Robert Hofler

As endearing as Radcliffe makes Billy, McDonagh's play really belongs to the women who co-star as his 'pretend' aunties, and Craigie and Hanna hang on to their adopted nephew like two determined barnacles. Under Grandage's direction, these two actresses take McDonagh's penchant for rustic cuteness - people who talk to stones, gossip about the cows - and make it sing with genuine humor. Less credible is the play's two big revelations, about the cause of Billy's physical impairment, which feel stuck onto the ending. And it wouldn't be a McDonagh play without some hilarious and/or ghastly episode of physical destruction. Here, the egg-smashing scene between Helen and her brother (Conor MacNeill) emerges as an unfunny overreach that, while lacking any blood, is a Grand Guignol display signifying not much of anything and, no doubt, a big mess to clean up after the curtain drops.

As endearing as Radcliffe makes Billy, McDonagh's play really belongs to the women who co-star as his 'pretend' aunties, and Craigie and Hanna hang on to their adopted nephew like two determined barnacles. Under Grandage's direction, these two actresses take McDonagh's penchant for rustic cuteness - people who talk to stones, gossip about the cows - and make it sing with genuine humor. Less credible is the play's two big revelations, about the cause of Billy's physical impairment, which feel stuck onto the ending. And it wouldn't be a McDonagh play without some hilarious and/or ghastly episode of physical destruction. Here, the egg-smashing scene between Helen and her brother (Conor MacNeill) emerges as an unfunny overreach that, while lacking any blood, is a Grand Guignol display signifying not much of anything and, no doubt, a big mess to clean up after the curtain drops.

As endearing as Radcliffe makes Billy, McDonagh's play really belongs to the women who co-star as his 'pretend' aunties, and Craigie and Hanna hang on to their adopted nephew like two determined barnacles. Under Grandage's direction, these two actresses take McDonagh's penchant for rustic cuteness - people who talk to stones, gossip about the cows - and make it sing with genuine humor. Less credible is the play's two big revelations, about the cause of Billy's physical impairment, which feel stuck onto the ending. And it wouldn't be a McDonagh play without some hilarious and/or ghastly episode of physical destruction. Here, the egg-smashing scene between Helen and her brother (Conor MacNeill) emerges as an unfunny overreach that, while lacking any blood, is a Grand Guignol display signifying not much of anything and, no doubt, a big mess to clean up after the curtain drops.

In the book 'Act One,' as well as its stage adaptation, the producer of 'Once in a Lifetime' tells the very young Hart that he's written a good but 'noisy' play...The Lincoln Center Theater production of 'Act One' boasts 22 actors, most of them playing multiple roles, and there's a constantly revolving set of three tiers that features more than a dozen locales ranging from rooftops to stoops to alleys to theaters to offices to restaurants to speakeasies. Designed by Beowulf Boritt, this cityscape makes the original set for 'Sweeney Todd' at the old Uris Theater look like a kids' jungle gym...The producer in Hart's book wasn't sure about the word 'noisy.' Regarding Lapine's 'Act One,' the word 'fast' is closer to the mark...Shalhoub also does triple duty, playing not only the mature Hart and Hart's father but Kaufman, as well. Watching Shalhoub's many physical transformations is one of the production's greatest pleasures and its major element of suspense...

Yes, they can. Both of them. And that includes James Franco. When big stars make their Broadway debuts, especially those big stars who don't have much of a theater pedigree, the first question has to be: 'So, can they act? On stage?'...In the current 'Of Mice and Men' revival, which opened Wednesday at the Longacre Theatre, Franco and stage vet Chris O'Dowd do something much more than not embarrass themselves... O'Dowd, who's well known to theatergoers in London and Dublin (he also guest-starred on HBO's 'Girls'), brings a surprisingly feminine grace to the mentally challenged Lennie, a quality that makes his shifts into violence all the more shocking. He's a big man on stage, but the real joy in this performance is watching his hands. The gestures are so delicate, as if his fingers can express what his tongue can't. Franco completely abandons any trace of the laconic slacker that's defined his best-known screen portrayals. Here on stage, he's both strong and determined...

