Michael Musto

Clooney is fine in the role, though it’s hard to dazzlingly play someone who’s so right so much of the time... The main star of the show, it turns out, is the set, by Tony-winner Scott Pask, a period-flavored marvel.

Nitpickers on the Broadway boards are claiming that the part doesn’t suit Audra vocally, offering elaborate descriptions of her “chest voice” versus her “head voice,” and how the jumps between the two aren’t perfect. A true Gypsy — and Audra — lover like myself didn’t notice, and doesn’t care. She is magnificent, giving a tingly performance that will be as hard to shake off as a tightened tassel. Another winning feature is Santo Loquasto’s efficient set design. While so many revivals have been going for flashy projections and enormous video screens, this production bravely goes for just … sets and props. And speaking of furniture: By the end of the three-hour extravaganza, it’s not hard to sense that Audra McDonald has a great chance of visiting that podium again.

Naughty double entendres are sprinkled throughout, with mentions of cum guzzling, giving head, and fingering that aforementioned hole—you must believe me—and there’s also a fetching reference to Madeline having made it with her legs thrown wider than anyone, I mean higher than anyone. It’s perhaps inadvertently hilarious that after the serum, Hilty looks pretty much the same as before, but for the most part, this is a lavish diva fest that, while not a classic, feels like just the kind of feelgood exercise in bad behavior that we need right now.

Directed by Rupert Goold (Ink, Patriots), this show is a guilty pleasure awash in a colorful struggle between good and evil. As fun as it is, the musical might seem quaint to anyone who’s come of age in an era where Donald Trump is the hero of the Evangelists, despite being an adjudicated rapist, adulterer, and fraudster. Tammy Faye is a healthy reminder that back in the good old days, scandals could actually harm you.

Jack O’Brien (Hairspray, Shucked) directs with a sure hand, and David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit) provides the woodwind-heavy incidental music. There’s no show without the stars — their staccato interplay is expert — and while Silverman’s play often feels like it might evaporate through those beams, it’s nice to spend time with these two old friends. If you can label them that!

And then comes the show itself, which hasn’t upped the sexuality quotient, though it has definitely underlined what’s over the top. Everything that was extreme in previous productions is now even more so. As the Emcee of the Kit Kat Club, Oscar and Tony winner Eddie Redmayne has to separate himself from two legends (Joel Grey and Alan Cumming); he does so with exaggerated hand gestures and head bobbing and with vocal tics that sometimes resemble those of Jerry Lewis. Redmayne sings the show’s signature tune, “Willkommen,” in brown leather culottes, long black gloves, and a bright-blue party hat (costumes by Tom Scutt, who also did the sets), and seems to have veered outside the normal human range, going instead for a Cirque du Soleil meets demented puppet effect that’s often weird for weird’s sake. Each time Redmayne appears, the costumes grow more outlandish, though vocally his best moment is when his Emcee is dressed conservatively as a Master Race type, standing still and smoothly singing the Nazi anthem “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” to creepy effect. A succession of miniature wooden Redmayne dolls in the same garb (puppets of the puppet, as it were) appear on the edges of the rotating stage as he sings, foreshadowing the moment later in the show when the entire cast storms the stage, suited and looking like fascists.

The cast couldn’t be better. Making her Broadway debut, Maleah Joi Moon is a find, with stunning vocals and just the right mixture of irritability and vulnerability. Without affect, she effortlessly lives the part up on that stage. Shoshana Bean (Mr. Saturday Night) is a marvel as her overprotective mother, rooting the show’s dramatic conflict and singing so amazingly, she turns Jersey’s pain into showstopping moments. As her seemingly good for nothing musician ex (and Ali’s dad), Brandon Victor Dixon is perfection, always trying to be less absent, including on an impressionistic version of Fallin’ that he deliciously sings to Jersey in a last-ditch effort to win her back. And Kecia Lewis is terrific as Miss Liza Jane, though she has to emit some dialogue people would normally never say. (“Your rage is real. Your rage is earned. But I will not let it defeat you.”)

Having premiered at the Public Theater in 2022, Suffs is a winner, with a wonderful mixture of earnest storytelling, humor, and heart. Any fear that there’s no need for a story starting in 1913—not to mention one with an outcome that’s a “duh” when you enter—is shattered by the fact that women are still desperately fighting for their rights, particularly in the wake of SCOTUS’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade. Sadly, the protesting and screaming that’s essential to the narrative of Suffs seems very up to the moment and more topical than ever.

