Melissa Rose Bernardo — Theater Critic

It’s no wonder that Omari wants to hang out at Moto Moto: The music is hot (the often-spellbinding Goddess songs—which include elements of R&B, Afrobeat, pop, East African taarab—are by Michael Thurber); the dancing is even hotter (thanks to choreographer Darrell Grand Moultrie); there’s a super-sweet budding romance between Ahmed and proprietor Rashida (Arica Jackson); and he, and we, can’t get enough of Nadira’s soulful vocals. Side note: Someone needs to do a jazz album with Amber Iman, and it needs to include the ultra-lush ‘Honeysweet.’

Ever since #MeToo became a hashtag and a movement, forever altering the way we frame, discuss, and spotlight sexual abuse and harassment, ask yourself: When was the last time—if ever—you found yourself sympathizing with an aggressor? Yet here we are off-Broadway at Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, listening to the confessions of famous author/rock-star college professor Jon Macklem, and we’re immediately charmed. Partly, it’s because we’re hearing the story almost entirely from his perspective—a surprising, and daring, choice.

But it all comes back to Groff. Buoyed by Andrew Resnick and Michael Thurber’s kicky orchestrations, his renditions of Darin’s standards—the brassy, hard-edged “Mack the Knife,” with those insistent key changes, and the absolutely manic, horn-crazed “Once in a Lifetime”—are thrilling. The show is a testament to one man’s pure, unabashed love of performing. Make that two men.

We feel like we’re right there with Haddad as he recalls the early goosebump stages of the relationship—the handholding, the flirting, the overanalysis of texts, the visions of “wedding photos, printed in The New York Times Style section” dancing in his head. Where Hold Me goes—and where they end up—we won’t share. But Haddad leaves us with a few thoughtful questions: “Have you ever dated a disabled person?” (He hasn’t, he admits. “Yet. That I know of.”) “Have you ever…even entertained the idea that romance might be possible for you and them?” He’s not judging; he’s just asking questions that, truthfully, no one has ever really asked.

John Proctor Is the Villain not only serves as a modern day recontextualization of the original play, but also a laugh-out-loud funny and deeply affecting examination of girlhood, feminism, the #MeToo movement, and the unstoppable power of female friendship. It is pure, heartbreaking perfection.

Olivier Award winner Scott takes great care to assign a distinct voice and defining mannerisms to each role: Sonia carries a kitchen cloth; the housekeeper, Marina, stands at the kitchen counter, dragging on a cigarette; Helena sounds distracted and breathy, fiddling with her slinky gold necklace as she speaks. Michael is deeply serious, and for some reason likes to play with a tennis ball. All it takes for Scott to slip in and out of each character is a turn, or a walk behind a door. He’s a marvel.

Director Arin Arbus stages the slap-dash town meetings—everyone talking over everyone else, engaging with each other but also addressing the audience—with orchestral precision; in the Public’s 99-seat Shiva Theater, you’ll be able to hear every gossipy aside and under-the-breath quip. Koogler, whose plays include last year’s Staff Meal and the Obie-winning Fulfillment Center (2018)—manages to strike that ever-so-delicate balance of poking a bit of fun at colorful characters while also appreciating what lies beneath. It’s Our Town meets Northern Exposure, with a dash of Gilmore Girls (town selectman Taylor and mayor Annie are true kindred spirits).

What we will reveal: Ali and Barron have terrific chemistry (don’t be surprised if you find yourself cheering for them to kiss on the roof!); and director May Adrales stages a genuine jump-in-your-seat moment, aided by Alan C. Edwards’ unnerving lighting design, that you’ll be thinking about for days.

Her new play—the ambitious, slightly overstuffed Liberation, which just opened off-Broadway at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre—continues her pattern of unpredictability: It’s a memory play of sorts, set largely in the 1970s in a basement basketball court of an Ohio rec center. (David Zinn’s scenic design is period perfection, down to the janky metal folding chairs; you can almost hear the buzzers and smell the stale sweat socks.)

Menzel does get to do some gravity-defying climbing—the Bay Area–based troupe Bandaloop provided the show’s “vertical choreography”—and show off her impressive, rangey voice. But all the vocal pyrotechnics on Broadway can’t help this Redwood grow.

Behar has generously given her costars the best material. Her monologues aren’t as engaging; rather, they’re more like stand-up routines. In fact, the second—about a middle-aged woman contemplating divorce in order to escape the constant demands of her “hot to trot” hubby—is pretty much joke after joke after joke. It’s in her wheelhouse, but there’s only so much you can hear about shtupping and pumping and spritzing.

Or does it? Since she’s not barreling through the tunes like a freight train, McDonald uses her phenomenal vocal range to tap into an intense reservoir of feeling. Her Rose isn’t the abominable woman we’ve seen in previous productions. Sure, she’s pushy, especially when it comes to her star-to-be daughter, June (Jordan Tyson, The Notebook’s Younger Allie), the singing-dancing-twirling headliner of the family’s home-grown vaudeville act. She’s oblivious, shockingly so, when she volunteers her mousy daughter, Louise (Joy Woods, The Notebook’s Middle Allie), for a striptease at a second-rate burlesque. She’s girlish, giggly, and demure with reluctant agent/would-be fourth husband Herbie (a flawless Danny Burstein). But ultimately, she’s more mama bear than monster. The climactic “Rose’s Turn,” where she’s at her most vulnerable, is full of highs and lows both musical and emotional; never has Merman’s comparison of the song to an aria been more apt.

