Naveen Kumar — Theater Critic

Indeed, the play’s most obvious 'Hamlet' winks and callouts, from puns to a few direct quoted passages, cede Ijames’ voice more than is necessary. The playwright’s own prose is lean and precise, with a vibrance of rhythm and association that hardly needs any supplementing. You could pull up to this barbeque with no prior knowledge of the Bard and be very well satisfied. The synergy between Ali, Ijames and the nose-to-tail extraordinary cast are more than enough for a feast.

Groban, previously on Broadway in “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” is a gentleman’s Sweeney. It’s possible to argue that his buttoned-up countenance and natural nobility are like dressing up a demon in a top hat and overcoat. But if there is bloodthirst underneath his desperation, it’s not an unhinged or unpredictable one. His voice can conjure a thousand associations, but here, menace isn’t one of them. When he swings his razor high, the hair on the back of your neck doesn’t budge.

Groban, previously on Broadway in “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” is a gentleman’s Sweeney. It’s possible to argue that his buttoned-up countenance and natural nobility are like dressing up a demon in a top hat and overcoat. But if there is bloodthirst underneath his desperation, it’s not an unhinged or unpredictable one. His voice can conjure a thousand associations, but here, menace isn’t one of them. When he swings his razor high, the hair on the back of your neck doesn’t budge.

Groban, previously on Broadway in “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” is a gentleman’s Sweeney. It’s possible to argue that his buttoned-up countenance and natural nobility are like dressing up a demon in a top hat and overcoat. But if there is bloodthirst underneath his desperation, it’s not an unhinged or unpredictable one. His voice can conjure a thousand associations, but here, menace isn’t one of them. When he swings his razor high, the hair on the back of your neck doesn’t budge.

To clear up the obvious question, “Bad Cinderella,” which opened at the Imperial Theater Thursday night, isn’t good. Composed by Webber and with lyrics by David Zippel, it is a muddled and momentum-less retooling of the familiar fairy tale in search of a coherent point of view as if it were a glass-slippered foot. The book, originally written by Emerald Fennell, the Oscar winning screenwriter of “Promising Young Woman,” and adapted for Broadway by the playwright Alexis Scheer, is an illogical head-scratcher, despite being based on a story most everyone knows. “Bad Cinderella,” directed here by Laurence Connor (“School of Rock”), even manages to gleefully reinforce the chronic social fixations — on beauty, vanity and wealth — that it purports to deem toxic.

Crackling with humor and shot through with surprises, “Between Riverside and Crazy,” which premiered off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2014 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is both a captivating collection of character studies and an incisive indictment of the systems that act upon them. It’s a stunning intellectual achievement that’s also a total gas, a rare breed of theater deserving of protection at all costs.

McDonald is also performing a double role — playing both present-day and college-age Suzanne, where previous productions have cast two actors. It’s another means of showing how fresh decades-old wounds can feel, and their lifelong reverberations, while taking full advantage of McDonald’s versatility. Leon’s production presents a bold, and unmistakable, visual representation of Kennedy’s argument for literature and imagination as both proof of human horror and an essential escape from it. The set design by Beowulf Boritt, a suspended cascade of bookshelves, sharply lit by Allen Lee Hughes, might be too on the nose were it not so startlingly beautiful. By any obvious measure, Kennedy’s arrival on Broadway in her ninth decade is long overdue. Commercial theater has not generally been the most fertile ground for daring, confrontational work that spotlights the voices and experiences of the most marginalized. But when an exception takes root, with a team of artists as visionary as these, it’s certainly worth the wait.

The prospect of dying by age 16 hardly seems like obvious fodder for musical comedy. But 'Kimberly Akimbo,' transferring to Broadway after an acclaimed run at the Atlantic Theater Company, is the sort of refreshingly unexpected musical that makes an exhilarating case for the vibrancy and potential of the form. It asks big questions about family and mortality. It's unabashedly heartfelt and irresistibly funny. Like life, it's inherently sad and a little absurd, and like its subject, 'Kimberly Akimbo' is exceedingly rare and almost impossible not to love.

It is a testament to the acuity of Suzan-Lori Parks' imagination and powers of perception that 'Topdog/Underdog' feels as vital and electric today as it did 20 years ago. The first Broadway revival, which opened at the Golden Theatre tonight, crackles like a live wire - an American fable with its finger shoved in a socket. Throw in career-high performances from Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and it is a theatrical event in the most essential sense, in that it demands to be seen here and now.

It is a testament to the acuity of Suzan-Lori Parks' imagination and powers of perception that 'Topdog/Underdog' feels as vital and electric today as it did 20 years ago. The first Broadway revival, which opened at the Golden Theatre tonight, crackles like a live wire - an American fable with its finger shoved in a socket. Throw in career-high performances from Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and it is a theatrical event in the most essential sense, in that it demands to be seen here and now.

What gives life value and makes it worth our daily toil? What does it mean to need another person, and what do we owe each other? It is a testament to the brilliant craft of Martyna Majok's 'Cost of Living,' now on Broadway after a successful off Broadway run, that it poses these sorts of colossal questions in scenes so bracingly intimate that you might be tempted to look away were they not so utterly magnetic.

