Owen Gleiberman

My ultimate feeling about “Dog Day Afternoon” as a play comes down to something so obvious it feels almost unfair to say it out loud, but I will anyway: The movie was so much better. As a director, Sidney Lumet was a volatile master of urban space and atmosphere, and Pacino’s Sonny is, quite simply, one of the indelible characters in movie history. Bernthal does a solid job portraying this angry, tormented, messed-up Brooklyn fireplug, and in some ways he gets closer to who the real Sonny was. But he doesn’t haunt us with the grandeur of his delusions the way Pacino did. It never tears us apart to see this dog have his day.

I saw the original stage version three times, and while the revived “Mamma Mia!” has its own spirit (which I would call slightly more bumptious, with more aggressive choreography), it’s really the same show. It’s directed, like the original (and like the 2008 movie version), by Phyllida Lloyd, and it remains scrupulously faithful to what she did the first time.