Naveen Kumar — Theater Critic

There’s no escaping the pair’s towering reputations, which turn out to be both a blessing and a trap. In this odd-couple comedy by Jen Silverman, Farrow and LuPone are cast as unlikely housemates in rural Iowa, lost souls eager to move on from their pasts. Directed by Jack O’Brien, the production leans generously into the distinctive qualities associated with its stars: Farrow plays a delicate and curious open book, and LuPone a blunt and sardonic riddle. Like most cohabitations, the results are uneven but not without tangible rewards.

There is a wittiness to the play’s conceit, rendering the awkward sparks of flirtation in synthetic voices. (The line readings and timing are a collaboration between the actors and the creative team, including the sound designer Matt Otto.) And Winters pays careful attention to the dynamics of living with disabilities that we rarely see depicted onstage, like balancing personal agency with the realities of needing assistance. But a sense of dutifulness toward representation — exploring differences in class as well as the origins and onset of disabilities, for example — gives “All of Me” a schematic quality. A subplot dealing with the opioid epidemic very nearly tips it into P.S.A. territory.

This revisionary attempt to turn “The Great Gatsby” into a clown car of passionate entanglements skids off the road when calamity is meant to strike. The second-act twists play out with the frenzy of a nighttime soap by Aaron Spelling, without any of the campy self-awareness. There is no ghastly reckoning with the follies of hedonism, just a rapid succession of abrupt ends.

This revisionary attempt to turn “The Great Gatsby” into a clown car of passionate entanglements skids off the road when calamity is meant to strike. The second-act twists play out with the frenzy of a nighttime soap by Aaron Spelling, without any of the campy self-awareness. There is no ghastly reckoning with the follies of hedonism, just a rapid succession of abrupt ends.

It proves tough territory to conquer, despite the Sturm und Drang of this staging by Almeida artistic director Rupert Goold (Netflix, a co-producer on the show, is reportedly developing a screen adaptation). Morgan’s choice to focus on Berezovsky, a pivotal figure in shaping post-Soviet Russia (and installing its authoritarian leader), is a promising one. But “Patriots” suffers from a slipperiness of both focus and scale, dramatizing historical incidents and backroom deals while only thinly sketching the characters behind them.

All that stripped-down humanity onstage — from the entrails of broken lovers to the dancers’ carnal gyrations (choreography is by Julia Cheng) — make Redmayne’s Emcee a jarring exception. An otherworldly salamander of a narrator, he hunches over, Gollum-like, gnawing on every syllable as if it were his last meal. It’s a fiercely committed performance, but a mannered one, too. For the Emcee to exist as a creature apart makes narrative sense, but Redmayne’s remoteness drains some of the force from what is otherwise a grounded, gut-punching take on a disturbingly timely story.

Peering behind the mystique of rock ’n’ roll has undeniable voyeuristic appeal. So there is an immediate thrill to seeing the mahogany-paneled control room and glassed-in sound booth that fill the Golden Theater stage, where “Stereophonic” opened on Friday. But David Adjmi’s astonishing new play, with songs by the former Arcade Fire member Will Butler, delivers far more than a dishy glimpse inside the recording studio during rock’s golden age.

But the maximalist revival that opened at the Marquis Theater on Broadway tonight, following a 13-city national tour, diminishes some of the show’s reliable pleasures with unmitigated, candy-colored exuberance. This family-friendly approach — bright, broad, unironic — aligns with the musical’s legacy as a VHS favorite, but even kids could use help knowing where to look. Dizzying visuals and overamplification too often swallow both actors and storytelling in a swirling sensory overload.

The infatuation between Ponyboy and Cherry (Emma Pittman), which produces a couple of serviceable duets, feels perfunctory and fades into a melange of other conflicts. Hinton’s novel gallops with the muscular first-person voice of a tortured narrator, grabbing readers by the collar. “The Outsiders” musical takes a milder approach, peering under the hood of masculinity to the tune and pace of indie emo.

Fishburne has the air of wisdom of someone who, having undertaken deep self-investigation, is eager to share his findings. (The restrained undulating projections designed by Elaine J. McCarthy have a light-behind-the-eyelids feel, evoking memory and contemplation.) To the question of legacy, Fishburne seems to say: It’s not the stage and screen roles that matter, but his powers of perception — of others and of himself. It’s a skill you don’t have to be a movie star to perfect.

Gold’s attention to texture and tactile detail asks audiences to lean in; the play’s early scenes foster an engrossing intimacy later blasted apart by civic controversy. From the delicate border on Petra’s woolen shawl (costumes are by David Zinn) to the Rosemaling patterns painted on the white set (by the design collective Dots), the production creates a seductive and convincing world in the realm of the senses. But it took a startling ambush to jolt the moral of the story into the moment.

Instead, Brunstetter’s book, which spreads thin as it flits back and forth through a half-century, resists delineating the central pair with much of any identifying detail. Allie still likes to paint and Noah is good with lumber, but an effort to maximize their relatability winds up sacrificing their flesh and blood. The roles can be played by different actors because there’s nothing very particular about either character. The result is anodyne — and lacks the erotic charge of an attraction with distinct flavor set against a recognizable world.

