Sandy MacDonald — Theater Critic

Two outstanding actor/singers make this Picnic a must-see, despite its unwieldy bulk. Gillian Jackson Han plays Miranda, a free-spirited, nature-loving senior girl who befriends the outcast Sara (Sarah Walsh), a damaged, asocial charity case. Miranda tends to the misfit as she would an ailing plant.

That message comes through clearly here, despite the production team’s penchant for bells and whistles. If all you’re seeking is a spectacle, you will get one. For some real resonance and depth, though, you may just have to wait a while—or reread the book.

That message comes through clearly here, despite the production team’s penchant for bells and whistles. If all you’re seeking is a spectacle, you will get one. For some real resonance and depth, though, you may just have to wait a while—or reread the book.

Director Steve H. Broadmax III keeps the action bubbling, the parallel story lines clear and swift. Set designer Riccardo Hernández even manages to endow the boxy Martinson stage with a bit of mystery and depth. Partway through, a pentimento emerges from a splotchy, black-and-white background wash of … what? Foliage? Dirt? Blood? The story of Sally and Tom will haunt you – as it should.

Power-contralto Eden Espinosa strives mightily to keep Lempicka – an overstuffed, formulaic musical – in forward motion, to mixed effect. Despite the evident willingness of co-creators Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould to play fast and loose with history, the show plugs along like a Bugatti (an emblematic subject of the Polish-born painter) in need of a lube job.

Playwright Liza Birkenmeier doesn’t make it immediately easy to grasp the gist of her quirky play, Grief Hotel. It starts with Aunt Bobbi – Susan Blommaert, queen of the deadpan delivery – planted in her armchair stage left. Updating the layout after the show’s fleeting premiere at the cramped Wild Project last summer, the design collective dots has sliced the Public’s smallest stage into a sharp, shallow wedge, lending the fast-paced, one-act play – deftly directed by Tara Ahmadinejad – a splayed, in-your-face feel.

Both actors are phenomenal. The Gars start out kidlike, doing their favorite bits up in his/their bedroom (nice, spare set design by Charlie Corcoran). Simultaneous psyched and scared to be heading off, the pair co-mimic, among other bits, John Wayne astride a battered old suitcase and Elvis rendering Gar’s gloss on the Al Jolson song that gives the play its title.

Both actors are phenomenal. The Gars start out kidlike, doing their favorite bits up in his/their bedroom (nice, spare set design by Charlie Corcoran). Simultaneous psyched and scared to be heading off, the pair co-mimic, among other bits, John Wayne astride a battered old suitcase and Elvis rendering Gar’s gloss on the Al Jolson song that gives the play its title.

Circus sagas so easily lend themselves to bathos: “Ridi, pagliaccio” and all that. Director Jessica Stone’s stage rendition of Water for Elephants – adapted by book writer Rick Elice from the best-selling novel (2006) and film (2011) – captures all the drama, but it’s clean-cut and concise, propulsive with passion and action. Unlike some other literary adaptations in the works or already on the boards, this production stands on its own merits as theatre. You could walk in with no prior knowledge, no expectations, and be transported.

Cecily Strong brings star power to this handsome production (scenic designer Santo Loquasto has gone all out, filling the Manhattan Theatre Club’s revolving stage with no fewer than four highly detailed, distinctive setlets). Strong seems oddly miscast, though, as Fran, a 37-year-old office drone whom the 50-ish laundromat manager/owner Owen (David Zayas) immediately pegs as “gloomy.”

She’s moving fast, typically switching roles with a sidestep, jump, or spin (movement direction by Didi Hopkins). The audience comes bearing great expectations, of course: We think we have the story down cold and can anticipate the high points. At best, this condensed rendering (adapted by Eddie’s brother, Mark Izzard) allows us to ponder subtext and quirks that can go unnoticed amid a full staging.

