Melissa Rose Bernardo

Usually a messed-up central character takes some sort of journey toward redemption in a play; he gets better. But in this case, Wheeler acknowledges he's a wreck and actually gets worse as time goes on. (Act 2 Wheeler, fair warning, is a real A-hole.) But actually...staggeringly realistic.

Because Slave Play-sharply and smartly directed by Robert O'Hara-is a show that needs to be processed. Admittedly, that is a terribly clinical way to put it. 'Can you stop saying processing?' yells one character, Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan). 'We aren't computers. My emotions aren't materials.' But fair warning: As the program note by poet-novelist Morgan Parker begins, 'This might hurt.'

If we're being excruciatingly honest, improv is not my idea of a good time. I'm still recovering from a 1995 incident with a campus comedy troupe (who shall remain nameless). But the giddy, upbeat Freestyle Love Supreme-now on Broadway after a recent hit off-Broadway run-is enough to cure anyone's improv-phobia. It's also a welcome break from the exhausting 24/7 election-and-corruption news cycle that assaults us from every direction.

The play is at its best at its most meditative-the calm during the Storm, if you will. André, achieving an ever-so-brief moment of lucidity with Anne: 'You know, as time goes by, You see things in a different light. What once seemed important to us suddenly becomes trivial.' Or Madeleine, enjoying the silence after their daughters have departed: 'It's nice of them to come and see us... But after two days, I've had enough of it. Don't you think?' A few more of those moody, mushroom-peeling moments would not have been unwelcome.

Of the many subtle, seemingly inconsequential but spectacular choices that director Jamie Lloyd and the creative team make in the Broadway-by-way-of-London production of Harold Pinter's late-'70s love-triangle drama Betrayal, perhaps the best is a song that punctuates a couple of scene changes: 'Enjoy the Silence,' by English electro-pop band Depeche Mode.

No disrespect to headliners Karen Olivo (a Tony winner as Anita in 2009's West Side Story), who plays the tuberculosis-plagued performer/courtesan Satine, and Aaron Tveit (Catch Me If You Can, Next to Normal), as the lovestruck aspiring composer Christian but the real stars of this Moulin Rouge! are the artists who don't appear onstage. Lighting designer Justin Townsend can evoke anything from a pulse-pounding nightclub to the shadowy alleys of Argentina to a hallucinogenic electric-green drunken dream. Six-time Tony winner Catherine Zuber, fresh off the elegantly appointed My Fair Lady, has crafted a stunning array of costumes: cascading cancan underskirts; bondage-style corsets; crushed-velvet tailcoats; and, for Olivo's Satine, glittering bustiers, satiny robes, and body-hugging gowns. And set designer Derek McLane has turned the inside of the Hirschfeld Theatre into a crystal-studded, heart-shaped, hopelessly romantic fantasyland.

Tootsie is full of terrific moments: Yazbek's delightfully pessimistic lyrics (one song repeats the line 'you fucked it up,' to great effect); supporting turns from the sidesplittingly funny Sarah Stiles as hopelessly insecure neighbor Sandy ('My phone no longer recognizes my face I.D. unless I'm crying!') and perennial scene-stealer Julie Halston as producer Rita, über-chic in an Ann Richards-white wig and a brocade Jackie O-inspired suit ('Dorothy, I'm rich. Not in family or friends. In money, the good rich'); lush-and magically magnetic-costumes by William Ivey Long (they go from the Renaissance to 1950s Cinecittà glam with a mere twirl of a skirt); and, most important, a genuinely believable, winning performance by Fontana, who's so darn convincing as Dorothy that when he starts to sing as Michael it simply sounds wrong.

As for how this production judges Joe, it's hard to ignore that Letts bears an eerie resemblance to capitalist warmonger and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Yet even as Joe is careening toward his inevitable fall, he never loses our sympathy. It seems selfish to want to see Letts do more and more stage roles when he could be writing more plays like August: Osage County and Mary Page Marlowe. But he's so spectacular in All My Sons-even in the simple, speechless act of reading a letter-that you can't help but imagine him (and Bening) in, oh, say...Death of a Salesman. Hey, a theatergoer can dream.

Despite what the promos for this revival would have you believe, the actors playing Pale and Anna don't necessarily require house-on-fire chemistry. Wilson didn't write a smoldering love story. He wrote a romantic comedy-and what they need is a burning need for each other. They both have massive holes in their lives thanks to Robbie's death. They're broken. (At one point, Anna even likens Pale to a bird with a broken wing.) Think Frankie and Johnny. Actually, it's fitting that Terrence McNally wrote a program note for this production; the unlikely lovers in his Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, which also premiered off-Broadway in 1987, are cut from the same cloth as Anna and Pale. This 'love shit'-as Wilson once described the crux of Burn This-is tricky business.