Leopoldstadt is the sort of dizzying intellectual panorama for which Stoppard is revered - a chronicle of social movements, theoretical frameworks, and geopolitical catastrophes. (Drink every time someone speaks passionately about the state of the world, and you'll have to crawl home.) The play, directed by Patrick Marber in a production that premiered in the West End, proceeds through 50-plus years in just over two hours, introducing more than two dozen characters that it seems to understand we won't be able to keep straight. Those details don't matter in the larger sweep of history, and the family's fate is evident from the start.

The revival that opened on Broadway Sunday night is not just a glorious lifeline for fans reawakening to the wonders of live performance after a long, dark hiatus. It's a crystalline showcase for sensational performances from an all-star cast of marquee veterans, and a testament to the enduring genius of the beloved musical, now in its fourth Broadway incarnation since premiering in 1987. The biggest giant in the sky this time around is Sondheim himself, and exalting his legacy is the production's unmistakable guiding principle.

Even truth can be subjective, but 'A Strange Loop' doesn't stoop or pander to solicit understanding and empathy. Undoubtedly there are details that may elude typical (read: white, straight, affluent) Broadway theatergoers, language and references specific to Black and/or queer culture presented here without explanatory commas. While 'A Strange Loop' may feel 'radical' to some (in the parlance of Usher's mom), to others it will be a rare and revolutionary moment of recognition.

'Funny Girl' is still more of a star vehicle than it is timeless or transporting. Its notions about women and men betray the rust of half a century, particularly its premise (she's funny, but couldn't possibly be pretty without fitting in). There are constraints to any material so snugly tied to gendered conventions, and their narrow conceit of how happily ever after is supposed to look. But with Feldstein firmly steering the ship, 'Funny Girl' is a breezy and joyful ride.

It would be some comfort to say that Vogel's taxonomy of how men and women are socialized into sexual beings feels outdated or old-fashioned, but it surely doesn't. This reunion of original stars Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse rather feels like a kind of haunting, confronting the present with ghosts who never left. The play's long-overdue Broadway premiere is bracing, intimate, expertly inhabited and a rare chance to see artists reanimate their work with the benefit of wisdom.

Some stories creep up in disguise, hiding a ghastly scowl. 'The Minutes' is an astonishing feat from playwright and star Tracy Letts, not least for its brilliant finesse in orchestrating audience expectations and surprise. To go in knowing little or nothing about the play may be the purest way to experience its dramatic cunning. (Reader, be warned.) It is thrilling and essential theater that interrogates the present by laying bare how history is written. And it's among the best new plays on Broadway in years.

It may be that 'American Buffalo' belongs in the junk shop where it's set - a token of bicentennial Americana with questionable lasting value. Like the novelty coin at its center, David Mamet's vulgar and compact heist drama no longer carries practical modern-day currency. It has very little, if anything, to say about American dreams and their fallacies that has not been said many times over - and in more broad-minded and sophisticated ways - since the play's 1975 premiere.

Despite the play's universe-skimming ambitions, there's also a narrowness to its imagination of what life can and could be. Ernestine follows a path of least resistance; though she has regrets, 'Birthday Candles' isn't a critique of conformity, or the broader social forces that led her there (she is a woman happily baking a cake, year after year, for more than half a century, after all). The play rather reinforces the heteronormative fantasy that fulfillment comes in recognizable forms - just be careful which man you choose. It's a bitter, if obvious, pill served with enough sugar to rot a full mouth of teeth.

But there's little retrospective insight to this production, from director Scott Ellis, which is a straightforward retelling of a story whose provocations were largely reliant on context. And if the play has enduring resonance - as a study of prejudice, or even a romance with America's pastime - here it's more an echo than a roar.

The body can sometimes say more than words, but even the most expressive moves cannot make a coherent case for 'Paradise Square.' The blunt and belabored history lesson of a new musical set in Manhattan's Five Points, and produced by Garth Drabinsky, purports to be a fable of American race relations. But while conflicts between the neighborhood's Black and Irish residents at times come thrillingly to life through dance, 'Paradise Square' is wrong-footed from the jump. For all its spring-loaded set-up, 'Paradise Square' quickly runs out of steam, sputtering through a reprise-heavy second act that somehow feels both bloated and rushed. A near-total lack of characterization beyond their historical circumstance invites little emotional investment in the numerous people on stage.

It's no surprise that the production's high-voltage stars, who last appeared together on Broadway nearly 30 years ago, have an easy, unassailable chemistry. There's even a slight air of voyeurism to casting Broderick and Parker to perform husband-and-wife routines, as though they might offer an oblique glimpse inside the couple's private life. But despite their offstage connection and individual talents, their performances here are out of step.

The demons that Jackson battles in 'MJ,' his father and the media, are figured as monstrous. But if there was darkness behind the angelic falsetto, a mix of light and shadow that made Michael Jackson a singular artist, 'MJ' enacts a sleight of hand, insisting it didn't belong to him. It's a renouncement worthy enough of a smooth criminal.

Half a century has passed since Stephen Sondheim and George Furth first dazzled Broadway with 'Company,' their tartly astute 1970 musical about a single Manhattanite dogged by coupled friends to meet a mate. But director Marianne Elliott's sensational new revival strikes like a lightning bolt, surging with fresh electricity and burnishing its creators' legacy with an irresistible sheen.

The Kirkpatricks' score seems bent on making up for its lack of distinct point of view with at least some measure of variety - a bit of rock 'n' roll (benign), a couple of beatboxing puppets (impressive) and a lot of genre non-specific songs in the style of contemporary musical theater (inoffensive). If the score has a unifying principle, it's duly resisting catchiness or memorability.