Robert Hofler — Theater Critic

Only two of Armstrong’s wives in “A Wonderful World” share a dramatic scene: when Daisy charges Alpha and Louis of bigamy. Otherwise, one actor could play all four female roles, which might give some theatrical flair to a show that’s lacking in panache. Christopher Renshaw directs, and Iglehart and Christina Sajous are credited as co-directors. If there isn’t an adage about too many directors in the theater, there should be.

"Drag: The Musical” opened Monday at New World Stages, and for much of the show, it joins the illustrious company of those aforementioned titles. It’s only big problem: It’s too Broadway even though it’s playing Off Broadway. Clearly, the show has big-stage ambitions. Jason Sherwood’s set and especially Marco Marco’s many glitzy costumes are very Broadway quality. They dazzle! Actually, they dazzle too much. Part of the appeal of drag is its inherent tackiness, and sometimes the display of money can kill a laugh. “Titanique,” especially, knows how to use cheapness to induce guffaws.

For me, the big surprise of this “Sunset Blvd.” is Scherzinger’s outrageously campy over-the-top performance. Like so much of this revival, it is both minimal and excessive. Her look is minimal while her acting goes way beyond anything delivered by either Swanson or Close, neither of whom offered particularly subtle studies in mature womanhood.

“Hold on to Me Darling” was the best new play of 2016 when it opened at the Atlantic Theater. Eight years later, Kenneth Lonergan’s comedy about a country singer is the best contemporary play now on the boards in New York City. A most entertaining revival opened Wednesday at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Leon’s “Our Town” solves that problem, in part, by not having an intermission. The Stage Manager now simply informs us that Act 1 and then Act 2 have finished, the audience applauds, and we’re off to Act 3 without a break. “Our Town” now runs 100 minutes without intermission, and I have to ask this: Would you do that to any three-act play that normally runs around two and a half hours if you were a director who considered it the best American play ever?

I’ve been going to theater in New York City for over 50 years, and never has the talent pool of musical talent among actors been this wide and this deep. Wolfson taking over for Mindelle at the last moment in previews is proof of that, while Nix and Rousouli just add to my amazement. The book for “Jamboree” finally catches up to its awesomely talented performers when the story begins to borrow not from musical theater but “The Stepford Wives.”

Throughout “Yellow Face,” Silverman uses her talented cast to play all sorts of characters, and the nontraditional casting often delivers a great deal of laughter. It’s fun to see a female actor of color playing a redneck Senator from the South. When Hwang wants to get serious, however, Silverman doesn’t mess around. She casts an actor who looks male and white in the role of the reporter. Oh, can I write that someone looks white and male? Keller also plays the role without a smidgen of the campy gay face that infects some of the other performances. White straight men have become the go-to villains in the theater. Apparently, some stereotypes remain PC.

Bartlett Sher directs and he pushes each of these supporting players to overact to the extreme, while Downey Jr. delivers an oddly staccato performance. It’s as if he’s trying to distance himself from the character with his tick-filled delivery of the lines. However, as this 90-minute play progresses with its over-the-top performances from the supporting actors, Downey Jr. begins to emerge as the calm eye of the angry storm raging around his character. He wins our sympathy by default.

Having now seen “The Hills of California” on Broadway, where it opened Sunday at the Broadhurst Theatre, I realize Butterworth has written something much more significant and moving. In crossing the Atlantic Ocean, he also cut a plot detail from the third act — and it’s a prime example of less being not only more but much better.

It is too early in the Broadway season to call something the worst. That caveat aside, “The Roommate” is the saddest spectacle of wasted talent on Broadway since Andre De Shields played a gorilla in “Prymate” in 2004.

“Never work with animals or children.” W.C. Fields delivered those words of wisdom to adult actors, and if the great screen comic were alive today, he might add to that short list of taboos a young actor’s name: Michael Rishawn. He walks away with the new Douglas Lyons comedy “Table 17” even though he’s a supporting player. The play had its world premiere Friday at MCC Theater.

When Jane isn’t talking about kiddie sex and people’s weird eating habits, your mind might wander. Why does Loyd not grab Jane’s knapsack, where she keeps the gun, since he has multiple chances in the course of the play to do so? You also have to wonder why any tech company would ever considering rehiring Jane after she has subjected her coworkers to a screaming fit atop a desk. And above all, why would Jane think that pulling a gun on a therapist by way of introduction would be a good way to achieve her ultimate aim. That goal is the play’s big ah-ha moment, and as plot twists goes, it crumbles at a moment’s reflection.

“Oh, Mary!” plays even better on Broadway than it did downtown at the Lucille Lortel Theater earlier this year. Experiencing this comedy with a few hundred more theatergoers takes the laughter from boisterous to atomic and the effect is absolutely radioactive. Plot-wise, it continues to be best to write as little as possible. There are outrageous twists and turns in the story that genuinely shock an audience into delayed convulsions of laughter. Let’s just say that Escola has somehow managed to turn the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln into an inspired, rollicking comedy.

