Robert Hofler

Cordero is good and sleazy enough so that we never miss the original too much. He lacks Palminteri's heavy elegance, but his is an understated performance that gives the musical a solid foundation. Also very fine is the delectable Ariana Debose, who plays the love interest, and a gifted child actor named Hudson Loverro. The huge obstacle to overcome in putting 'A Bronx Tale' on stage is finding the right kid for the early scenes. Problem solved: Loverro brings real street edge to the young Calogero, who prefers being feared, like Sonny, to being beloved, like his financially struggling father (Richard H. Blake).

The triple threat is rare in the theater, and for good reason. An adventurous Dave Malloy gives us the quadruple threat with his musical 'Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,' which opened Monday at the Imperial Theatre after a long run Off Broadway.

In Liev Schreiber's eccentric performance, this audio disconnect provides one of the few pleasures in what is otherwise a lethargic production, one that originated at London's Donmar Warehouse under the direction of Josie Rourke. Schreiber sounds as if Laurence Oliver's tenor is fighting Richard Burton's baritone, with all of this disharmony emitting from the esteemed American actor's great granite face.

t's very unlikely that William Finn will ever get a better production of his groundbreaking musical 'Falsettos' than the revival that opened Monday at the Walter Kerr Theatre. Top among its assets are leading men Christian Borle and Andrew Rannells, who play the not-always-well-matched lovers Marvin and Whizzer.

Director Jack O'Brien begins and ends each act with a tableau. Until Lane arrives, the action in between those stylish freezes rarely unthaws. The direction is stately when it needs to be raucous. Likewise, Douglas W. Schmidt's set is grand, not grungy enough to be a press room in a prison. Occasionally, a few supporting players break through. Robert Morse in the cameo of a boozed-up messenger emerges as lower than the worn linoleum. Sherie Rene Scott goes period with an uncanny Joan Crawford impersonation, right out of 'Rain.' Jefferson Mays, once again, recycles Franklin Pangborn, playing a persnickety poem-writing (wink, wink) reporter. Oddly enough, Mays received a big ovation at his entrance. Were people applauding his recent 'Oslo' triumph, or did they think Lane was reprising his performance from 'The Nance'? From a few rows away, the two men look a lot alike.

The theater's most famous cherry orchard makes a return appearance in the Roundabout's new revival, which opened Sunday at the American Airlines Theatre. Those soon-to-be-chopped-down fruit trees are represented by hanging mobile-like sculptures, designed by Scott Pask, and they kept reminding me of the Serban production. In the end, they're the least of what's wrong in Simon Godwin's staging of Stephen Karam's new adaptation.

Their characters share a diffuse, off-center comic patter that promises to be much raunchier and offensive that it ever delivers. Jokes fly about the Holocaust, 9/11, O.J. Simpson's Bronco chase, and other crimes: 'Gil's hair is like the JonBenet Ramsey case. The more you look into it, the more questions you have.' Unfortunately, there's also talk about Gil having to leave the stage to go to the bathroom because his not-yet-ejected stool has gotten 'pointy.' (Sorry for that full disclosure, but it doesn't play any better in the Lyceum.)

Holiday Inn' is the kind of musical that makes you wish there were fewer holidays in the year. By the time the show's big Fourth of July number rolls around, theatergoers will be hoping they skip Labor Day and Thanksgiving to wrap it up quickly with a Santa Claus finale. Slower than that spiritless denouement is the entire first act, which takes 50 minutes to deliver the show's farm-saving concept that everyone knew before walking into Studio 54, where this 'new Irving Berlin musical' opened Thursday under the auspices of the Roundabout.

But McBurney's conversations with his daughter beautifully illustrate the fractured, if not fractious, quality of time and place. 'The Encounter' also easily trumps the book's ability to convey the concept of beaming. McIntyre doesn't speak the Mayorunan language, but learns to hear what the chief wants him to know.

Wolfe is both director and book writer, and what a story he delivers! He turns every '42nd Street' cliché on its head to celebrate these artists' tremendous achievement against impossible odds in racist America...There's a lot of history to tell here, and Wolfe doesn't skimp...Four -- count 'em, four -- leading men in one musical! It's a very didactic approach, but whenever their words threaten to turn into a Wikipedia entry, Wolfe the writer hands the reins to his better half: Wolfe the director, with an assist from Savion Glover the choreographer. Both have no equal on Broadway this season. In a year of pandering, corn-pone musicals, 'Shuffle Along' exudes elegance and intelligence at every turn. While it's big in its ambitions, theatrical thrills, and the emotions it stirs, Wolfe achieves much in very small ways.

