Robert Hofler — Theater Critic

The three words of the title were Imelda’s humble choice of verbiage for her own tombstone. David Korins’s scenic design for “Here Lies Love” on Broadway is far more expansive than the bare-bones production at the Public, and it is immensely enhanced by Peter Nigrini’s jazzy projection designs of vintage photos, documentaries and animated graphics that literally engulf the theater.

What do you get by crossing “Six” with “& Juliet”? No, “Bad Cinderella” was last season. Today, that mash-up of two similar musicals gives you the slightly better Cinderella show, which has been tortuously titled “Once Upon a One More Time.” This new jukebox tuner, which recycles songs written and/or performed by Britney Spears, opened Thursday at the Marquis Theatre after its world premiere at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Eric Ting directs with a subtle hand. He lets his actors and the script do the work. Only the moments featuring Death get a little showy, with Amith Chandrashaker’s design of a solo spotlight on the actor and Palmer Hefferan’s sound design, which suddenly overlays the voices with echoes. The special effects are definitely not needed.

Stories of horror are fantastical, but need to follow their own inner logic once the parameters of that fantasy have been established. One game played in “Grey House” dictates that a mother will die if the “it” person tells a lie. Well, many lies are told and Raleigh, while tortured, somehow survives. If she’s the kids’ mother, why doesn’t she die? If she isn’t their mother, why is she tortured by these lies? Raleigh survives because if she didn’t, “Grey House” would end well before Holloway delivers his climax, which is a very unappetizing dinner party that involves way too much exposition to make narrative sense of what’s happening.

Its love letter to the city often doesn’t set well on its target board of the city, especially in the confused first act. But “New York, New York,” under the savvy direction and choreography of Susan Stroman and featuring a score by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a book by David Thompson and Sharon Washington, ultimately delivers its melting-pot message with intelligence, style and, yes, good old-fashioned razzle-dazzle.

Its love letter to the city often doesn’t set well on its target board of the city, especially in the confused first act. But “New York, New York,” under the savvy direction and choreography of Susan Stroman and featuring a score by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a book by David Thompson and Sharon Washington, ultimately delivers its melting-pot message with intelligence, style and, yes, good old-fashioned razzle-dazzle.

Comer is a superb athlete. “Prima Facie” runs 90 minutes, and in its first 15 minutes, it appears that this actor never takes a breath as she races at breakneck speed through her character’s background as a defense barrister for persons accused of sexual abuse. The extreme alacrity and force of Comer’s delivery is part aggression; she plays a very truculent defense lawyer named Tessa Ensler. It is also part compensation for the character being a woman born in the working-class. At Cambridge University, she had been surrounded by students, most of them male, to the manor born. She defends her fierce grilling of the plaintiff because that is her role as a defense lawyer. Tessa is a real professional.

Beyond Harris' very physical performance and all the staged deaths, the high point of 'Peter Pan Goes Wrong' is extremely low tech and of even lower humor. It comes when the Captain Hook (co-author Henry Shields does a very good imitation of John Cleese) has problems removing the cork from a bottle. The moment goes on forever and ends sooner than it should.

“The Thanksgiving Play” runs 90 minutes without intermission. Interspersed throughout the show are a number of filmed school pageants in which “students” perform their own well-meaning and ridiculous enactments of Thanksgiving. All together, these filmed segments run approximately 15 minutes, giving the four live actors about 75 minutes to perform, which is about an hour more than Saturday Night Live would have taken to satirize this topic of woke run amok. Because “The Thanksgiving Play” runs about an hour longer than it should, a strange thing happens as its four characters grapple with the impossibility of Logan’s assignment: The most manipulative and openly self-centered of the characters steals the show. In her Broadway debut, Carden wins most of the laughs by doing little more than rolling her eyes, seductively throwing her hair back and applying yet another layer of lip gloss.

Once again, Lincoln Center Theater shows that it knows how to amplify a musical. The real singing voices and the real playing of 30 musicians in the pit can be heard. Marc Salzberg and Beth Lake’s sound design merely supports the music; it doesn’t replace the original sound. It’s ironic because when the Vivian Beaumont opened in 1965, the venue was lambasted as the acoustic nightmare of Broadway theaters. Today, it is the last refuge of experiencing Broadway musicals as they were meant to be heard.

Time after time in “Fat Ham,” when someone in the family has misbehaved outrageously, usually to great comic effect, it is up to Juicy to occupy the middle ground and address the audience directly in a soliloquy that binds us irrevocably to this most empathetic character. Spears plays these moments to the hilt by always underplaying them. His many dead pans and weighted pauses invariably bring down the house. As for that wonderful ghost, much of his magic derives from Maruti Evans’ set, Dominque Fawn Hill’s costumes, Bradley King’s lighting, Earon Chew Nealey’s hair and wigs, Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound and, above all, Skylar Fox’s illusions design. So don’t let that Pulitzer Prize fool you. “Fat Ham” is the most fun you’ll have at any play this Broadway season.

At their most amusing, Clark and McAnally have more in common with the gentle humor of Meredith Willson than the far more rambunctious nonsense that Horn delivers. This constant switching of gears between the songs and the joke-filled dialogue slows down the narrative, making “Shucked” seem a lot longer than its two and twenty minutes with intermission. There’s also a pair of narrators (Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley) who are somewhat less adorable than they think they are.

All this analysis of the singing might be a clue to what’s occasionally wrong with Thomas Kail’s direction when his actors aren’t thrilling us with their superb vocals. Kail brings out the humor in “Sweeney Todd” that both John Doyle (2005 Broadway revival) and Tim Burton (2007 film version) eschewed. Ashford sees to that almost singlehandedly. She doesn’t miss a chance to twist a phrase or an eyebrow in her burlesque seduction of Sweeney. Elsewhere, Kail’s approach is a little too operatic, too respectful. There’s even a stateliness verging on lethargy between some of the musical numbers. “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir” and “The Contest” have always been problematic.