The rest of Gold's production lacks that kind of laser focus. The time period is murky; let's just say it's after the invention of duct tape, which features prominently in one scene. But there are definite allusions to a certain possibly certifiable current president. Gilded walls...a decorative lion statue...it's very Trump Tower, no? And an often throwaway line by Gloucester (Tony winner Jayne Houdyshell), the play's other deluded dad-''Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind'-is delivered with a surprising heavy-handedness. Then there's the onstage eveningwear-clad string quartet, which pops up at the most inopportune times, almost drowning out moments like the Lear-Goneril-Regan fight with Philip Glass music.

Leaving a new musical with a great song or two running through your head is a rare but exciting thing. Leaving with about 10 great songs running through your head is pretty much unheard of. But that's the power of Dear Evan Hansen, which just opened on Broadway after a world premiere at Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage and a stint at Second Stage Off-Broadway.

There's no shortage of laughs, from tuneful one-liners (Jason: 'My father's a homo, my mother's not thrilled at all') to entire numbers (a knife-wielding Trina cracks up with a cutting board in 'I'm Breaking Down'). And act two's 'The Baseball Game' - 'We're watching Jewish boys who cannot play baseball play baseball,' the company sings as Jason haplessly swings - is a work of lyrical comic genius. Bonus points for the Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg references.

Yet from the start, the Roundabout Theatre Company's loud, broad revival - working with a new adaptation by Stephen Karam, a Tony winner for the Chekhovian drama The Humans - makes no attempt to find a tragicomic balance. A worker blundering about in squeaky boots (Quinn Mattfeld) and a pratfall-prone maid (Susannah Flood) prove more memorable in the first scene than Lopakhin (Harold Perrineau of Lost and The Matrix fame), the peasant-turned-businessman with a vested interest in the cherry orchard.

Still, you'd have to be a total Grinch not to melt even a little during Berlin's comforting-as-cocoa Christmas ballad. And who couldn't succumb to the charms of the tap-happy 'Shaking the Blues Away,' a massive tree-trimming production number led by that comic dynamo Megan Lawrence as a Rosie the Riveter-meets-Lucille Ball scene stealer?

I have a bone to pick with Andrew Lloyd Webber about Cats. For the past few days, since I saw the first-ever Broadway revival at the Neil Simon Theatre, that's all I've had running through my head. And I'm not talking about 'Memory,' the showstopper made famous by Barbra Streisand before Cats even opened on Broadway in 1982. I mean the almost hypnotically repetitive prologue 'Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats'; the jazzy, doo-wop ode to Jennyanydots, 'The Old Gumbie Cat'; and the singsongy 'Magical Mister Mistoffelees' ('Oh! Well I never! Was there ever a cat so clever...'). Will anything - short of the 'It's a Small World' theme song - banish these insistent melodies from my brain?

Tuck Everlasting is a beautifully drawn, evocative tale about an eternal-life-giving spring, the trapped-in-time family who drank from it, and a curious young girl who stumbles upon both...Yet on stage, this fantasy-driven story remains stubbornly earthbound. Not that Tuck isn't trying its darndest: The actors are appealing -- particularly Andrew Keenan-Bolger, impishly charming as the '17-year-old' Jesse Tuck, and the extraordinary Sarah Charles Lewis as our intrepid 11-year-old heroine, Winnie Foster...But they're practically drowning in a flood of banalities and a deluge of clichés. C

No prime-time sitcom star returns to the theater more faithfully than Jesse Tyler Ferguson...It's a smart move: a one-man, 30-plus-character, 90-minute comedy where he can flex his impressive comic muscles in four-walled, air-conditioned comfort...Ferguson juggles all of these personalities rather deftly, making only a few fumbles. It takes about three calls for the ego-tastic chef to really take shape, and reservations manager Bob never really becomes instantly identifiable...Fully Committed is full of laughs, but leaves you wanting more... B+

If you can resign yourself to the story's innate ambiguity, you're in for a perversely enjoyable experience. The script, by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa...captures, and deftly skewers, all of Patrick Bateman's and the 1980s' most over-the-top obsessions...The music is totally '80s as well: Sheik's bizarrely catchy, entirely electronic score - far from the usual Broadway fare...Since its 2013 premiere at London's Almeida Theatre with erstwhileDoctor Who star Matt Smith as the titular psycho, AP has gotten a lot bloodier. It's also gotten a lot slicker, sharper, faster, and funnier...Patrick's secretary, Jean (Next to Normal's Jennifer Damiano), haplessly and hopelessly in love with him, and his mother (Tony-winner Alice Ripley)...these two sincere characters seem out of place in such a stinging satire...And as for the violence - it's simply part of the story, usually a joke, and often part of a stunning stage picture.

