Matt Windman

Slater gives a terrific performance — physically agile and emotionally transparent. He avoids mythologizing Marceau, instead presenting a young man straining to hold everything together. When his cousin fails to appear and responsibility settles fully on his shoulders, the flicker of panic is visible.

Seen on Broadway, with greater polish and physical distance, “Bug” lands differently. The problem isn’t that “Bug” no longer makes sense. It’s that this time, I never fully went with it. I understood what the play was doing. I respected the craft. I appreciated the performances. But I didn’t surrender to the descent. Where the play once swept me into its fever dream, I remained aware, analytical, outside the experience. The bugs never got under my skin.

The production ultimately feels less like a fresh interrogation of “Anna Christie” than a respectful showcase for Williams—who is married to Kail—and a museum piece. It honors the play’s legacy, but stops short of making a compelling case for its return.

‘Gruesome Playground Injuries’ is not an easy play; it’s nonlinear, messy, and intentionally unresolved. But that lends it power. The scenes accumulate like fragments of memory, adding up to something quietly devastating. When the play clicks, it does so with startling emotional clarity.

Director-choreographer Danny Mefford doesn’t attempt a radical reinterpretation, nor does he need to. The material is bulletproof. But he infuses the evening with a welcome sense of kinetic play, giving each scene and musical number a brisk, physical charge. “Magic Foot” remains a guaranteed showstopper, and the decision to run without an intermission—keeping the show at a tight 1 hour and 45 minutes—maintains the breathless pacing that makes the bee feel like a single, unbroken event.

The new Broadway revival once again attempts the impossible, under the direction of Michael Mayer and book writer Danny Strong. On paper, their involvement suggested a clear-eyed rethink: Mayer excels with emotional pop-rock material (“Spring Awakening,” “American Idiot”), while Strong has a reputation for structuring complex political narratives (“Dopesick,” “Empire”). In reality, the production feels caught between apologizing for the musical and re-enacting it—all while relying on its three stars to deliver the songs that keep the evening afloat.

In “Liberation,” Bess Wohl’s daring and deeply analytical new play, the act of exposure is both literal and intellectual. Wohl strips away nostalgia and ideology to examine how the 1970s women’s liberation movement reshaped lives, where it fell short, and what its legacy means today. She’s less interested in celebrating the past than in interrogating it—probing questions of identity, sacrifice, and progress with the precision of a social scientist and the empathy of a dramatist.

Nichelle Lewis’s Sarah is heartbreaking, and she sings “Your Daddy’s Son” with raw, aching vulnerability. Ben Levi Ross captures Younger Brother’s naivety and the fervent militancy with which he hurls himself into causes. Shaina Taub makes a sharper, funnier Emma Goldman this time around, with her vocals far stronger than last year. Overall, the cast imbues the piece with life and cohesion, embodying the full scope of America’s promise and pain.

What results is not unlike an expensive, exclusive party in a carnival funhouse. While the original “Phantom” was derided by its detractors as a cheesy theme park attraction, “Masquerade” truly is a glorified one.

The production seems intent on reaching new audiences and making the play feel more accessible to people who know “Bill & Ted” and “The Matrix” rather than Beckett. Some will be hooked, and others will surely find the repetition unbearable and slip out at intermission. “Godot” has always divided audiences. Reeves and Winter may not save the world this time, but their endless adventure in Beckett’s wasteland is a strange, curious, and surprisingly affecting experiment.

On paper, the new Broadway revival of Yasmina Reza’s “Art” sounds like a winner: three Tony Award winners — Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale, and James Corden — trading barbs in a sleek comedy about male friendship and the value of modern art. The result is hardly terrible, but it is slight. The laughs are modest, the pacing drags, and the play never builds beyond its simple conceit.

For all its beauty and occasional flashes of humor, “The Brothers Size” remains more evocative than fully satisfying. At 90 minutes, it drags in places, its lyrical style and deliberate pacing sometimes testing patience. It works best as part of the larger “Brother/Sister” cycle, where its themes of loyalty, family, and survival resonate more deeply.

