Michael Sommers — Theater Critic

Like an amusement park ride ascending an incline, the first act of Paranormal Activity deals out a gradual build-up of backstory detail and stormy night-type creepiness, prickly with relatively minor jump scares and climaxing with – well, let’s reveal no more but simply note this second act possesses even more backstory but also delivers some twists, turns and stage tricks that scared up highly audible responses from Saturday night’s preview crowd.

To stage Broad Strokes, Alex Timbers, the inventive Tony Award-winning director of Moulin Rouge! The Musical and Peter and the Starcatcher, among numerous other major league events, capitalizes on Cohen’s characteristically self-dramatizing manner to present the comedian in mock-Gothic romance environs. Top of the line designers Derek McLane (scenic), Kelsey Randall (costume), Jake DeGroot (lights) and Cody Spencer (sound) showcase the raven-tressed lady grandly clad in puffy, grape-colored satin furbelows amid lurid blue, purple and green surroundings suggesting Game of Thrones more than The Pitt. A curious visual decision, perhaps, but Cohen’s humorous matters of life or death certainly deserve some other-worldly grandeur,

The emotional and sexual confusion of early adolescence partly forms the story of The Saviors, but Bubba Weiler’s tender new drama rises beyond mere teen angst to develop a higher theme about compassion. Premiering on Monday, Atlantic Theater Company’s production is gracefully staged by Jack Serio at the Linda Gross Theater, which was built as a church and now neatly accommodates a contemporary American play set mostly around the sanctuary of a modest Roman Catholic church.

Nettles has written for herself a demanding if rewarding role as a valiant soul whose desire to protect her loved ones and friends in dangerous times somehow warps into mass murder. If that critical storytelling point in Guilia remains hazy, Nettles and her glowing score override the question by the warmth of her personality and the agreeable music she offers. The confidence and ebullience of the production’s excellent 13-member ensemble succeed in making Giulia certainly play like a hit show, even though it obviously remains a work in progress.

That said, to my old-school taste, the ambitious A Woman Among Women registers mostly as a terribly talky, at times even tedious, theater exercise that fails to engage pity or any emotion other than occasional confusion over who some of these people may be and what’s their relationship to the heroine, and why should I care?

An achingly beautiful new blend of drama and music, Girl, Interrupted has been exquisitely crafted from Susanna Kaysen’s memoir regarding the many months she spent as a teenager in a psychiatric facility. Readers of Kaysen’s story (unlike me) can judge how faithfully the original is followed, but the strange musical loveliness and abiding sensitivity of this play infused with a dozen or so striking songs will soon be obvious to anyone who sees the very fine production that premiered Thursday at the Public Theater.

An achingly beautiful new blend of drama and music, Girl, Interrupted has been exquisitely crafted from Susanna Kaysen’s memoir regarding the many months she spent as a teenager in a psychiatric facility. Readers of Kaysen’s story (unlike me) can judge how faithfully the original is followed, but the strange musical loveliness and abiding sensitivity of this play infused with a dozen or so striking songs will soon be obvious to anyone who sees the very fine production that premiered Thursday at the Public Theater.

Then there are Mahira Kakkar, Eva Kaminsky and Patrick Kerr, popping up as late-arriving theatergoers who morph into vaguely defined commentators along the edges of the story who may also represent The Fates or gods, but anyway are agreeable company. Viewers conversant with Wilder’s works are likely to enjoy speculating on such possibilities, as with other puzzling aspects here. A worthwhile attempt to piece together an ambitious drama despite its missing, unknown or conflicting parts, The Emporium remains an unfulfilled promise of an expansive work on eternal themes.

Apart from Mills, whose live-wired Ophelia is a vital presence, the company’s well-spoken performances generally appear a tad disengaged, as illustrated by Abeysekera’s energetic though very self-conscious Hamlet, who seemingly thinks only about his own feelings rather than about anyone around him. Blood spills but the emotional temperature remains low despite ominous sound effects, skittering violins and spooky red lighting. Of course, Hamlet remains fascinating all by its 426-year-old self and as somebody remarks, the play’s the thing, and the National Theatre capably serves it here.

The company agreeably perambulates through Pinkleton’s competent though surprisingly uninventive staging of The Rocky Horror Show that churns up a decent amount of laughs and entertainment and yet offers little in the way of remarkable sex appeal or bizarre atmosphere. An inability or unwillingness to cue the audience into responding at least to a few of the show’s obvious gags sacrifices the potential communal satisfaction which the film’s ritual delivers. Reflecting upon this conventional effort, it’s too bad Roundabout no longer leases that funky basement theater space underneath an Eighth Avenue supermarket in Chelsea – now there was a properly seedy joint for a weird manifestation of The Rocky Horror Show.

Schmigadoon! has now been smartly and successfully retooled as a full-fledged Broadway attraction that opened Monday at the Nederlander Theatre. The first season of the series condensed here into a classic two-act Broadway format, the whimsical Schmigadoon! content brightly crystalizes into stage existence as a fond, funny salute to old school musicals like Carousel and The Music Man as delightfully populated by an ensemble of expert performers.

Schmigadoon! has now been smartly and successfully retooled as a full-fledged Broadway attraction that opened Monday at the Nederlander Theatre. The first season of the series condensed here into a classic two-act Broadway format, the whimsical Schmigadoon! content brightly crystalizes into stage existence as a fond, funny salute to old school musicals like Carousel and The Music Man as delightfully populated by an ensemble of expert performers.