Helmed by Headland’s go-to collaborator Trip Cullman—who also directed Assistance (inspired by the playwright’s years working for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax), the deliciously bawdy Bachelorette, and the 2016 psychodrama The Layover—Cult of Love couldn’t be better timed: As we’re all agonizing over our own impending holiday family gatherings, there’s nothing more comforting than watching other people’s messed-up relatives tear each other to pieces, especially when there’s a prescription painkiller involved. Now will someone please bring us some figgy pudding?

The characters in Shit. Meet. Fan., however, are more annoying than unnerving. And, unfortunately, predictable. (Though the actors, especially Tillman and Messing, do their darnedest to create a bit of mystery.) As for the twist at the end—which is taken from the Genovese movie, and which we won’t reveal here—it feels like an easy way out. Something, say, a long-running TV show might do.

Maybe the musical takes a few too many tries to reach its (maybe) happy ending. But this is a 100-minute future-set show about robots, bursting with genuine feeling. If you need something to lift you out of your post-election depression, Maybe Happy Ending is your emotional upper.

Thanks to Rossum’s and Winters’ fearless performances, and the smooth direction of Whitney White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding), we see the distance between the siblings, but we also see the indissoluble attachment. (Hard to believe that Rossum, who spent nine seasons on the Showtime black comedy Shameless, is making her off-Broadway debut.) And hat tip to casting director Taylor Williams: Rossum and Winters actually do look like twin sisters.

It’s hard not to be instantly drawn to Tateh’s story: an immigrant who arrives on our shores dreaming of a better life and starts his own business making silhouettes, only to be crushed by tenement life; he ultimately resorts to working in a textile mill—64 hours a week for 6 dollars. You’ll want to join Younger Brother at Emma Goldman’s rally for the workers. Taub, on leave from Suffs where she plays another fiery activist, women’s suffrage leader Alice Paul, and Ross (star of Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Connector) are that persuasive. And Tony winner Uranowitz (Leopoldstadt), recently seen as the uppity ship owner in Titanic at Encores!, is shattering as Tateh, who later reinvents himself brilliantly as the filmmaker Baron Ashkenazy.

The most gorgeous moments in this Romeo + Juliet are the simplest, when all the noise falls away and it’s just Connor and Zegler: their first meeting, when they spontaneously proclaim their love in a shared 14-line sonnet; the famous Act 2 balcony scene, a positively swoon-worthy moment that no future production should ever attempt to re-create; their too-brief moment of post-wedded bliss. As Gertrude wisely commented in Hamlet: “More matter with less art.”

She channeled her frustration with the communications company into a New York Times piece, which led to the discovery of the second great love of her life, Peter. The start of their story became the heart of her 2022 memoir, Left On Tenth, now adapted into a middling Broadway play starring Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher (presumably Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks weren’t available).

The audience at the Todd Haimes Theatre, where Yellow Face has just opened in a lively revival, laughs heartily. Partly because DHH, played by Daniel Dae Kim—of TV’s Lost and Hawaii Five-0—has a wicked way with a one-liner. Also because Hwang is so proudly flaunting his dramaturgical transgression. But mostly because we have been laughing at DHH for the last 90 minutes. Not many writers would be willing to be the butt of so many jokes.

Saheem Ali directs a one-acter that only scratches the surface of the gentrification debate

But this is no standard-issue dysfunctional family drama; it’s also a meticulously crafted, emotion-packed memory play. With one rotation of Rob Howell’s spectacular towering set—anchored by a labyrinthian Escher-like staircase that seems to stretch to the sky—we’re back in 1955, in the Seaview Luxury Guesthouse and Spa, which is not luxurious and almost certainly doesn’t have a spa. Hills toggles between decades with ease—a credit to director Sam Mendes, whose particular gift is taking sprawling stories (see: Butterworth’s The Ferryman; The Lehman Trilogy) and making them feel intimate.

There are a couple twists—one involves a rather questionable Walmart purchase—that push The Roommate from realistic into far-fetched territory. One, unfortunately, is the ending. Again, no spoilers, but it’s a moment for Sharon that should be brimming with possibility, not hampered by implausibility.

There’s an intriguing push-pull to Friedlich’s script: Jane needs Loyd to give her the all-clear; at the same time, this overachieving zillennial techie clearly resents needing the approval of some Boomer with an earring who probably couldn’t program an Apple Watch. Lemmon and Friedman (Succession alum alert!), who have been with Job from the start, are terrific, especially in the drama’s most emotionally combative moments. But things go awry after a late-in-the-game twist that pushes the bounds of plausibility attempts (unsuccessfully) to move the play into psychological thriller territory.

There’s really no main character in Empire, but they all have songs. If you have a name, you get a song! Musically, Sherman and Hull were clearly inspired by Kander and Ebb; lyrically, they seem to be influenced by Hallmark and Successories. “We get to love the greatest love/ We get to climb the highest heights”: That’s from “Nothing Comes for Free,” the American Idol–ready ballad for star-crossed lovers Rudy Shaw (Kabeary), a Mohawk woman, and Joe Pakulski (Devin Cortez), a white man. “My whole life I gave my all/ Now my back’s against the wall”: That’s from “Al’s Moxie”—not to be confused with “Moxie,” an earlier song—sung by Wally’s boss, ex–New York Governor Al Smith (Paul Salvatoriello, who’d be aces in a revival of Fiorello!). In “Lookahee,” a cringe-fest in which all the newsboy cap–clad laborers—ethnic stereotypes, every last one of them—show off their pickup skills, there’s “I can make you smile like the Mona Lisa”; is that supposed to be a compliment…or just a clumsy setup for a rhyme about the tower of Pisa? And in Sylvie and Wally’s “We Were Here”: “The risks of those who came before us were taken out of love/ To give us all a future, they still guide us from above.” A phrase better suited to an inscription than an incantation.