Allen has pulled something of a Sylvester Stallone in his Broadway book-writer debut: His book never really abandons his screenplay sufficiently to reinvent itself for the theater. For most of the evening, some great dance numbers and many old tunes have simply be inserted into this tale of a young writer (Zach Braff) who willingly allows a mobster (Nick Cordero) to rewrite his play, much to the play's improvement...'Bullets,' the musical, is loaded down with old ditties that wore out their welcome sometime during the run of 'Arthur Godfrey Time' and only vaguely refer to Allen's story...'Bullets' on Broadway rarely breaks free of the movie, and fond memories keep taking us back to the original.

I recently wrote that 90 minutes in the theater is the new three-act play. And there have been some good short plays that constitute a full, satisfying evening in the theater. Will Eno's 'The Realistic Joneses,' which opened Sunday at the Lyceum Theatre and marks his overdue Broadway debut, isn't one of them, despite all the fine acting and writing talent on display. The drama feels overextended even before its four characters settle into a final, whimpering contemplation of life, mortality, the cosmos, eternity and that owl hooting in the woods nearby...It's quirky, but nothing ages faster than quirky when the playwright doesn't have a second act for his short one-act play.

It's not confusing with all these stories; it's just all spread a little thin. And it's all a little too fast...Even so, it's an intriguing book, but one that Yorkey might tinker with beyond opening night, just as the books of 'Merrily We Roll Along' and 'Follies' went through many revisions after their respective Broadway premieres. In other words, see 'If/Then' now so you can have the fun of making comparisons to its future revivals, of which there will be many.

After her debut in 1990 on PBS's 'American Playhouse,' the gorgon mother known as Katharine Gerard is not a character most people would care to revisit, least of all in a full-length Broadway play. But there she is on stage at the Golden Theatre, where Terrence McNally's 'Mothers and Sons' opened Monday, now inhabited by Tyne Daly and acting every bit the human refrigerator that the late Sada Thompson presented in that 1990 episode titled 'Andre's Mother.' Did McNally bring Katharine back just to beat her up again? Maybe. Whatever, this public trashing is a riveting show. Of course, by play's end Katharine has delivered a couple of bombshells that explain her bitterness, if they don't exactly absolve her, and Daly gets some of the evening's biggest laughs without even saying a word.

Suffice to say, 'Aladdin' bears no resemblance to Nicholaw's previous laugh-filled Broadway effort, 'The Book of Mormon.'...And neither does Chad Beguelin's book, which is loaded with some clever 'Sesame Street' word play but finds no magic whatsoever in a story rife with magic lanterns, carpets, genies and sultry Arabian nights. Will children get the humor in send-ups of old tap and soft-shoe numbers? Isn't mocking stage traditions a rather cynical way to introduce children to the theater?

It's never a good sign in a stage musical when the most rousing numbers are not written by the credited songwriters, in this case Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens for their Broadway version of 'Rocky,' which opened Thursday at the Winter Garden...Stallone and Meehan are faithful to that script, and on stage the dialogue plays even weaker than on screen. The corny jokes and meet-cute lines don't land or define character; they just sit there surrounded by dead air. Flaherty and Ahrens have merely punctuated that lame dialogue with their songs - or other people's songs...The show's Rocky is a bright spot in the production. Andy Karl has been in and out of a lot of Broadway shows, often as a replacement. Unlike Stallone's performance, there's nothing sentimental about Karl's Rocky, except the dialogue he's been stuck with. He's tough, resilient and displays a real macho edge, which isn't always the easiest task for a boxer singing on stage in a big Broadway musical.