All this analysis of the singing might be a clue to what’s occasionally wrong with Thomas Kail’s direction when his actors aren’t thrilling us with their superb vocals. Kail brings out the humor in “Sweeney Todd” that both John Doyle (2005 Broadway revival) and Tim Burton (2007 film version) eschewed. Ashford sees to that almost singlehandedly. She doesn’t miss a chance to twist a phrase or an eyebrow in her burlesque seduction of Sweeney. Elsewhere, Kail’s approach is a little too operatic, too respectful. There’s even a stateliness verging on lethargy between some of the musical numbers. “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir” and “The Contest” have always been problematic.

All this analysis of the singing might be a clue to what’s occasionally wrong with Thomas Kail’s direction when his actors aren’t thrilling us with their superb vocals. Kail brings out the humor in “Sweeney Todd” that both John Doyle (2005 Broadway revival) and Tim Burton (2007 film version) eschewed. Ashford sees to that almost singlehandedly. She doesn’t miss a chance to twist a phrase or an eyebrow in her burlesque seduction of Sweeney. Elsewhere, Kail’s approach is a little too operatic, too respectful. There’s even a stateliness verging on lethargy between some of the musical numbers. “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir” and “The Contest” have always been problematic.

I don’t recall how Fosse ended his “Dancin’.” Cilento ends his with a real flourish. He gives each of his nearly two dozen dancers the full-star treatment, complete with his, her or their name emblazoned (lighting by David Grill) in tall letters on the upstage wall. Cilento, who appeared in the original company of “A Chorus Line,” presents the anti-“Chorus Line” with this extended curtain call. These quick solo turns feature some of the evening’s best choreography. Here and elsewhere in the show, Dylis Croman, Jovan Dansberry, Pedro Garza, Jacob Guzman, Mattie Love, Nando Morland and Ron Todorowski grab our attention to mesmerize. Now, that’s entertainment.

I don’t recall how Fosse ended his “Dancin’.” Cilento ends his with a real flourish. He gives each of his nearly two dozen dancers the full-star treatment, complete with his, her or their name emblazoned (lighting by David Grill) in tall letters on the upstage wall. Cilento, who appeared in the original company of “A Chorus Line,” presents the anti-“Chorus Line” with this extended curtain call. These quick solo turns feature some of the evening’s best choreography. Here and elsewhere in the show, Dylis Croman, Jovan Dansberry, Pedro Garza, Jacob Guzman, Mattie Love, Nando Morland and Ron Todorowski grab our attention to mesmerize. Now, that’s entertainment.

A couple of the villains in the piece might be overdrawn here, but that’s debatable. Otherwise, Arden’s direction of his cast is exemplary, and an especially poignant touch is the projection of historic photos that function to introduce their actor doppelgängers. Above all, the fluid and often surreal staging of the Frank murder trial is an extended moment of brilliance in the theater that no musical aficionado should miss.

Under Scott Elliott’s direction, some of the other actors (Patrick Foley, Daniel Oreskes, Bill Sage, Amy Stiller) and their supporting characters almost come off superfluous. (To be honest, that’s often my reaction when I see the original.) The exceptions are David Cale’s wonderfully flighty landowner and Nef, who gives Sasha a droll contralto delivery that starts out ridiculously inappropriate before ending up downright tragic.

Under Scott Elliott’s direction, some of the other actors (Patrick Foley, Daniel Oreskes, Bill Sage, Amy Stiller) and their supporting characters almost come off superfluous. (To be honest, that’s often my reaction when I see the original.) The exceptions are David Cale’s wonderfully flighty landowner and Nef, who gives Sasha a droll contralto delivery that starts out ridiculously inappropriate before ending up downright tragic.

“The Wanderers” lasts only 105 minutes without intermission, and yet effectively holds enough storylines for a half dozen lesser plays. We never meet Sophie’s parents, but as pieced together from what she and Esther tell us, they emerge as two of the strongest characters ever to have not graced the stage. Their life together sparkles with energy and could be a whole other play.

“Between Riverside and Crazy” is a play where everyone, including Pops, is a con artist. Guirgis takes his time to expose the duplicity of each of his characters, and the scenes between Pops and the voodoo Church Lady (Liza Colon-Zayas) and his former NYPD partner, Detective O’Connor (Elizabeth Canavan), and her fiancée, Lieutenant Caro (Michael Rispoli), show a major talent writing at full and breathtaking speed. These four gifted actors know precisely how to jockey with each. They do the playwright’s poker-game of words full justice.

With the exception of “Fly, Mariposa, Fly,” you will leave “Some Like It Hot” humming the tunes because you could have hummed them going in. At their very best, John Kander and Fred Ebb knew how to reinvent showbiz pastiche to deliver genuinely original anthems like “All That Jazz” from “Chicago” and the title songs from “Cabaret” and “New York, New York.” Shaiman and Wittman’s work is more journeyman-like; while the lyrics often delight, the music is merely peppy, repetitive and, yes, loud.

Hers is clearly a performance that goes beyond the written words in the script. McDonald’s performance also has that veracity that comes from basing her character on a living person, in this case, Kennedy herself. The actor replicates the playwright’s halting, carefully modulated delivery. It’s as if McDonald is rewriting every line a few times before she actually says it out loud. “Ohio State Murders” features four other actors, but as powerfully staged here by Leon, it is a one-person show starring McDonald.

Eric Ting’s direction is effective when the play is on track. When “The Far Country” goes awry, he leaves his audience lost in the San Francisco fog.