Matt Windman — Theater Critic

‘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.

While “Elf” can still hardly be considered a great or even good musical (many songs that fail to leave a lasting impression and loads of clunky comic business), the new Broadway production is, I must confess, a crowd-pleasing, feel-good delight that is presented with genuine showmanship, including expansive dance choreography by Liam Steel, whimsical digital projections, and (in a feat reminiscent of the “Back to the Future” musical) Santa’s sleigh flying high above the audience. There are also, of course, obligatory bursts of snow throughout the theater.

The production rides on heavy sensory overload, with intense lighting (which is used to depict location rather than scenery or props), live filming and video projections (with tons of extreme close-ups), smoke and fog effects, monochromatic design, stylized ensemble movement (at one point, the chorus members break into convulsions), and other melodramatic and self-aware gestures. The sound quality of the orchestra is also top-notch, allowing the mostly sung-through score to contribute to the outsized experience.

I initially came away from “The Hills of California” feeling that it is a neatly constructed but derivative family drama that lacked the excitement of Butterworth’s 2018 melodrama “The Ferryman” (another London import directed by Mendes and starring Donnelly) and was subject to meandering scenes full of accusations. But over the next few days, I became increasingly fascinated by the play’s plot mechanisms (which leave a lot of lingering mystery), the psychological damage sustained by each character, and impressed by the shaded performances and meticulous stagecraft.

It took over two decades, but Foster is now finally playing Winnifred in a Broadway revival of “Mattress” based on an Encores! production at City Center from earlier this year. As expected, Foster is sublime, and the production is a tuneful, old-fashioned, flamboyant, altogether blissful romp.

Regretfully, I did not see “Job” during its earlier runs, and I suspect that it was probably more exciting to see it in a more intimate downtown space. On Broadway, the production (as directed by Michael Herwitz) looks empty and the play feels underwritten. It dumps compelling societal concerns upon us, leaves them unexplored, and relies structurally on an uninspired starting point (i.e. confessing to a therapist) and gimmicks.

One might question whether the lengthy prologue enhances or takes away from the musical itself, which together last approximately four hours (imagine sitting through “Macbeth” in its entirety after attending “Sleep No More”) and whether some of the other production choices and characterizations are too extreme. However, it all makes for an exciting, edgy, and painstakingly-detailed production.

This rendition of “The Wiz,” which arrives on Broadway following short engagements in multiple cities and is directed by Schele Williams (“The Notebook”), has the look and feel of a second-rate, low-budget touring production, with tacky, Halloween-quality costumes, limited scenic design (relying heavily on projections), and surprisingly uninspired and generic dance choreography. More thought seems to have gone into the alcoholic drinks available at intermission, including a green-colored frozen margarita.

At its best, “The Outsiders”(which is directed by Danya Taymor, “Pass Over”) is fresh and rambunctious, with an attractive period country-pop score by Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Justine Levine (with plainspoken lyrics and pulsating music reminiscent of Jason Robert Brown), well-executed choreography by Rick Kuperman and Jeff Kuperman (including both rock social dance and intense fight movement), and an industrial design scheme that is seamless and atmospheric. However, the book (by playwright Adam Rapp and Justine Levine), which stays dutifully true to the novel, has difficulty reconciling bursts of excitement with the plotting and character details of the novel, with Brody Grant (who looks far too mature to be playing the sensitive 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis) slowly narrating exposition to the audience and sentimental solos that stop the show in its tracks. By act two, the show felt like a mechanical procession of plot progression and teen melodrama.

The production truly works best in the town meeting sequence, in which the doctor struggles to communicate his findings to the community. Audience members feel as if they are at the pub where the scene is taking place, with many invited to sit onstage and the rest offered complimentary shots of liquor. The scene also concludes with an act of mob violence (in which ice buckets are poured upon the doctor). It all makes for great environmental theater – and the unexpected addition of the climate change protesters must have made for a rowdy, on-point addition.

For the most part, I found “The Connector” (which runs just under two hours without intermission) to be engrossing (particularly during explosive production numbers in which the protagonist narrates his stories, conjuring colorful and offbeat characters played by Max Crumm and Fergie Philippe) and sharp (with ominous warnings about how the internet and corporate overlords would remake journalism). The performances and the production values (with Brown himself on piano and conducting the band) are all first-rate.

While the musical respects the film’s structure and setting (though the location is moved from San Francisco to New York City) and recycles much of the original dialogue, it proves to be one of the relatively few theatrical adaptations that expands upon its cinematic source material, as seen in how the score (which is grounded in mid-century jazz) artfully captures the characters’ circumstances (including the high-flying, euphoric rush of endless cocktails) and subsequent breakdowns and melancholy.

Over the past year, there have been a number of plays and musicals dealing with anti-Semitism, some more powerfully than others. Harmon (whose prior works include the comedies “Bad Jews,” “Significant Other” and “Admissions”) takes the genre to the next level by not just depicting anti-Semitism or warning against it but in earnestly trying to wrestle with how to respond to it, including the limits of intellectually analyzing it, and whether to fight it or flee for safety.

Unfortunately, “Harmony” contains a weak score, with surprisingly generic and bland music by Manilow (none of which stands up to his wonderfully catchy pop hits), and pedestrian lyrics by Sussman (who also wrote the comparatively stronger book). It does not help that “Harmony” is so similar in setting, manner, and politics to the comparatively superior “Cabaret,” which is about to receive a new Broadway revival. In fact, “Harmony” often feels like a combination of “Cabaret,” “Jersey Boys,” and Rodgers & Hammerstein love duets.

“Here We Are” probably did not merit a full-scale, sleek, starry production – but I suppose that it had to be produced posthumously anyway in tribute to Sondheim, and diehard Sondheim fans such as myself feel as if they have an obligation to check it out.

Rannells and Gad once again make a terrific pair of unlikely pals and earn many laughs. However, “Gutenberg!” was intended to be what the Polish theater theorist Jerzy Grotowski termed “Poor Theater,” built upon minimal production values and maximized imagination. On Broadway, it feels both overdone (with an elaborate set invoking an empty stage, instead of an actual empty stage, and a band instead of a single piano, losing its original charm) and undercooked (a slight, overextended, and rudimentary comic routine).