Bonds crafts a denouement as genuine and original as it is moving. Her focus – within an intentionally smudged time frame – is boundaries, those breached and those willingly erased. She brings a fresh perspective to often overworked dramatic themes (sexual assault, domestic abuse) and adroitly mixes in contemporary concerns. Relationships now come pre-set with clearer rules: Participants are required to seek permission and keep asking, to a sometimes silly but reassuring degree.

Does the show aim to go bigger – to Broadway, perhaps? It has the basic makings, but the script needs a livelier, clearer through line. It wouldn’t hurt to apply a stronger focus to the political turmoil of the times (both times, ‘50s and ‘90s), a topic only glancingly touched on here. Or maybe just accord the phenomenal cover band a series of concerts? History – and the audience – might be better served.

Meanwhile, the young performers who make up the seven-member core – all of whom self-identify as autistic – do their best to make us, the audience, comfortable. In a prefatory group speech, one performer notes the availability of “cool-down spaces.” All but the most easily triggered playgoer will want to hang in, though, to hear the melodies – buoyant to poignant – that composer Jacob Yandura has set to the text, portions of which have been lifted verbatim from the film.

Age – a hiatus of 14 years, some of them plague-ridden – has not withered Spamalot’s inspired looniness. If you saw the Broadway production the first time around (2005-2009), of course you’re going to go back. Who would pass up a chance to relive Eric Idle’s hilariously dark spoof of the Middle Ages, especially as recast with a whole new set of comedic aces? All of the replacements, smartly marshaled by director/choreographer Josh Rhodes for last spring’s Kennedy Center revival, seem to be having the time of their lives.

You would think that a recording superstar on the level of Barry Manilow (85 million records sold) might enjoy a bit of a step up when attempting to get a show mounted on Broadway. You’d be wrong: From its conception some 30 years ago, Harmony hit every conceivable bump in the road, starting with a few fizzling out-of-town tryouts and a Covid delay before National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene succeeded in introducing it – to considerable acclaim – at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in the spring of 2022. Certain elements remain: Beowulf Boritt’s simple but snazzy black-patent-leather-like box of a set and Warren Carlyle’s snappy direction and choreography continue to contribute plenty of sizzle. If a few clunker lines from longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman’s book and lyrics have managed to survive the transfer, the damage is minimal – perhaps because the storylines are so broadly limned to begin with.

Still, the story line remains more or less on track so far. It’s in bumping a hitherto peripheral character – the nondescript, nonsinging, nondancing club manager – to the fore that the rewriters simultaneously triumph and overstep. As the updated counterpart, de facto den mother Lucille Wallace, Loretta Devine (who achieved stardom with Dreamgirls) is assigned a number of songs that challenge her current vocal capabiity. Text-wise, she’s fantastic, “Lu” having been assigned all the wittier, more insightful lines. As for her side-plot romance with Vera’s fixer, Tony? Conveying not the slightest trace of thuggish menace (would that be un-PC?), Jeb Brown plays the gangster like a benign Park Avenue toff who thinks that he’s the main story.

Who couldn’t use a good laugh right about now? How about 90 minutes’ worth, nonstop? As the threat of viral infection wafts about the city once again like some Victorian miasma, we’re due for some comic relief. You’ll find it, amid some stage-fog spritzes, in Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, playing at New World Stages.

Who couldn’t use a good laugh right about now? How about 90 minutes’ worth, nonstop? As the threat of viral infection wafts about the city once again like some Victorian miasma, we’re due for some comic relief. You’ll find it, amid some stage-fog spritzes, in Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, playing at New World Stages.

Subsequent songs – nonspecifically credited to a quartet of composers including Suffs’ Shaina Taub – show off Bloom’s genuine gifts as a singer. “Lullaby for a Newborn,” with its panic-stricken extrapolations – her daughter came into a an already topsy-turvy world with complications – is a heart-wrencher. Hull, as the outcast Death, gets to deliver the parody/critique “I Feel Just Like Dear Evan Hansen.” The pinnacle, though, is Bloom’s scatological takedown of a soppy kitsch mythos known as “the rainbow bridge.”