I became hopeful on learning that the new Broadway revival, directed by Schele Williams, stars 24-four-year-old Nichelle Lewis, making her Broadway debut, and sure enough she more accurately conveys the innocence of adolescence, with big sad eyes burrowing into the audience at odd moments. The earnest Lewis can also sing like an angel, though at times her Dorothy is so lost that she tends to become a cog in the aggressively flashy happenings around her.

But Act Two has some unmitigated joy too, particularly “It’s a Hit,” an ecstatic ditty the three leads sing with Joe when they realize the new show Shepard and Kringas have written, Musical Husbands, is scoring and their lives have been irrevocably changed (“No more writing clever little shows for those basement saloons,” sings Shepard. “No more proclamations from the pros that ‘You can’t hum the tunes’”). Well, more than four decades after it premiered to quizzical expressions, Merrily We Roll Along is a hit. Kudos to Friedman and company for going back in time to see what went wrong.

The show is lavish and, as directed by John Rando (Urinetown, Mr. Saturday Night), never slows down, at times coming off like something that might belong at Madison Square Garden. The whole thing is basically a big, flashy, speeding car, but it’s apt for today’s Broadway, since it combines a familiar title, a sampling of hit songs, and some slick special effects, while vaguely touching on the fantasy of changing eras in order to work things out and patch things up.

Tony Award-winning Alex Timbers, a visual master who made a glitzy carnival out of Moulin Rouge!, has been the director of this project since day one, and he’s amped up the theatrics to match the venue. The old intimacy is diminished, and the show starts to seem a bit relentless, especially since not all the music is on a top tier—but you can still feel the multi-layered invention on parade, and it’s often breathtaking. As an example of the intricacy involved, when a helicopter takes off (conveyed through sound and lights), I felt a gust of wind wafting into the mezzanine, and it wasn’t my imagination.

What has most noticeably been sprinkled in is a fairy-tale tone, complete with an actual “Happy Ending,” with the aim of being a lavish love letter to NYC and all its possibilities. And despite the less felicitous moments that verge on cliché (“Life turns around, like that. In a New York minute. Things can change. Even Jimmy!”), it actually adds up to a satisfying entertainment, steadily guided by Stroman, who has obviously learned from her 2014 musical adaptation of Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway, which took off with breakneck speed and never paused to breathe. New York, New York is full of wonderful, swirling movement — the streets of Manhattan come alive with strutting and spinning residents — but it also makes time for the human element.

Spears is terrific in the lead, capturing the conflicting emotions of a young male struggling with his own fate and feelings, as he valiantly majors in Human Resources online. A high point is the karaoke sequence, where Juicy rivetingly sings “Creep” by Radiohead, as Darrell Grand Moultrie’s stylized choreography and Bradley King’s dramatic lighting help turn the moment into a showstopper. Nikki Crawford is wonderful as Tedra, a crass but well meaning woman who’s always living for the moment, though Ijames gives her shadings so we see that she has real feeling for her son and also has reasons for her unapologetic behavior. Tedra’s karaoke number, by the way, is a raunchy take on Crystal Waters’ 100% Pure Love and it’s pure heaven.

Scott Pask’s set is a big wooden barn that practically gives you splinters when you look at it, and three-time Tony-winning director Jack O’Brien (Hairspray) and choreographer Sarah O’Gleby keep things moving so you don’t stop and ponder too much about plot developments dealing with who kissed whom, not to mention a dumb bit about the dual sets of wedding vows being prepared. Kernels of wisdom like “Maybe love just needs a little love” are as cringeworthy as me saying “kernels,” but there’s plenty of badinage too, and the obsession with corn becomes kind of riveting, as if the characters from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! were just pretenders. So, is Shucked the product of “perfect hominy” (one of the show’s overabundance of puns)? Maybe not, but it definitely provides more of a window than a wall.

Direction is by Max Webster, with Set and Costume Design by Tim Hatley, Puppetry and Movement Direction by Finn Caldwell, Puppet Design by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, Video Design by Andrzej Goulding, Lighting Design by Tim Lutkin, and Sound Design by Carolyn Downing. Together, they’ve created a visual—and visceral—feast that engages the senses. I’d recommend sitting in the front mezzanine. That’s where they seated press people like myself, so we could properly take in the entire swirl happening onstage. By the end, you will no longer doubt the fact that bananas float.

