Peter Marks — Theater Critic

For both of these actresses, that would be the suppleness of Regina's mind. Her survivor's gift for staying one diabolical step ahead of the men - who would cheat her in a lucrative deal over a cotton mill - makes her more than a cardboard evildoer. That impression is encouraged in the performances of the men, who also include Oscar and Birdie's sniveling son, Leo (Michael Benz, wearing entitlement like a fitted shirt). McKean's Ben is a subtle demon, Goldstein's Oscar a more transparently brutish one. Thomas, as the mortally ill family truthteller, contributes a grand turn as the requisite voice of rectitude.

Some of us may be easy marks for any hint of humanity in a story of the indelible tragedy of the Middle East. 'Oslo,' in its account of intractable foes finding common ground, is irresistible and, ultimately, deeply moving. Jokes are related at the negotiating table, at the expense of the string-pulling leaders behind the scenes, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; memories are shared about the suffering of warring peoples, the devotion to loved ones at home. The small acts of soul-bearing indeed bind the characters to one another - and an audience to them. Around Rogers's captivating table, gradualism is a triumph for everyone.

That 'War Paint' takes pains to reveal this parallel emptiness speaks to one of the musical's worthiest achievements: making room on a stage, to a degree virtually never seen, for star turns by two sublime female veterans of the musical theater. When Rubinstein and Arden were in their 60s, they were nowhere near ready to be ushered into the wings. And neither, thank goodness, are LuPone and Ebersole.

The familiar elements of Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil's 1991 musical are faithfully replicated in the Broadway Theatre, where this all-too-mechanical revival, under Laurence Connor's direction, had its official opening Thursday night. That compulsory object of attention, the musical's Vietnam War-era military helicopter - which hit its mark 4,092 times in the original - swoops back in again on this occasion, its 'blades' creating a whoosh that spreads a discernible wind over the audience. The design dexterity extends to cinematic Saigon streetscapes and heavenly sunsets by scenery creators Totie Driver and Matt Kinley and lighting designer Bruno Poet, and there's still bracing romanticism in a score played by an 18-member orchestra and conducted by James Moore. But even before the climactic evacuation scene of U.S.- and South Vietnamese-controlled Saigon, you're conscious of an absence. That would be the missing ingredient of outsize performances, to match what is supposed to be a politics-infused love story of epic scale.

The lump that forms in your throat in the opening minutes of 'Come From Away' - and remains lodged there for 100 buoyant minutes more - is the physiological confirmation that this effervescent musical, enveloped in Canadian good will, is an antidote for what ails the American soul...The alternating stories of the townspeople and the strangers in their midst - all played by a dozen superbly cast actors - are communicated vivaciously by book and songwriters Irene Sankoff and David Hein, in a bracingly kinetic production directed by Christopher Ashley, doing some of the most impressive work of his career. With the arrival of 'Come From Away' to Broadway's 2016-17 season, joining such accomplished new shows as 'Dear Evan Hansen' and 'Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,'the Tony race for best musical of the year just got interesting.

Chiefly through Gyllenhaal's performance - at once intense and emotionally transparent - this version makes clearer than ever the incisive emotional channel from Act 1 to Act 2. In each half of the musical, too, there is a visual coup, in the form of an example of each artist's work. At the end of Act 1, it's the thrilling tableau of Seurat's painting come to life. And in Act 2, it's a demonstration of the artist's experiments with color and light in the form of a laser display that he calls a 'chromolume.'

'Historic' is an adjective I've rarely used to describe a performance, but a review that does not invoke it for Ben Platt's incandescent turn in the ravishingly bittersweet 'Dear Evan Hansen' would be doing it less than justice.

Josh Groban - he of the mellifluous lung power so dynamic it could lift a tall ship's sails - is the marquee attraction of 'Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,' the vivacious new musical that had its official opening Monday night at the Imperial Theatre. And as it turns out, he's neither an overbearing blowhard nor a star adrift. Rather, Groban proves to be a thoroughly winning team player in an offbeat pop opera that is ultimately more memorable for technical dexterity than emotional texture.

Josh Groban - he of the mellifluous lung power so dynamic it could lift a tall ship's sails - is the marquee attraction of 'Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,' the vivacious new musical that had its official opening Monday night at the Imperial Theatre. And as it turns out, he's neither an overbearing blowhard nor a star adrift. Rather, Groban proves to be a thoroughly winning team player in an offbeat pop opera that is ultimately more memorable for technical dexterity than emotional texture.

So I left the theater feeling the rush of some exhilarating teamwork still coursing freshly through my brain. Floating up there most buoyantly is the impression of Lane's priceless turn as Walter Burns - an editor so voraciously news hungry he could survive purely on a diet of scoops. In boxy pin-striped suit and bushy black mustache, Lane hurls Burns's blunt-force insults and bolts of impotent rage in all directions, with the timing and élan that have made him one of the great comic actors of our age. Slattery, playing the roguish Hildy Johnson, Burns's restive star reporter at the Chicago Examiner, reveals again the gift for the kind of swaggering masculinity he displayed as Roger Sterling on 'Mad Men.' Mays and Baker, too, are deployed here to maximum enjoyable effect as a pair of courthouse reporters - Mays portraying a skittish germaphobe, Baker a diligent leg man.