Gabriel Byrne plays Tyrone with reserved, desiccated style...In a Broadway season of big (often too big) performances, Byrne's portrayal stands out for its understatement, and something else, too. Amid all the stinginess, he brings a palpable love to his relationship with Mary (Jessica Lange)...Tom Pye's set design creates a very spacious summer residence for the Tyrones. Lange's performance works against that openness to create Mary's own desperate claustrophobia. It's a big performance, but there's nothing mechanical about it, especially the love that she projects back to Byrne. The great beauty of O'Neill's play is its repetition. He captures the way families can be civil one moment and at one another's throats the next. Under Jonathan Kent's direction, Byrne and Lange handle those sharp changes in tone adeptly to create a mesmerizing dance of death.

If immortality is so awful here on earth, why do people pray for it before they die? Neither the musical nor its source material...asks that question. The show's first act...finds it necessary to ask all sorts of other less interesting questions...Shear and Federle answer most (but not all) of the above questions about the Tuck family, but it takes them forever. More than anything else in 'Tuck Everlasting,' their lax narrative gives us a real glimpse of just how long forever can be. The songs by Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen also give a nod to eternity. No tune seems to have a beginning, a middle and an end...'Tuck Everlasting'...is more whimsical than it is broad slapstick, and Nicholaw is better with the latter. As a result, the performances in 'Tuck' come off as merely Broadway generic.

Becky Mode's 'Fully Committed' is that one-person play for theatergoers who hate one-person plays. Which is most theatergoers...Fans of this restaurant-reservationist comedy will not be disappointed, and fans of 'Modern Family' will be delighted to see Jesse Tyler Ferguson live on stage playing not one character but a few dozen. What lifts 'Fully Committed' from the doldrums of having to watch one actor on stage playing one character for 90 minutes are all the people who call Sam to make a reservation at an absurdly exclusive restaurant...It's only food, of course. But in the end, it's so much more. It's ego. It's prestige. It's power.

...something odd happens to this pie-crust thin story when Jenna, the resolute heroine, becomes Jenny, the singing doormat. Diane Paulus's direction and Jessie Nelson's book never let us forget that Jenna is victim, first and foremost. And so was her loving mother, who appears as a ghost, baking pies when she isn't being beaten up by her own thug of a husband....The result of all this marital and on-the-job abuse is that the men's behavior, past and present, overwhelms the show. The first act is well on its way to breaking out the razor blades when a very supporting character, played by Christopher Fitzgerald, lifts the show and proceeds to steal it....Fitzgerald is one of those great Broadway character actors who also has the acting chops and charisma to carry a show, but rarely gets the opportunity. (He dazzled in the lead role in the Ahmanson Theater's production of 'Minsky's,' which sadly never made it to Broadway.)

Sheik's music gives Bateman a soul. It's the nature of musical theater...Walker emerges as far more tortured than Bale, who becomes a touch more manic...Musicals need more narrative drive than movies, and Walker (with help from Aguirre-Sacasa) supplies it...Es Devlin's set design also provides a marvelous journey...Depending on how you look at 'American Psycho,' it's either horrifying or a hoot...Goold and his book writer sometimes scrape the bottom.

As usual, Langella gives a big, showy performance. That approach has sometimes been a distraction in the past. Not with 'The Father,' which is really one long mad scene. Langella's larger-than-life performance becomes the character's way of trying to hang on to life...Zeller has underwritten the supporting characters, and director John Hughes is wise to keep those performances very understated. Especially fine are Kathleen McNenny as the woman and Charles Borland as the man. There's something menacing in how matter of fact they are when interacting with the totally bewildered Andre...

...van Hove knows how to put on a good old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone spectacle, and he makes us believe it. More controversial is his decision to update the play's setting to what appears to be a private girls' school in the not-so-distant past...Gone is almost any trace of puritanical repression as he brings to the fore the lust of adolescent girls, led by Saoirse Ronan's headstrong and determined Abigail Williams. She's naked in her attraction to John Proctor, and the astonishing performance by Ben Whishaw in that role makes her desire entirely understandable. Whishaw delivers a very feral John Proctor, with something of the little-D devil in him...But at the heart of van Hove's direction is what the play is all about: how the perverse convergence of politics, greed, religion, and, yes, sex creates mass hysteria.

The 'Bright Star' bluegrass score features more twangs per dipthong than a whole evening of 'Tobacco Road'...Walter Bobbie directs and Josh Rhodes choreographs 'Bright Star' in a way that brings to mind Agnes de Mille as rendered by Grant Wood. Time will tell if this musical makes the walls of Joe Allen restaurant's gallery of flops. On the walls of my mind, 'Bright Star' has already taken its place between last season's 'Doctor Zhivago' and 1979's 'Got Tu Go Disco.'

