Robert Hofler

It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while a play is not so much a play as it is an audition for a Netflix or HBO series. The TV company could be NBC or CBS if not for the fact that “The Reservoir,” which opened Tuesday at the Atlantic Theater Company, is about alcoholism and Alzheimer’s.

“The Other Place” is a far looser adaptation and update. Beyond the too cute name changes — Annie/Antigone, Chris/Creon, Erica/Eurydice and the soothsayer Terry/Tiresias (Jerry Killick) — “The Other Place” plays like an improv exercise in which actors, who are only vaguely familiar with the Sophocles classic, are put on a stage with an urn full of ashes and directed, “To now gives us ‘Antigone.’”

Even though “High Spirits” is a nearly forgotten antique, Encores! has cast it with flair, bringing real Broadway stars to the stage. In addition to Lenk (“The Band’s Visit”) and Martin (tons of stuff), there’s Steven Pasquale (“The Bridges of Madison County”) and Phillipa Soo (“Hamilton”) in the roles of the husband and wife whose stiff-upper-lip marriage disintegrates under Elvira’s laser-focused high-jinks. Playing the very British couple, Pasquale and Soo are cast against type and can be thankful that “High Spirits” is a limited engagement.

At its core, “Marjorie Prime” tells a simple kitchen-sink story of two adults trying to care for an aging relative. Harrison tries to up the ante by dipping into his gothic drawer of horrors to deliver not one but two suicides that push the human narrative into the contrived. In the end, the machines are more honest than the humans and, better yet, there’s none of the angst.

In the first scene, Young delivers the best performance by an adult actor of a child character since Anika Noni Rose played a kid in the original 2003 production of “Caroline, or Change.” Braun isn’t quite as convincing – who would be? – but he’s admirably effective playing a little boy despite this actor being over six feet tall.

Jim Barne and Kit Buchan wrote the songs and the book for this rom-com two-hander, and they begin “Two Strangers” with real promise. The young man Dougal (Tutty) is newly arrived at JFK from London and eager to meet his American father for the very first time. Dad’s getting married and the bride’s sister, Robin (Pitts), picks him up at the airport. As meet-cutes go, this one turns very problematic in Act 2, if not before.

The humor depends entirely on 20-20 hindsight. The scientist, the divorcee and her obnoxious niece (Kayli Carter, being obnoxious) visit a fair exhibition that predicts what the world will be in the year 1960. They all receive an “I Saw the Future” button. No surprise, the scientist knows what’s really going to happen, and his oblique but spot-on remarks about the future provoke mild giggles of recognition from the audience.

David Cromer directs, and a hallmark of his many stellar productions is the actors’ comic timing. No one directs comedy better than Cromer; he invariably finds the humor in adversity. And there’s something else that makes him one of the great directors: He champions and takes on plays by writers even an avid theatergoer has probably never heard of. This autumn, he preceded “Cartozians” with the exquisite “Caroline” by Preston Max Allen. If Cromer is directing, you know it’s worth seeing.

The biggest pleasure of this prestige production is watching how Icke pastes these modern references onto a classic story. It’s often fun to watch, but never more than clever. Icke also panders to one of the theater’s largest demos by having one of Jocasta and Oedipus’ sons, Polyneices (James Wilbraham), be outed by his brother, Eteocles (Jordan Scowen), at a family dinner. Because he’s such a wonderful father, Oedipus reassures Polyneices of his love and support by delivering a speech written by someone at PFLAG.

Based on the Marcel Pagnol film, “The Baker’s Wife” was supposed to open on Broadway in 1976, or thereabouts, but shuttered on its way to New York City, the most likely culprit being the abominable showman-producer David Merrick. Productions have popped up here and there over the years, and fortunately for New Yorkers, a stellar production of “The Baker’s Wife” opened Tuesday at the Classic Stage Company. It’s by far the year’s best revival of a stage musical. If there’s any justice, this long-neglected musical by Joseph Stein and Stephen Schwartz will finally make it to Broadway with this great ensemble completely intact.

The bad news for Trump is that Obama now has a musical dedicated to his time in the White House. It’s aptly called “44: The Musical,” and opened Thursday at the Daryl Roth Theatre. The good news for 45 and 47 is that the show is “awful,” as in the original definition of the word, which is “full of awe.”

“Kyoto” had its U.S. premiere Monday at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, and it is yet another British import filled with Big Ideas served up on a sterile monolithic set that screams “prestige” even before you sit down.

Samuel D. Hunter’s latest begins as a very funny two-hander comedy in which Laurie Metcalf plays another of her sharp-tongued curmudgeons and Micah Stock brings to the stage a more svelte version of Brendan Fraser’s obese recluse from “The Whale,” also by Hunter. We know Metcalf can be a hilarious bitch. What’s fun is that Stock’s tortured schlub of a nephew turns out to be just as skilled at throwing the insults back at her.