But the lead performances are miscalibrated. Schreiber’s gruff, salt-of-the-earth Flynn lacks a threatening underside, like a rock without worms squirming beneath. Ryan, a last-minute replacement for Tyne Daly, who withdrew from the production for health reasons, wields Aloysius’s iron-fisted quips like daggers. But she seems to throw them for the sake of it, with an absence of fear or disgust that what she believes might actually be true.

But the lead performances are miscalibrated. Schreiber’s gruff, salt-of-the-earth Flynn lacks a threatening underside, like a rock without worms squirming beneath. Ryan, a last-minute replacement for Tyne Daly, who withdrew from the production for health reasons, wields Aloysius’s iron-fisted quips like daggers. But she seems to throw them for the sake of it, with an absence of fear or disgust that what she believes might actually be true.

Nixon, a delicately skilled stage performer, plays each character as a slightly exaggerated persona, like roles an artist might try on to demonstrate that identity is a kind of drag. If there are psychoanalytic underpinnings to this approach, they’re not compellingly explored. The result is two actors operating in uneven registers throughout, with Trensch as the so-called straight man to Nixon’s shuffle of mild caricatures. (The exceptions are mother-son confrontations that Elliott pitches as earplug-worthy shouting matches.)

There is also the strained union between this relatively mundane plot, not unlike a PSA about the dangers of alcoholism, and the poetic, dynamic songs by Adam Guettel, who also collaborated with O’Hara and book writer Craig Lucas on “The Light in the Piazza.” Fizzy and jazzy during the couple’s soused courtship, delicate and melancholy in the aftermath of their downfall, the score is a rich and undeniably gorgeous vehicle for the production’s stars, and especially O’Hara, for whom the adaptation has long been a passion project.

“Here We Are” delights in the flavor of its vapid jet-sets, but ultimately spits them out in a resolution that betrays its own internal logic. It’s too much, and robs the show of its potential teeth. Better to know when the feast is done.

In an attempt to imagine alternative ways of being, the playwright has smashed existing artistic forms and created new ones along the way. The result is provocative but messy: While the three acts interlock, they don’t propel each other forward, and Davis’s surfeit of ideas ultimately comes at the expense of a dramatic throughline. But cumbersome as it is, “The Refuge Plays” suggests the potential for stories to exceed the world’s limitations. Ellison would have to agree.

This is a paint-by-numbers sex farce, with parameters that do not extend beyond the obvious: heterosexual marriage is restrictive for all, unreasonable for many, and, oh, so thrilling to transgress. The forbidden-fruit pleasures that “The Cottage” tries to pass off as a feast, in a lavish production directed by Jason Alexander, are familiar, superficial and fleeting.

The ingenuity that Bryne demonstrated in “American Utopia,” an astute compilation of existing hits into a treatise on democracy, is unevenly expressed here. Though their dynamic musicianship is undeniable, it’s hardly clear what the creators make of the Marcos’ fraught legacy. According to the script, many of the show’s lyrics are drawn from its historical figures' public remarks. But the Marcos’ words have been artfully assembled here without a coherent or critical point of view about their politics or public personas. The pair’s duplicity and alleged wrongdoings are distilled into mere headlines, in projection design by Peter Nigrini.

Questions at the show’s heart, about the origins and limits of empathy — where we get it from, and to whom we owe it — would benefit from a slight downshift in pace, to lend them greater heft than the brisk clip of laughs. Then again, treating tough truths with quick humor would seem like another defining feature of Edelman’s inheritance.

Questions at the show’s heart, about the origins and limits of empathy — where we get it from, and to whom we owe it — would benefit from a slight downshift in pace, to lend them greater heft than the brisk clip of laughs. Then again, treating tough truths with quick humor would seem like another defining feature of Edelman’s inheritance.

Questions at the show’s heart, about the origins and limits of empathy — where we get it from, and to whom we owe it — would benefit from a slight downshift in pace, to lend them greater heft than the brisk clip of laughs. Then again, treating tough truths with quick humor would seem like another defining feature of Edelman’s inheritance.

“Sidney Brustein” is more voracious than the polite naturalistic drama that was perhaps expected of Hansberry when her swan song was deemed to be too much. But it was also her clarion call, to demand more from people, their principles and the art that confronts them. Broadway would do well to heed her word.

It’s a testament to the breakneck pace of the past eight years that “The Thanksgiving Play” would be better off set when it was written. The substance of its argument is no less pressing: How and by whom stories get told perpetuate systems of power and oppression. But the objects of its satire seem both too easy a mark and already expired. It’s true that vanity, complacency and self-congratulations hinder progress, but such illusions have largely gone up in smoke. The winds of backlash have shifted, the schoolhouse is on fire and the hose is needed elsewhere. To their credit, the players do eventually reach a realization, if one that seems even more obvious today — that white creators ought to do less, leaving space for others to tell their own stories. Hopefully “The Thanksgiving Play” clears the way for future artists like FastHorse to do just that.