Judging from the audience's enthusiastic greeting, the duo has acquired a following as a result of George and Gil's appearances on Kroll's now-ended Comedy Central sketch-comedy program, 'Kroll Show'; a well-received off-Broadway run in 2015, and a national tour. It's devotion well-earned, because these comedians, who met as undergraduates at Georgetown University, have sharpened to a very funny point an acumen for keeping an audience off-balance - and eager for more.

Judging from the audience's enthusiastic greeting, the duo has acquired a following as a result of George and Gil's appearances on Kroll's now-ended Comedy Central sketch-comedy program, 'Kroll Show'; a well-received off-Broadway run in 2015, and a national tour. It's devotion well-earned, because these comedians, who met as undergraduates at Georgetown University, have sharpened to a very funny point an acumen for keeping an audience off-balance - and eager for more.

And whatever other misgivings you might have, wading through the thin story of the ascension of Grizabella the Glamour Cat (British vocalist Leona Lewis) to the redemptive Heaviside Layer, the cast assembled for the revival is gangbusters. Andy Blankenbuehler, the Tony-winning choreographer of 'Hamilton,' has been recruited to tweak the dances of 'Cats's' original choreographer, Gillian Lynne (another Tony winner). His refinements inject precision and verve and allow several of the performers, in their equitably distributed spotlight moments, to show off grandly. Among the most exciting are Ricky Ubeda as the magician cat, Mistoffelees; Tyler Hanes, playing Rum Tug Tugger, the rock-and-roll cat, and Jess LeProtto and Shonica Gooden as the mischief makers Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer.

'Fully Committed' has essentially a one-joke premise, which becomes apparent after about 20 minutes of ringing phones; a slender subplot revolving around Sam's recently widowed dad in the Midwest, whose fondest hope is that Sam won't have to work on Christmas, does add a soupçon of genuine warmth. The sustained enjoyment comes from the impressively controlled mayhem activated by Ferguson, under Jason Moore's savvy direction. The actor not only manages to soothe Sam's savage callers, but also the most judgmental of the evening's ticketholders.

It's surprising that 'Waitress's' director, the resourceful Diane Paulus, who staged recent Broadway revivals of 'Hair' and 'Pippin,' would not have required the softening of at least one of Earl's monstrous edges, because he's a villain so transparently designed to provoke a specific response that - no disrespect to the highly competent, physically imposing Cordero - the character comes across as an inane contrivance. Some other supporting parts fare far, far better, as with an eccentric suitor for Dawn named Ogie, played to the wonderfully kooky hilt by Christopher Fitzgerald. The number late in Act 1 in which Ogie introduces himself to us, 'Never Ever Getting Rid of Me,' jump-starts the proceedings with its effervescent spirit (and suggests that it might be fun if Ogie and Dawn got a spinoff musical of their own).

'American Psycho' creates another sub-genre - ersatz horror - an odd variation that fails to tingle your spine with its copious bloodletting or titillate you via the writhing bodies in its mechanical sex scenes (complete with pornographic video illustrations). Director Rupert Goold's shiny production, churning vapidly to the beat of composer Duncan Sheik's surprisingly clunky, characterless songs, charts the homicidal rampage of Patrick (Benjamin Walker) through the cash-engorged precincts of the Manhattan of the decadent '80s; Es Devlin's eye-catchingly sleek sets are the production's best asset. And then, in an odd departure from the novel, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's script pulls the blood-soaked rug out from under us, with the suggestion of a Patrick reborn, as a better man.

'The Father' - not of course, to be mistaken for the unnerving August Strindberg play of the same title - lumbers on in this vein for an hour and a half. The turbulent turns in Andre's powers of perception may strike one as unpredictable, but Zeller and Hampton's machinations do not. Langella is a bit too robust for a man so ravaged by mental deterioration. Still, he's in his element here, conveying with Lear-like levels of outrage and hurt Andre's refusal, or inability, to comprehend what is happening to him. As a demonstration of how Alzheimer's runs its course, Hughes's production has some merit: It might be serve as a useful training tool for medical schools. As illness-of-the-week plays go, however, 'The Father' is mundane. Much finer works, such as Margaret Edson's 'Wit,' about a professor dying of ovarian cancer, have crossed this company's path in the past.

For God's sake -- or maybe the devil's -- don't mess with Abigail. The look of feral resolve in Saoirse Ronan's eyes is so intense that an audience has not a moment's hesitation believing in the havoc at her fingertips in director Ivo van Hove's stunning new Broadway revival of 'The Crucible.' Her Abigail...is one of the many coups in van Hove's transfixing modern-dress production...The portrayals across the board infuse Arthur Miller's 1953 drama of vengeful mass hysteria with a stomach-knotting urgency that doesn't dissipate until well after the last of the evening's wrenching twists.