Taylor keeps her feet planted on solid ground; Villafañe spouts idealistic slogans about the Green New Deal and defunding ICE that will decimate the Democrats’ majority in the House. And each argument ends (and often begins) with Taylor getting the laugh. There’s really no other way to play the text, and under Diane Paulus’ direction, “N/A” soon emerges as a lopsided comedy act, with the deadly serious A(lexandria) having to set up alpha comic N(ancy), who hogs the spotlight.

“Appropriate” is the dirtiest word in the arts today, and one might feel sorry for Lloyd Webber for having his material spayed in this way by directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch. In fact, the only thing that makes this “Cats” worth watching is the ballroom environment of high and low drag that has been dropped like a bottle of Pooph odor eliminator onto Lloyd Webber’s litter box of a musical.

Sandra Oh makes for a very effective Henry Fonda, as he appeared in “Twelve Angry Men.” She also manages to convey Nancy Kelly at her most distraught and maternal in “The Bad Seed.” And swirling around this actor are another 15 equally gifted performers who bring to mind “The Crucible” in its most powerful moments and “Dead Ringers” at its most lurid. Lucy Kirkwood’s sometimes bewildering and always fascinating new play “The Welkin” opened Wednesday at the Atlantic Theater Company after its world premiere at London’s National Theatre in 2020.

Kaufman and Gronich’s play was recently made a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama. It is yet another example of a work of art being awarded for its subject matter, not its execution. That said, the photographs are worth a visit to the New York Theatre Workshop where “Here There Are Blueberries” is a coproduction with Tectonic Theater Project.

It’s debatable whether one of American literature’s most mysterious characters should ever sing. What Gatsby should definitely not ever do is lead a chorus of tap dancers. That not-since-“Carrie” spectacle sums up what goes wrong with the new musical “The Great Gatsby,” with book by Kati Kerrigan and score by composer Jason Howland and lyricist Nathan Tysen.

At the Armory, I found “Illinoise” not only sentimental but downright whimsical. It was intriguing to see three singers walk out on stage wearing enormous fairy wings (costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung). Only later did I realize that they were moth wings, because “Illinoise,” with its book by Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury, is a coming-of-age story. The dancers on stage can be seen as human caterpillars that blossom into human moths. “Illinoise” could be called “Metamorphosis,” but the songs come from Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 concept album, “Illinois.” The switch from that original title to “Illinoise” is not a typo. Chalk it up to the change being another metamorphosis, using the spelling seen on the album’s stylized cover, which read “Come on feel the Illinoise.” Beyond “sentimental,” the other word to describe “Illinoise” is “precious.”

If you liked Jordan Peele’s horror comedy “Get Out,” you’re going to love Ife Olujobi’s horror comedy “Jordans,” which opened Wednesday at the Public Theater. Is it pure coincidence that Peele’s first name is Jordan, and Olujobi has written a play that’s about two characters who are named Jordan? The similarities don’t end there. Both “Get Out” and “Jordans” clock in as many gasps as they do laughs. More significant, each work sets Black characters — one in “Get Out,” two in “Jordans” — who find themselves in the uncomfortable situation of living and working in a white-run world.

“Mother Play” marks Lange’s fourth engagement on Broadway but the first time she has originated a role there. In its excellence, her work in “Mother Play” recalls what she did on stage as Mary Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” in 2016. The only difference is that Vogel gives Lange a few more notes to explore, most of them above the staff in the comic stratosphere. Before this review makes “Mother Play” sound like a dirge, it is really a very funny play. When Martha doesn’t accept Phyllis’ attempt to make amends, Carl cautions, “Don’t gnaw on the olive branch!”

Lila Neugebauer directs a very punchy revival of “Uncle Vanya,” which opened Wednesday at LCT’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Anton Chekhov’s characters suffer from ennui, but not so much in this production.

In the scenes set in the apartment, the four visitors tend to take focus away from Mary Jane. Each of the four actors is exemplary, but there’s too much still air on stage before each of them can establish her presence, especially in the play’s first half. Stoic is not an easy look to convey to an audience, and McAdams’ performance doesn’t really take shape until Mary Jane sets up residence in the hospital. Ultimately, McAdams gets her big theatrical moment, but much of the play’s power comes from Herzog’s scheme to withhold that moment. We expect Mary Jane to break down, explode, get pissed off long before she does. What sets her off is unexpected. It’s worth the wait.

In a Broadway season filled with big performances, there’s none bigger or busier than Michael Stuhlbarg’s portrayal of Berezovsky. He leaves no gesture, no inflection, no dance step unexplored. Berezovsky was a child prodigy, but rather than taking his phenomenal aptitude for math and going into academia like a normal genius, he instead made billions by becoming Russia’s top oligarch after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Stuhlbarg’s spewing of Morgan’s aphorisms recall the Old Fool in “Boris Godunov” and sometimes provokes applause from the audience. It’s not so much a dramatic performance as it is a musical-comedy performance without the songs.

Gordon Greenberg directs and Lorin Latarro choreographs, achieving some kind of immortality with all that bubble wrap. Around the edges of this production are a few inspired performances. Raymond J. Lee’s wacky rocker, Tamika Lawrence’s un-PC HR director and Billy Harrigan Tighe’s bleach-blond ukulele-playing male bimbo invariably deliver laughs despite the paper-thin material.