script crackles with sweetness and freshness, combining a little 'Monty Python's Spamalot' with some 'Les Miserables.'

Whether all the sound effects are meant to enhance the performances onstage or cover up the acting is unclear. What's not unclear is that an unnecessarily noisy production opened Thursday at the Richard Rodgers Theatre...Scarlett Johansson turns in a nifty turn as Maggie, finding humor and barely hidden desperation in her role as frustrated wife and mother-to-be. She's less overtly sexy than other actresses who have played the ironic role, making her Maggie more cerebral, angry and proud. Benjamin Walker, as her husband Brick, is slow to boil but savage when he does, a former athlete turned into a languid hunk of beef who sits on the edges of the stage avoiding conversation and hiding in a bottle. They have little chemistry at first - but that's kind of the point.

The play - so buffed and polished it now seems to squeak - is matched by a searing, brilliant performance by Laurie Metcalf, who is simply astonishing as she goes from snippy, bossy scientist to a broken, confused intruder wolfing down Chinese food on the floor. Director Joe Mantello keeps up a blistering pace - snippets of scenes dissolve into another, past and present collide. Speed is important to keep the audience guessing, but it leaves no room for a moment's error. Mantello proves as sharp as the narrator is unreliable.

This 'Glengarry Glen Ross' is a hoot. The timing is pretty good too: Florida real estate and horrible desperation in offices is now in vogue.

A dazzling revival of Clifford Odets’ ”Golden Boy” opened Thursday, still packing a punch after 75 years. Tyson could do well to watch how to successfully put together a show about the rise and fall of a boxer…Tony Shalhoub is a stand-out as Bonaparte’s father, a role whose lines are written in broken Italian-accented English which could be a disaster in the wrong hands...But Shalhoub is so skilled that only a deeply felt character emerges…Numrich, who starred as the young farm boy Albert Narracott in “War Horse,” is a nimble former “shrimp with glasses” here, maintaining his air of insecurity despite a toned physique and a solid left hook. The actor nicely does impetuousness and brashness, but also you can feel his inner tumult at betraying his father….Sher has embraced the realism of this dark world — the sweat, gore and rushes of blood to the head. There are passionate kisses but always a lingering threat of violence. The place reeks of leather and failure.

Running an intermissionless 70 minutes, “The Anarchist” starts in second gear and never really speeds up or slows down, just becomes wave after wave of staccato dialogue that is more pleasant on the page than spoken. No one talks like this and the two actresses struggle to make something unnatural seem natural.

[Holmes] mostly tries hard to keep up with stage veterans Norbert Leo Butz and Jayne Houdyshell in Rebeck's oddly thin new play...Director Jack O'Brien struggles to both get the five-person cast to really jibe and the rhythm of the plot to get going. Holmes relies too much on a whiny teenage angst and a guilelessness that worked on TV but lacks nuance onstage...Rebeck, who created the first season of NBC's 'Smash' and several well-received plays including 'Seminar' and 'Mauritius,' has stumbled a bit with 'Dead Accounts,' a love letter to the hardworking, plainspoken Midwest, but one that lacks the sharpness and depth of her previous work...The heavy lifting is done by Butz...Butz at first seems to be overcompensating for the smallness of Holmes, but the anguish and heart of his character are revealed beautifully...But 'Dead Accounts' doesn't really resolve anything or really end. It just sort of peters out, its momentum lost and none of its issues resolved.

We've all seen the scene in 'A Christmas Story' when the kid gets his tongue stuck on a frozen flagpole. Now on Broadway is that very same scene – plus the kid actually singing through it, or at least trying to sing. 'Sthlun luv a...,' he mumbles at the end. It's just one great touch in a musical that dares to mess with one of the most popular Christmas-time movies of all time and yet manages to not only do the film justice, but top it. The show...is a charming triumph of imagination that director John Rando has infused with utter joy. It's also a snappy piece of mature songwriting from a pair of guys barely as old as the original 1983 film...Purists may be upset to miss some film elements – such as Ralphie's decoder ring – but few will walk away thinking 'A Christmas Story' has been dishonored, itself a little Christmas miracle.

We've all seen the scene in 'A Christmas Story' when the kid gets his tongue stuck on a frozen flagpole. Now on Broadway is that very same scene – plus the kid actually singing through it, or at least trying to sing. 'Sthlun luv a...,' he mumbles at the end. It's just one great touch in a musical that dares to mess with one of the most popular Christmas-time movies of all time and yet manages to not only do the film justice, but top it. The show...is a charming triumph of imagination that director John Rando has infused with utter joy. It's also a snappy piece of mature songwriting from a pair of guys barely as old as the original 1983 film...Purists may be upset to miss some film elements – such as Ralphie's decoder ring – but few will walk away thinking 'A Christmas Story' has been dishonored, itself a little Christmas miracle.

Most of the jokes from the new Broadway comedy 'The Performers' cannot appear in a family newspaper. The world of adult films doesn't lend itself to cleanliness…The funny thing is that the show has a pure heart and a traditional feel-good message despite the waving of adult toys, simulated sex acts and language that would trigger a seizure in a network censor. Read has somehow found sweetness in porn…Director Evan Cabnet has aimed at, and struck, the tender heart in a script that could easily be performed with more darkness or more cartoony. The great cast — especially a squeaky, muddle-headed Graynor and zesty Winkler — keeps the show giggling.

Perhaps the best part is watching the first-rate cast have so much fun — Stephanie J. Block shows real comedic power, Jim Norton is having a ball, Chita Rivera is giggly, Gregg Edelman is just silly and Will Chase is over-acting perfectly...This is a play where overacting can be done to perfection…The jokes are hoary, the songs are ditties ('Off to the Races' is the best known) and the mystery not so mysterious — 'You might like to add that line to your list of suspicious statements!' says one character to the audience — but the fun is infectious, even if it seems that the folks on stage might be having more of it than the paying guests…In the wrong hands, it can sit awkwardly in a Broadway house — too zany, too arch. But these are the right hands: There are veterans at every turn. So no matter who gets the most votes, everyone wins.

The slow-to-start musical features an appealing 11-year-old Lilla Crawford in the title role, an overcooked Katie Finneran as Miss Hannigan and a first-rate Anthony Warlow as Daddy Warbucks...Finneran and Warlow seem to be in different shows. If you missed her in her Tony Award-winning turn as a daffy, drunken floozy in “Promises, Promises,” she reprises it here. In fact, she does very little new...If Finneran is big and brassy and broad, Warlow is the opposite. This Australian actor brings gravitas and a sumptuous voice to Warbucks...While Crawford is excellent, as is usually the case with “Annie,” a younger orphan often steals your heart. In this show, that would be Emily Rosenfeld as Molly, who is cuter than a dump truck of plush teddy bears.