Cranston doesn't look or act much like the real LBJ (at least the one most of us saw on TV), and that's one of the more intriguing aspects of Bill Rauch's direction. Except for a dead-on Lady Bird Johnson (Betsy Aidem) and George Wallace (Rob Campbell), the cast avoids the Madame Tussauds approach to acting that has taken over biopics (and rarely fails to win actors their Oscars). Rauch keeps the focus on telling a complicated story as nimbly as possible, dispensing with the extreme makeup and mannerisms that would only get in the way as Brandon J. Dirden's MLK, Christopher Gurr's Strom Thurmond, Richard Poe's Everett Dirksen, William Jackson Harper's Stokely Carmichael, Robert Petkoff's Hubert Humphrey, Michael McKean's J. Edgar Hoover and Cranston's LBJ do battle with each other in 1964.

Woody Allen did something like this in 'Midnight in Paris' when he conjured up the likes of Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway and Salvador Dali. From the evidence of Simonson's play and Allen's movie, painters and writers make a helluva lot better dinner guests than baseball players. The premise isn't bad, but the around-the-table chat in 'Bombers' is...After the endless dream sequence, Simonson takes us to the last game in the old Yankee Stadium. It's like he's directing the Passion Play what with all the dry ice foaming and church bells ringing and beatific light streaming. It's not unusual for screenwriters to direct their own scripts, but they're working in collaboration with a cinematographer and an editor. Playwrights who direct their own plays don't have that buffer, and this production of 'Bronx Bombers' is a textbook example of why they should stick to writing.

Far more the stage veteran, the supremely talented O'Byrne is oddly colorless here - until the final scene when he hesitatingly describes himself in tremulous voice as a 'honey bee' and Rosemary as a 'flower.' Somehow, as the way it is played here under Doug Hughes's direction, Anthony comes off as a violet to Rosemary's hornet. While many in the audience made it clear that they found this scene both hilarious and touching, others may applaud in relief at the Delayed Curtain.

This 2014 staging is notable for giving Rebecca Hall her stunning Broadway debut and proving that 'Machinal' is an arresting and not some old chestnut that deserves to be cracked open only once every century. It helps, too, that director Lyndsey Turner (another Broadway deb) and her design team (Es Devlin, Michael Krass, Jane Cox, Matt Tierney) have choreographed this story, based on a real-life case of a woman who murdered her husband, as if it were a very modern atonal opera.

Here is arguably the nicest, most normal, least eccentric personality ever to be at the center of a Broadway musical. 'Beautiful' is the show for theatergoers who don't like drama queens. Is there such an animal? The new Carole King bio musical 'Beautiful,' which opened Sunday at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, might more aptly be titled 'Nice.' 'Beautiful,' of course, is just one of the singer-composer's many hit songs. 'Nice,' though, is the word that best describes this showbiz musical that goes out of its way to prove that great talent isn't necessarily dramatic.

Here is arguably the nicest, most normal, least eccentric personality ever to be at the center of a Broadway musical. 'Beautiful' is the show for theatergoers who don't like drama queens. Is there such an animal? The new Carole King bio musical 'Beautiful,' which opened Sunday at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, might more aptly be titled 'Nice.' 'Beautiful,' of course, is just one of the singer-composer's many hit songs. 'Nice,' though, is the word that best describes this showbiz musical that goes out of its way to prove that great talent isn't necessarily dramatic.

Being a showoff works well for “Godot,” especially as envisioned by director Sean Mathias, who has set the play in the ruins of an old theater, where a big tree has sprung up through the boards and could provide the perfect exit if only these two old hams from vaudeville or the music hall or two-reelers could find enough strong rope to hang themselves. McKellen and Stewart are a very carefully orchestration study in contrasts here. As Estragon, Stewart is staccato and all sharp edges, his dome almost polished to a point on top. McKellen, on the other hand, seems to be sprouting hair everywhere to the point of looking furry, if not fuzzy.