Director Walter Bobbie's production in the Cort Theatre, where the musical had its official opening Thursday night, retains the intelligently spare look of the incarnation in the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater. (It's also tauter - about 10 minutes shorter than it was in Washington.) Evoking a bucolic North Carolina of the 1920s and '40s, set designer Eugene Lee deploys a skeletal cabin on wheels as the visual centerpiece, in which the band, expertly conducted by Rob Berman, sits and strums Martin and Brickell's amiable tunes, albeit with some oddly-set lyrics. It's also worth noting that one of the biggest hands of the evening comes for the orchestra's playing of the entr'acte, the purely instrumental interlude that greets us after intermission.

Exuberance, thy musical name is 'She Loves Me'...The orchestra conducted by Paul Gemignani and the cast led by Laura Benanti, Zachary Levi and Jane Krakowski prove to be scrupulous custodians of the luscious score, and none of them more polished than Benanti. Her Amalia Balash is a worthy successor to the role's originator, Barbara Cook -- and that includes her skill at hitting that gorgeous, high B-flat in the song 'Vanilla Ice Cream.'

It is the caliber of these parodists that keeps the silliness afloat as Tony's earthquake-racked gambling vessel takes on ever more water. Butler, a star of Broadway's tongue-in-cheek 'Hairspray' and 'Xanadu,' and Pascal, the original Roger in 'Rent,' approach their stock roles with a winning élan. As dyed-in-the-mink Shirley (modeled on Shelley Winters's performance in the peerless 1972 upside-down cruise ship flick 'The Poseidon Adventure') Prince gets to show off a gift for physical comedy that becomes more formidable with the worsening of Shirley's terminal illness - a condition apparently native to the Borscht Belt. And Bart, the Carmen Ghia of Broadway's 'The Producers,' provides the vital services here of a shameless, polished clown. Best of all, though, is Simard's Sister Mary, a guitar-toting scold who cries 'shame' at her shipmates' vices while harboring a secret yearning to shout 'Blackjack!'

It is the caliber of these parodists that keeps the silliness afloat as Tony's earthquake-racked gambling vessel takes on ever more water. Butler, a star of Broadway's tongue-in-cheek 'Hairspray' and 'Xanadu,' and Pascal, the original Roger in 'Rent,' approach their stock roles with a winning élan. As dyed-in-the-mink Shirley (modeled on Shelley Winters's performance in the peerless 1972 upside-down cruise ship flick 'The Poseidon Adventure') Prince gets to show off a gift for physical comedy that becomes more formidable with the worsening of Shirley's terminal illness - a condition apparently native to the Borscht Belt. And Bart, the Carmen Ghia of Broadway's 'The Producers,' provides the vital services here of a shameless, polished clown. Best of all, though, is Simard's Sister Mary, a guitar-toting scold who cries 'shame' at her shipmates' vices while harboring a secret yearning to shout 'Blackjack!'

In Whitaker's eager-to-please though slightly pushy manner, Erie comes across as one of those fellows whose need to disclose overwhelms your ability to retreat. The intermittent nervous giggle betrays a soul of deeper insecurities than he otherwise cares to expose. And yet Erie can't help but reveal the truth of his situation, the losses and rejections he's racked up. All of this registers in the countenance of a terrific American actor, who's found a comfortable home on the stage of the Booth, when the man he plays never truly can.

In a mere 95 minutes, the playwright -- bolstered by a whip-smart director, Joe Mantello, and pitch-perfect cast of six -- delves into the dynamics of this clan with a gentleness that feels like compassion and a scrupulousness that borders on the forensic...If anything, the levels of tension and humor in 'The Humans' have been skillfully ratcheted up since the play's transfer to Broadway from Roundabout Theater Company's Laura Pels Theatre, where it had its off-Broadway New York debut last fall. The actors, encouraged by Mantello, isolate all of the warm and sore spots that unify and divide the Blakes, the affections and fissures that drive them into an ever-changing pattern of alliances.

The ecstatic noise emanating from West 45th Street may just have enough seismic force to shake foundations all the way to West 145th. It's the strength, collective and individual, of the 17 extraordinary vocal performances of 'The Color Purple' -- doubtless the best version of this 2005 musical you are ever going to hear...What remains of 'The Color Purple'...is a sleek, fast-paced treatment -- virtually a concert version -- of the journey of Erivo's heart-melting Celie...The setting seems a reflection of unvarnished Celie, who only wants out of life the simple, comforting joys of loving family and fulfilling work...There's more than enough combustibility on that stage, though, to compensate for any occasional energy deficits. And that goes treble for the dynamically emotive Erivo, who makes of Walker's heroine such an urgent life force that you're left in these troubled times with a reassuring sense that goodness really still can be its own reward.