Yes, much of the show is as sugary and sweet as Amalia's late-in-the-show dessert, but evident also are the pain and heartbreak of infidelity, unemployment, being jerked around by a loved one and getting fired from your job. David Rockwell's magnificent and ever-changing set design takes its cue from the book's pivotal object, a musical cigarette box being sold at a Budapest parfumerie in 1934...Levi and Benanti connect through their characters' mutual underlying loneliness. They're as charming as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, those 'You've Got Mail' stars, and they can also sing. Equally important, they never indulge in the usual musical-comedy tricks that attract Tony attention. Ellis wisely hands all that kind of Broadway shtick to the show's ill-matched secondary couple, played by the warring Jane Krakowski and Gavin Creel.

The marvel of Daniels' performance then and now is that his Ray could just be a big liar...He keeps us guessing...Williams means to give a big, bravura performance that starts at a white-hot pitch and descends into near madness...Her performance as Una is mannered to the point of distraction. It's as if the sexual abuse her character suffered 15 years ago has caused not only a speech impediment but uncontrollable physical spasms that now affect her walk, gestures, and facial expressions. As a film actress, Williams can be subtle and nuanced. On stage, she's the opposite: showy and contrived. The result is an imbalance in performances that seriously undermines the drama between an unrepentant offender and his lost victim.

A boat capsizes on Broadway and Irwin Allen turns over in his Hollywood grave. 'Disaster' is too dynamic a word to describe the new jukebox musical 'Disaster!'...Better words would be 'lukewarm mess'...Smaller, not to mention shorter, would help in every way...The long first act gets bogged down in telling us the 'somehow' of that nonsense, rather than getting right to the boat capsizing...Rudetsky and Plotnick, who also directs, are wise to give us only snippets of 1970s hits like 'Hot Stuff' and 'I Will Survive.' In a send-up of the jukebox genre, they jam these songs into the narrative, occasionally to comic effect for about two stanzas...Occasionally, a performer breaks through the ice of mediocrity to expose real comic chops. Jennifer Simard's droll nun is a delight...Also fun is watching Roger Bart's sleazy casino owner assiduously avoid a blind woman's calls for help.

In between Erie's many monologues, Grandage interjects speechless longueurs in which the actor either sits or stands around with nothing to do as shades of green sweep over him like waves of smog...On stage, Whitaker's voice is much higher pitched than in the movies...Whitaker uses that contrast in sound and appearance to superb effect, giving a whimsical edge to the character...Whitaker delivers a most endearing Erie, right down to the nervous giggle he adds to punctuate the character's otherwise bottomless despair. It's a sign he's still living. That kind of vital sign is completely missing in Wood's equally disturbing night clerk.

The play is filled with attempts at wit, like the one Mom delivers about her son being a 'string terrorist.' Or statements that 'the potato chip is nature's most perfect food,' which Lavin delivers as if she's quoting Oscar Wilde. The actress is a real trouper. 'Affair' is nearly a drama-less drama. Nearly every conflict presented is resolved by someone on stage telling us how it is resolved...Likewise, character traits are thrown out and dismissed.

For anyone who's seen 'Noises Off' before, there's much to smile at in director Jeremy Herrin's new revival. Truly inspired is David Furr's performance as Garry Lejeune, the lead actor in 'Nothing On.' Each character in 'Noises Off' has a quirk: nerves, incompetence, alcoholism, forgetfulness. Lejeune's thing is that he stutters. Furr wisely drops the stammering and instead turns Lejeune's inability to say certain words into a chronic inarticulateness, which is much funnier than a speech impediment...A greater problem for this production is Campbell Scott, who has neither the style nor the size to play the director of 'Nothing On,' who not only screws a few people in the company but also needs to represent our reaction to the general pandemonium on stage. Campbell has neither the style nor the size to carry 'Noises Off.'

A sleek, vastly improved and altogether wonderful revival of 'The Color Purple' opened Thursday at Broadway's Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre...under John Doyle's new, inspired direction the musical emerges as one of the most adult shows ever written...Four women is a lot for a musical, and in that original production the focus on Celie...sometimes got lost. The new 'Color Purple' never loses sight of its Celie, and Doyle keeps the show revolving around the stunning performance of Cynthia Erivo in the role. She isn't better than LaChanze, Erivo is just different -- very grounded, less impish and adorable. Her more naturalistic approach roots the show, and that's needed because Doyle's minimalism here is very fanciful...Erivo dominates, as she must. But it's a real contest between her and Danielle Brooks' big-voiced, full-bodied Sofie...Jennifer Hudson, in her Broadway debut, brings star presence to the role of Celie's fickle lover, Shug Avery...Here is another big, rich voice, and it is entirely apt that Hudson should be showy with her overuse of melisma.