If ever there was a show that defines the phrase 'cult musical', it's Side Show...If you saw Side Show the first time around, you may not recognize it...And if you didn't see it the first time around, you're likely to leave asking: what was all the fuss about? Certainly not this leaden, sporadically moving update -- which bears little resemblance to the original production...in giving the girls a backstory...Condon subverts the show's momentum...One aspect such revisions have not messed with: the two linchpins of Side Show's score, the twins' power-ballad duets 'Who Will Love Me As I Am?' and 'I Will Never Leave You', both as heart-stopping (and tear-jerking) as ever, and Padgett and Davie are never more connected than they are in those moments...But in making Daisy and Violet's connection literal, the production robs us of a chance to fully relate to the sisters -- even if it is just, as Houdini sings, 'all in the mind.' C

To paraphrase Moss Hart, it's a brave writer who would contrive this show: Japes Lapine's adaptation of Act One, playwright-director Hart's best-selling 1959 autobiography that's become an object of inspiration/adoration for anyone seeking a career in front of-or behind-the footlights. (Ask any actor, playwright, director, or designer you know if they've read Act One. If they haven't, give them a copy.) And it's fitting that Lapine would be the one to transfer this ultimate showbiz story from page to the Lincoln Theater Center's Broadway stage. Like Hart, Lapine is both a playwright-he penned the libretti forFalsettos and Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, and Passion-and director, helming a variety of shows from those musicals to a revival of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Alas, nothing ensues or unfolds, which makes for an excruciatingly long 90 minutes (despite director Sam Gold's snappy pacing). As Jennifer says dejectedly to her husband, 'We're - I don't know - throwing words at each other.' Like the dead squirrel, that line comes in the first few minutes. Who could guess it would be a harbinger of things to come?

Over his three Broadway plays, Simonson's efforts become more diluted and the stories more far-fetched. Lombardi focused on one man; Magic/Bird took on two. Here, he's dealing with a whole franchise. (What's next - a hockey play that puts the entire NHL on ice?) Worse, the manufactured plot doesn't even begin to approach believability... In his defense, Simonson doesn't have a heck of a lot to work with. There's no footage or photos - no visual backstory that could fill in the blanks for viewers who aren't completely steeped in 90-plus years of Yankee history. MLB should be able to supply more than a few pinstriped uniforms with the interlocking NY logo. Not that a few video clips would turn Bronx Bombers into a hit. It's just a bomb - and not the kind that made Babe Ruth famous. D

Hall, a British actress who's making her Broadway debut, is spectacular in a near-impossible role. She maintains an astonishing deadness in her eyes throughout the entire evening, save one scene: when she's with her lover (Morgan Spector). Then they light up like firecrackers. That's also the most loosely structured, conventional exchange in Machinal, and the whiplash-inducing return to her character's unreal world is exasperatingly unfulfilling. B-

Following a 30-year Broadway absence, Tyson gives an awe-inspiring performance. She sings, she dances, she does everything but cartwheels. She's well matched by Vanessa Williams - wickedly funny as her bossy daughter-in-law - if not by Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire), who's out of his emotional depths as her broken-down son. Yet perhaps Tyson's best scene is with ex-Dukes of Hazzard star Tom Wopat. You'd think a burly, white small-town sheriff going nose to nose with a tiny black woman would be unsettling. But it's simply, quietly moving. B+

...now receiving an overamplified, dry ice-drenched Broadway revival following a national tour: It's good and - well, not evil, but head-scratchingly, laughably, even painfully bad. And one that you'll be constantly struggling to sit through. As the titular schizophrenic scientist, American Idol alum Constantine Maroulis...supplies hair-band-worthy locks and lungs of steel. His 'This Is the Moment'...is indeed momentous - a triumph of vocal pyrotechnics over clichéd phrases, misaccented lyrics, and throat-testing key changes...Unfortunately for Wicks, R&B songstress Deborah Cox wins the belting match without breaking a sweat. In fact, Cox - as Lucy, the hooker with the heart of gold and bustier of steel - is quite terrific throughout.