McKellen mines laughs in “No Man’s Land” where none exist. Watch him, at age 74, get down on his knee to tie one shoe lace, only to perform a nimble bent-knee leap to tie the other. Audiences may find that his verbal and physical dexterity makes for a lighter, more digestible night at the theater, but it also diminishes the desperation that drives Spooner, a down-and-out poet, into the no man’s land of another writer’s well-appointed, servant-infested manse.

Cinephiles will know that Horniman's 'Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal' is also the basis for the 1949 British film 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' in which Alec Guinness famously plays the eight murdered victims of a distant relative who feels he deserves to be the Duke of D'Ascoyne...Bryce Pinkham in 'Gentleman's Guide,' on the other hand, is a stage animal who defines the term 'handsome devil.' As Monty Navarro, he has more than a bit of the imp in him - as if he were Marty Feldman's younger, much better looking brother. Plus he possesses a sumptuous singing voice. Taking over for Guinness, Jefferson Mays can now claim title to the most oft-murdered man in Broadway history. He does Guinness one better, playing not just eight but nine characters. He doesn't erase the memory of Guinness, but you won't miss Guinness either. The musical is a showcase for Mays's many faces, but it is Pinkham who must-and does - carry the evening.

Weisz and Spall are so charming and engaging throughout that a palpable sadness settles over the Barrymore Theatre late in the play when we see them so physically and romantically engaged in the flat they've rented...It's a marvel of acting to watch Craig slowly bring the subtext of raging anger to the fore in scene after scene as Spall and Weisz effectively react with knowing silence...

the producers of 'A Time to Kill' have lavished Holmes' play with an old-fashioned cast of players, numbering no fewer than 17 actors. Too bad that huge cast doesn't have a vintage story to tell, because when you strip Grisham's panoramic tale of racism and injustice in a small Mississippi city down to a courtroom drama, there really isn't much of a trial at the heart of it...Under Ethan McSweeny's direction at the Golden Theater, only John Douglas Thompson, Tonya Pinkins as his supportive wife and Patrick Page as the smarmy prosecutor (the Spacey role) are able to tweak this character dross into star turns. In his Broadway debut, Tom Skerritt keeps entering and exiting like a lost ghost in white hair and designer David C. Wollards's equally bleached-out linens.

Very early in the new stage musical 'Big Fish,' director Susan Stroman delivers a splashy ensemble number, 'Be the Hero,' that effectively introduces us to many of the fantastical characters we know from Tim Burton's 2003 film version and the original novel by Daniel Wallace. The difference, however, between seeing them onscreen or reading about these mythic figures is that when they're forced to sing and dance right off the bat with no introduction, there's a distinct feeling of the wrong kind of déjà vu. Is that Ariel from 'The Little Mermaid'? One of the witches from 'Wicked'? The circus ringmaster from 'Pippin'? And the giant from 'Shrek'? Suddenly, they're not archetypes anymore but rather the stars of some 'Best of Broadway' theme-park show...The problem is, neither Stroman's staging nor Andrew Lippa's songs expand upon or deepen our understanding of these stock Broadway figures.

Fortunately, Williams has once again aligned with the ideal cast and creative team, in John Tiffany's staging of 'The Glass Menagerie,' an American Repertory Theater production starring Cherry Jones and Zachary Quinto that previously played Harvard and opened Thursday night at the Booth Theater.

Cera...is the Cera we know from the movies: quiet, nerdy, low-key with a delicate imbalance to his delivery that fits Warren as perfectly as the baseball cap he treasures. The 'Arrested Development' star is genuinely funny and endearing, and if you've never seen him on-screen before, his Warren will be a revelation. For those who have seen him, it's a performance without many surprises from an actor who has been here, done this male-waif thing. The good news is that he's not playing to the camera, and his performance fills the theater...The words 'total surprise' sum up Culkin's achievement here...Culkin presents a perfectly reasonable young cynic, one who's better than most slackers at selling drugs and conning his parents. There's real businessman acumen on display here...It's difficult to see what Shapiro wants to achieve with Tavi Gevinson's loud, hysterical interpretation of Jessica.