When Schiff’s book disappoints by simply regurgitating her screenplay, the original score by Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay provides the necessary fresh energy. It’s nothing more than bubblegum, but like Hubba Bubba, the songs come in a wide variety of flavors and colors.

When Bess Wohl’s “Liberation” opened Off Broadway all the way back in February, it would have been ridiculous to grace it with best-of superlatives. Now that “Liberation” has opened on Broadway this Tuesday at the James Earl Jones Theatre, it’s entirely apt to write that it’s the year’s best play. There are only a few other new plays to open in 2025 and I’ve seen most of them in previews. Bank on it: “Liberation” remains the best.

“Ragtime,” like “Les Miz,” gives anthems a very bad name. DeBessonet emphasizes their excessiveness by having her cast, especially Joshua Henry in the Coalhouse role, hold on to a note well passed its sell-by date. It’s difficult to tell if people are applauding mid-song because they’re impressed by Henry’s lung power or if they just want him to get off the note and finish the song. DeBessonet’s blunt direction only encourages us to applaud before the actors have finished singing.

For Cooper, “Oh Happy Day!” is not so much a step forward from “Ain’t No Mo’” as it is a step sideways. It shows that he can also write a full two-act 130-minute family drama. Not that this playwright has abandoned his irreverent comic streak. God takes many forms in “Oh Happy Day!” and the ones that can be written about in this review are the fiercely attired (costumes by Qween Jean) girl group that features Holy Divine (Tiffany Mann), Mighty Divine (Shelea Melody McDonald) and Glory Divine (Latrice Pace). They sing so many great gospel-inspired songs, by Donald Lawrence, that “Oh Happy Day!” at moments turns into a rollicking musical.

What’s very entertaining about “Let’s Love!” and even a bit jolting is that three of the female characters (Mary McCann, Aubrey Plaza, Mary Wiseman) get all the dirtiest lines. In other words, Cohen is writing female characters like no other playwright today. In light of all this feminine off-color, it’s no surprise that four of the male characters (Chris Bauer, Dion Graham, Noah Robbins, CJ Wilson) emerge as very reactive, if not a little colorless at times.

Which brings this review to River Lipe-Smith. If I’ve ever seen a more accomplished performance from a child actor on stage, I can’t think of it. Over and over again, this young actor delivers a zinger with the comic timing of a veteran stand-up comic. It’s one of the great things about Allen’s writing and Cromer’s direction: They know how to win an audience’s sympathy not through tears but laughter.

There’s something else that Penford does that’s really grating. Even though he has 10 actors on stage, he relies on leads Clark and Robards to play minor characters with a mere switch of a hairdo or a shirt. It’s especially unfortunate to see Clark, a fine actor, resort to cheap tricks to go from playing the levelheaded mom to the cute grandma to some rowdy young street urchin.

Regarding the broken link in this ensemble, what Reeves does have going for him is a look. The late theater illustrator Al Hirschfeld would have drawn him with a minimum of very long lines. This Gogo is so tall and thin as to be suffering from severe desiccation, the eyes small beads of black glass, the body so starved for another of Didi’s carrots that hair has sprung out all over his face in a kind of hirsute protest. Gilmour’s costumes emphasize this physical starkness by making Gogo’s suit too small, Didi’s suit too big. Of course, there are the Laurel & Hardy black derbies, also worn by Pozzo and Lucky. Gogo and Dido aren’t so much big and thin as they are tall and short. They are also the stomach and the brain, the id and the ego. But a look only goes so far. It is not a performance, and Reeves very studied and mannered delivery of his lines is enough to ban the word “staccato” from Webster’s.

The new theater season has its first must-see musical. It’s “Mexodus,” written and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, which had its New York City premiere Thursday at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre after a few regional productions. You’ll be entertained, but you might learn something, too.

The three stars appear to be having great fun even when their respective characters are at each other’s throat. It doesn’t matter that Yasmina Reza wrote stick figures rather than characters for her play “Art,” which won the Tony Award for best play back in 1998. She instead sets up a series of premises in which Marc (Bobby Cannavale), Serge (Neil Patrick Harris) and Yvan (James Corden) are able to sound off against each and take sides. Friendship triangles like this one are made so someone feels left out. The current revival of “Art” opened Tuesday at the Music Box, and it is a reminder of how far the theater has traveled since the late 20th Century.

Cloud’s play is a series of snippets, told out of order, that are grabbed from Rick Lazes and Seth Koch’s McQueen biography. Every scene is so short and undeveloped that the title character emerges as a jumble of clichés produced by an abusive father, an adoring mother, snobbish employers, and HIV-infected lovers.

The self-proclaimed “Roastmaster General” made his Broadway debut Monday at the Nederland Theatre in a one-man show titled “Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride.” It may be the most sickness and death focused show ever put on a stage and that includes the Pulitzer Price-winning plays “Wit,” by Margaret Edson, and “Angels in America,” by Tony Kushner.