Director Scott Ellis tends to rush the pace of the comedy, when taking a bit more leisure about it might make Coward’s already clipped dialogue easier to appreciate. His staging takes surprisingly little advantage of the expansive set and its deluxe furnishings. The program notes that Coward revised the play in 1958 following its revival on Broadway, although this intermission-free version appears to bear other fingerprints as well.

Some may argue that The Adding Machine works fine and needs no retooling, but Bradshaw’s reasonably faithful adaptation will be more economical for theaters to produce than the rarely staged original play. In accordance with the stylized nature of expressionist theater, director Scott Elliott cultivates a cool, slightly bizarre quality to his well-acted, seamlessly staged production.

Whether Titanique proves to be too casual as an entertainment to attract a goodly Broadway crowd to the 1,339-seat St. James Theatre over the next 13 weeks is a prediction thankfully beyond my expertise. Speaking of which, let me assure readers who may fear I don’t know beans about Schmigadoon and The Rocky Horror Show (which I will review next week) that I am versed in Golden Age musicals and I can dance “The Time Warp” better than most.

Unable to cite everyone in the enthusiastic company, let’s briefly note how Sydney James Harcourt’s sizzling Rum Tum Tugger is a major crowd-pleaser, Emma Sofia’s sleek Skimbleshanks is quite a saucy authority figure and probably there’s a blazing star of tomorrow glowing among the corps who goes unmentioned here. It appears to me that Cats: The Jellicle Ball may become one of those legendary Broadway shows that someday you will tell others you were lucky enough to see.

Unable to cite everyone in the enthusiastic company, let’s briefly note how Sydney James Harcourt’s sizzling Rum Tum Tugger is a major crowd-pleaser, Emma Sofia’s sleek Skimbleshanks is quite a saucy authority figure and probably there’s a blazing star of tomorrow glowing among the corps who goes unmentioned here. It appears to me that Cats: The Jellicle Ball may become one of those legendary Broadway shows that someday you will tell others you were lucky enough to see.

This plotline of villains and deceptions twists with surprises, so small wonder the tone of this modest Red Bull revival often shifts with it, from the formality of a military ceremony all the way over into grim, farcical business involving severed body parts and a monstrous pie. Treating such lurid doings mostly for dark comedy, Jesse Berger, the director, keeps the two-act show’s pacing quick and the emotional temperature reasonably cool with one single jarring exception: A violent assault upon the screaming Lavinia by Chiron and Demetrius is vigorously depicted by the three actors with a physical actuality that’s horrifying to witness.

Jeena Yi makes her Off Broadway debut as a playwright with Jesa. Opening Friday at the Public Theater, Jesa is an enjoyable dramedy about four Korean American sisters, adults in the prime of their lives, who get together one night to honor their deceased parents with a traditional Korean ceremony known by that name.

Ciarán O’Reilly, Irish Rep’s producing artistic director, gives the comedy a handsome production with a cozy setting designed by Charlie Corcoran in greens and tartans. Generally mellow lighting devised by Michael Gottlieb and the costumes designed by Orla Long are so subtly done for the intimate 148-seat theater as to be scarcely noticeable. Yet these visuals contribute to the atmosphere and can provide insights about the characters, such as how Jay, the silver-haired movie star, dresses himself as casually and youthfully as possible in a T-shirt and faded jeans.

Wallace Shawn offers a sorrowful story of estrangement and infidelity in his latest work, What We Did Before Our Moth Days. Closer to a spoken novella than a conventional play in its format, the drama is structured as more than two dozen interlocking monologues performed by four actors, who almost entirely speak directly to the audience rather than to each other. Hope Davis, Josh Hamilton, Maria Dizzia and John Early are the fine artists who sensitively relate Shawn’s woeful modern-day tale under the direction of Andre Gregory in the world premiere opening on Thursday at Greenwich House Theater.

The satirical humor of the sketchy, often obvious script by Amber Ruffin and Kevin Sciretta scarcely arises above the collegiate level: “Our water system has more illegal substances in it than a bathroom at Studio 54.” Several running gags involve face-slapping, the portentous shrieking of a raptor and awkward medical terms. The message regarding the American public’s susceptibility to despicable leaders and crazy notions was sent long ago.

The satirical humor of the sketchy, often obvious script by Amber Ruffin and Kevin Sciretta scarcely arises above the collegiate level: “Our water system has more illegal substances in it than a bathroom at Studio 54.” Several running gags involve face-slapping, the portentous shrieking of a raptor and awkward medical terms. The message regarding the American public’s susceptibility to despicable leaders and crazy notions was sent long ago.

Of course, action-hungry viewers may dismiss The Dinosaurs as one of those watching-the-paint-dry affairs. Theatergoers who savor a smart, subtle use of language or can appreciate the generosity of feelings shared in such support groups likely will find this new play by Jacob Perkins to be a quietly touching show. Certainly there is no question regarding the excellence of the acting or the production as sensitively staged by Les Waters, a director who has helmed the premieres of works by the likes of Caryl Churchill, Will Eno and Lucas Hnath, and surely knows how to effectively present meaningful modern dramas like this one.

Generally, the acting proves spotty. Possibly that thudding, bass-heavy sound design by Brandon Keith Bulls, icy music by David T. Little and an intermittent yellowish atmospheric haze undermines performances. A less than charismatic McKinley Belcher III is a handsome though mostly stolid Coriolanus; speaking the blank verse, he tends to hit the cadences hard. The greater disappointment is the director’s slack, unimaginative shaping of the crucial scenes involving those so-swayable Roman people, who collectively become the drama’s motivating force. Clad in East Village mufti, they’re noisy but scarcely suggest a dangerous Roman mob. Perhaps it would have been wiser to invest more in additional actors and their rehearsal than in tech.