Sharper, sleeker, and eerily timely, the revival proves that what began as a cult curiosity has grown into one of the best stage musicals of the last decade. Eleven years ago, “Heathers” premiered at New World Stages and was met with skepticism and a short-lived run. But in the years that followed, it built a rabid cult following thanks to its original Off-Broadway cast album, a hugely successful West End production (which yielded its own cast recording), and a professionally filmed version of the London staging. Combined with the viral spread of its songs on social media, “Heathers” became a genuine phenomenon among younger audiences raised on TikTok and YouTube bootlegs.

A three-hour fan wiki brought to life, complete with origin stories, stilted dialogue, lame jokes, and sequences seemingly constructed only to set up the next visual effect.

The play doesn’t discard “The Crucible.” It wrestles with it—closely, critically, personally. The students point out how John Proctor remains emotionally distant and never fully acknowledges the harm he has caused to others. These aren’t acts of revisionism; they’re acts of engagement. And in that sense, “John Proctor is the Villain” becomes not just a critique of a text, but an embodiment of how literature should be read: actively, critically, and with full awareness of who gets to tell the story.

‘Old Friends’ tries to be everything at once, moving from ‘Company’ to ‘Into the Woods’ to ‘A Little Night Music’ to ‘Sweeney Todd’ at breakneck speed. The result feels more like a mixtape than a tribute, more exhausting than illuminating.

Yes, it’s kid-friendly. Yes, it’s visually slick. But it’s also toothless. A show about a boundary-pushing cartoon icon shouldn’t feel this safe or generic. Betty Boop may be ready for her close-up, but this isn’t the vehicle she deserves. You are better off watching the original animated shorts on YouTube.

Unfortunately, this long-awaited debut is a frustrating misfire — overproduced, emotionally hollow, and fundamentally at odds with the delicate intimacy that makes the musical so beloved.

“Good Night, and Good Luck” is both a tribute and a reckoning—a stylish, sobering reminder of journalism’s power and the price of using it. With Clooney’s quiet strength at the center and Cromer’s riveting stagecraft all around him, this production looks to the past but refuses to stay there. The message is clear: if no one stands up, history isn’t just doomed to repeat—it already is.

While Mamet’s offstage persona may continue to provoke discomfort, this revival reminds us why his plays—at their best—remain so potent onstage. “Glengarry” still crackles with vicious energy, bitter humor, and brutal truths about American ambition. This sharp, superbly cast production doesn’t just close deals—it slams the door.

The first half of the Encores! production is unwieldy but terrific, with the lush romantic duets “Here I’ll Stay” and “I Remember It Well” (which was later repurposed by Lerner in the movie musical “Gigi”) interposed against the comic commentary of “Progress” and “Economics” and operetta-style sung conversations involving the full cast. Mitchell, one of Broadway’s most vital leading men since “Ragtime,” sings beautifully and brings an everyman persona to the role, while Baldwin is bright and vocally pristine. All the while, the large orchestra (conducted by Rob Berman) sounds glorious.

I was looking forward to the production – not just because of the track records of Washington and Gyllenhaal (who have both given excellent performances on Broadway in recent years) and Leon (who helmed a stunning production of “Our Town” at the same theater earlier this season). “Othello” is a play about the dangers of misinformation and mistrust as engineered by an exceptionally persuasive orator. It should speak directly to this cultural moment. Instead, it’s a hollow star vehicle – expensive but cheap, flashy but dull.

The ideal way to present ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ would have been as a nightclub concert or a revue that discarded the new book altogether.

A major problem with the City Center production (directed by the little-known Teddy Bergman) is that the venue is too large for “Urinetown,” which is a minimalist work that benefits from an environmental feel. It brings back memories of when City Center used to revive Off-Broadway musicals over the summer as part of its Off-Center series, which has been on hiatus since 2019.

However, the text has not been altered to explicitly support this thesis, leaving the racial subtext as an intriguing but peripheral layer to an otherwise outstanding production of one of the greatest musicals. One wonders whether Wolfe intended to develop the concept further and ultimately decided against it, which may have been for the best. I look forward to seeing “Gypsy” on Broadway again in 2040 – but not before attending this remarkable production at least a few more times.