But the three Broadway veterans who comprise the entire cast give the play heft. Tony winner Burstein (Moulin Rouge! The Musical) is convincingly brash, letting dad’s insults fly right over him, while hiding an appealing vulnerability. Wanamaker is also terrific, resolutely going about her business and eventually even showing a soft side. And Broadway titan Nathan Lane doesn’t play down to his character, lands every laugh, and has a volcanic explosion late in the play that is brilliantly pulled off. Unfortunately, Irving—who describes himself as a deeply vulnerable person who doesn’t want to be seen as vulnerable—is pretty insufferable company, and director Bartlett Sher lets Lane exacerbate that by screaming so many of his lines. When Irv starts giving Larry the silent treatment out of seething resentment, you’re relieved for his vocal cords.

With accurate-looking tufts of dreaded hair, Jeremy Pope (a two-time Tony nominee who’s currently scoring in the gritty film The Inspection) is an aptly moody and haunted Basquiat, full of attitude and drive. As Warhol, Bettany (WandaVision) seems too energetic to me and sometimes comes off more like a handsome surfer dude than a wry visionary, but his interpretation is interesting and he really nails Andy’s constant sense of unease. Erik Jensen delivers as the manipulative Bruno and Krysta Rodriguez is excellent as Maya, an ex-girlfriend of Basquiat’s who sweeps in to demand money for rent and an abortion, while her limo waits outside.

Enlightened audiences didn’t want to see drag (and female identities) co-opted by cisgender hetero men in order to sneakily achieve their male goals. But the new Broadway musical remake of Some Like It Hot has found a way around that pitfall. While the classic 1959 Billy Wilder movie centers on two straight male musicians on the lam and hiding out as part of an all-girl band after witnessing a gangland massacre, the stage version takes pains to include an evolution for one of those characters, which I’ll get to later. (Spoiler alert!) The Republicans who’ve been demonizing drag queens—but only queer ones; they’re not about to cancel Milton Berle reruns—will be uncomfortable here, and will retreat back to the movie instead. And that’s OK with me, especially since this delectable show looks to be a big, spangled hit anyway.

As directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun, with our star), McDonald is pretty much the whole show, and the result is the rare theater outing where I never heard a single cell phone ringing or even a cough. I wish I could say that the entire evening was substantial enough to deserve that kind of reverence, but as an unnerving glimpse into a dark time—and an update on the continuing legend of Audra—Ohio State Murders is still welcome on Broadway. The curtain call climaxes with McDonald, playing the author, pointing to a slide projection of the play’s actual author. Author, author!

Despite the occasional A for effort moments, the production still clocks in as a potent revival-something not easy to pull off, considering that the show has a lengthy Act One section where independence is discussed in the Congressional chamber and the politicos have the nerve not to bother to sing or dance at all! The sets are relatively uninspired (especially what looks like a big shower curtain with flag images on it, plus the humdrum-looking desks at Independence Hall), and the sudden use of contemporary activism videos at one point in Act II is jarring, but again, what propels this production is a bold willingness to take chances-and believe me, it resonates.

It's been said that a musical has to have at least three 'wow' moments to really grab an audience. Well, the Diane Paulus-directed revival of the 1972 musical Pippin has at least seven. The tale of a medieval lad searching for significance--dotted with both earnestness and shtick, like so many of composer Stephen Schwartz's shows--is done here with a circus theme that makes the work come to vivid, acrobatic life. The look of the piece is ambient, the physical stunts are eye-popping, and Chet Walker has deftly choreographed in the style of the original's Bob Fosse.

By the chat's end, Midler's star power and timing have once again proved incomparable. I defy anyone else to get as much as she does out of the moment when Sue looks at the receiver, waiting for Barbra, and shrieks 'Call me, you cunt!'

Start shining the Tony award for Cicely Tyson, who's just plain wonderful in The Trip To Bontiful, Horton Foote's play about an older lady who wants to return to the Texas town of her youth, remembering it as a place of fertility and goodness.

An air-tight revue with classic songs presented as theatrical set pieces, with a minimum of superficial chatter in between them. That's not what Motown The Musical is. Instead, the story of how Berry Gordy Jr. created a dazzling black sound that managed to be upbeat, despairing, and socially relevant--with a script written by Gordy himself--aims for a much broader approach...The Charles Randolph-Wright-directed production is attractive, and his cast members prove to be worthy interpreters...By the end, you'll have been entertained by many of the production numbers, though you might just wonder where the cruiseship buffet is.