Subsequent songs – nonspecifically credited to a quartet of composers including Suffs’ Shaina Taub – show off Bloom’s genuine gifts as a singer. “Lullaby for a Newborn,” with its panic-stricken extrapolations – her daughter came into a an already topsy-turvy world with complications – is a heart-wrencher. Hull, as the outcast Death, gets to deliver the parody/critique “I Feel Just Like Dear Evan Hansen.” The pinnacle, though, is Bloom’s scatological takedown of a soppy kitsch mythos known as “the rainbow bridge.”

Friedan’s magnum opus is not the easiest gateway tract, but no matter: it’s only cited as a shorthand signifier. What Friedan in the supposed flesh is doing in this jukebox musical is the real puzzler. Let’s hope that her estate is being duly recompensed for the use of her personage, because her message has been perverted here into mere tokenism. If you really want to honor Friedan’s legacy, consider sitting this one out and contributing instead to one of the causes she fiercely espoused, such as the ever-elusive Equal Rights Amendment promising bodily autonomy – a basic that Spears herself no doubt holds dear.

Director Eric Ting deftly guides a superb cast, all of whom make the most of their carefully calibrated roles. This reunion — depth-charged like most — unfolds in its own style (blessedly free of cliché) and at its own pace. One guarantee: Those 130 minutes will race by.

With her signature languid diction (which does not translate easily to the Midwest), Hecht’s delivery can sometimes wear, but watch her closely. Her micro-reactions are mercurial and deep. Alice appears to have a native intelligence that Diana lacks. Meanwhile, Linney keeps Diana’s mean-girl vibe in check just enough so that she’s not overtly off-putting. Diana will charm you, as she does Alice. It’s easy to see how an unsophisticated admirer might sign on as an acolyte. With these antipodes, Auburn has seemingly come up with a way to represent the puzzling bifurcation in women’s objectives over the past half-century: glamour at all costs vs. industry, endurance, and actual power and progress. In the case of these unlikely friends, do we see a comeuppance coming? If so, it’s subtle, a mere postscript. While it might be gratifying to observe a relentless poseuse cut down to size, Auburn blunts the blow, having already strewn the path with ambiguous omens. Diana’s efforts to maintain a façade are bound to come at a cost. The production itself is flawless: A seemingly plain box of a set by John Lee Beatty transforms, via the lighting magic of Japhy Weideman, into a twilight patio, a museum cafe, and more, while Jill BC Du Boff’s sound design lends the illusion of intimacy. Director Daniel Sullivan deftly delineates every interaction – subdued to explosive.

With her signature languid diction (which does not translate easily to the Midwest), Hecht’s delivery can sometimes wear, but watch her closely. Her micro-reactions are mercurial and deep. Alice appears to have a native intelligence that Diana lacks. Meanwhile, Linney keeps Diana’s mean-girl vibe in check just enough so that she’s not overtly off-putting. Diana will charm you, as she does Alice. It’s easy to see how an unsophisticated admirer might sign on as an acolyte. With these antipodes, Auburn has seemingly come up with a way to represent the puzzling bifurcation in women’s objectives over the past half-century: glamour at all costs vs. industry, endurance, and actual power and progress. In the case of these unlikely friends, do we see a comeuppance coming? If so, it’s subtle, a mere postscript. While it might be gratifying to observe a relentless poseuse cut down to size, Auburn blunts the blow, having already strewn the path with ambiguous omens. Diana’s efforts to maintain a façade are bound to come at a cost. The production itself is flawless: A seemingly plain box of a set by John Lee Beatty transforms, via the lighting magic of Japhy Weideman, into a twilight patio, a museum cafe, and more, while Jill BC Du Boff’s sound design lends the illusion of intimacy. Director Daniel Sullivan deftly delineates every interaction – subdued to explosive.