Steven Suskin

Menzies, standing uncertainly in the ambiguous middle, gives a masterful performance as Lucas. The actor seems somewhat older than he did back in 2019 at the Almeida; but then, most of us seem somewhat older after those upheavals of 2020-2022. There is an additional element of celebrity: Menzies has in the interim become internationally known, courtesy of his Emmy-winning turn as Prince Philip in two seasons of The Crown.

If it’s 2,000 beaming faces aglow with musical comedy pleasure you’re looking for, head over to City Center this week or next to catch Once Upon a Mattress. Several minutes and three songs in, a pair of bright young lovers launch into a gently upbeat ballad duet called “In a Little While,” and all’s right in the world—or at least for the two hours you’re at Encores’ latest.

But good intentions alone, alas, do not a compelling musical make. The intentions are good, the core performances are good (and in some cases better than that), and the audience is likely to sit there rooting for the success of the characters in their quest to attend a prom-like dance in Ohio. On the other side of the ledger, though, is a score that is little more than functional (with exceptions as hereinafter noted), and a book that devolves into flimsy musical comedy style. The central performers earn our admiration, and the benefit of any doubts we might have; but How to Dance in Ohio offers only moderate entertainment, and moderate entertainment is unlikely to prove strong enough to attract sufficient audiences to get through the long cold winter.

Mind Mangler provides a fair amount of entertainment; and if you bring the kids, so much the better as it provides them with adult (as opposed to juvenile) entertainment they can howl at and feel quite sophisticated. While this is not a kid’s show, the performance attended had a fair amount of the 6-to-19 set, who were not only altogether delighted but in some cases just about standing on their seats with joy. And you gotta love a show in which they bring out a ouija board and somehow call it a Luigi board.

All told, it’s a hit, to borrow a title phrase from one of Sondheim most artful “concerted” numbers; a palpable hit, to borrow a phrase the Master borrowed from the Bard. Forget about the troubled history of Sondheim and Hal Prince’s most ignominious miscue; here and now, Merrily is a five-star hit, and no doubt about it. The show plays like wildfire, ignited from that first blast of overture from that band. It’s a win-win, or perhaps a win-win-win-win. A win for Merrily, yes; a win for Radcliffe, Mendez, and Goff; and a win mostly for Maria Friedman, who created this production with significant success back in 2012 and—in three or four steps along the way—has continued to add layers of sheen so that it no longer plays like an excellent production of a troubled musical but an excellent show all around. It’s a win for Furth, too, who is often overlooked for his script to Merrily (and Company as well) but whose contributions the composer always insistently cited.

As playgoers might expect, Odom has all that silver-tongued preaching down cold. One of the chief delights of the production comes from the performance of Young as Lutiebelle. Those who saw her in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s likely realized that she is a star to be, while Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living demonstrated that she’s a fine and intelligent actor as well. Here, she weaves a thorough spell, eyes wide in wonderment at the new world outside “Miss Emmylou’s kitchen” while succumbing to waves of weak-kneed infatuation toward her savior, “Reb’n Purlie.” She has over two seasons given three distinctive performances, each of them excellent, in three very different plays in very different styles. Kara Young, remember that name.

The younger Mr. Shaw, who is now older than his father was when he died in 1978 at the age of 51, has stepped into his father’s deck shoes. He is joined by actors Colin Donnell (partner to Sutton Foster in both Anything Goes and Violet), who has the mannerisms of the late Scheider down pat, and Alex Brightman (of School of Rock and Beetlejuice), who limns a supremely sharp sketch of an impossibly but believably annoying Dreyfuss. The two American actors, by now quite familiar for their Broadway musical appearances, offer exceptionally diverting caricatures.

The new musical import from London is built around the spectacle of that flying DeLorean; or at least, I imagine the show would be just another mediocre effort without the spectacular flying machine. The prop car, built by a company called Twins FX, turbocharges the audience at least four times, and deserves the waves of applause it garners. Which leads us, inevitably, to items of lesser importance like book, music, lyrics, et al. Gale, who wrote the screenplay with Robert Zemeckis (director of the original film and one of numerous coproducers of the musical), has done a respectable job of adapting it to the stage. All the film highlights seem to be here, which is to the good. As for the score by Alan Silvestri (composer of the film) and Glen Ballard (composer/lyricist of that excessively bland Ghost musical that visited the Lunt in 2012), let’s just say that it gets by; this is one of those shows with the music so brutally amplified as to make the words often impossible to comprehend.

High among the joys of the evening is the work of the highly talented, ever-present, and perpetually propelled cast. The piece—like Evita—is devised around three principal roles, and there are three dynamic players on view. Jose Llana has been giving standout performances since he first appeared in 1996 as a teen-aged Lun Tha in the Donna Murphy King and I; among the numerous highlights of his career were Chip Tolentino, the candy-selling contestant in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and a replacement stint as the King in the 2015 Lincoln Center King and I. As convincing as his Marcos was ten years ago at the Public, Llana’s performance is now even more compelling. Conrad Ricamora—who followed Here Lies Love by playing Lun Tha in that Lincoln Center King and I—also brings added resonance to his performance as political contender Ninoy Aquino.

That said, there is plenty of first-rate musical making in New York, New York. Stroman gives us some of the most exciting choreography on Broadway just now; there is too much of it, though, and a good deal distracts from (or covers for the faults of) what used to be called plot. The design elements are strong, led by Boritt’s shifting views of New York. Donna Zakowska’s costumes are mostly excellent, although the couture—like the show—seems to shift from postwar to prewar. Some delicious work from Zakowska, along with hair and wig designer Sabana Majeed and whoever did the hats, is mixed in with the more generic rest. Lighting designer Ken Billington, who goes back to Chicago and the original Sweeney Todd, deserves a star of his own for his above-referenced work in the “World Goes ’Round” number.

Is Peter Pan Goes Wrong quite as blisteringly sidesplitting as The Play That Goes Wrong? Well, no; it’s difficult or perhaps impossible to offer the surprises of that initial foray into the Mischief formula. But the frantic, manic, desperate humor is the same; you might start the affair sitting in your seat thinking “go ahead, just try to entertain me” as you watch pseudo-stagehands scurrying to apply last-minute fixes to the ramshackle scenery. But as with the earlier show, they quickly win you over. And do, for gosh sake, bring the kids.

Ben Platt remains the raison d’être of the production; if the Broadway transfer was predicated on the hunch that the former Evan Hansen would prove a ticket-selling draw, the sales thus far seem to bear this out. Platt — in adult shoes, as it were — proves himself an adept musical theater (and dramatic) actor. Relative newcomer Micaela Diamond was the welcome surprise at City Center; the 23-year-old handily carried the difficult and somewhat treacherous role of Lucile Frank, the passive wife who — when hope is lost in the second act — grabs the narrative and, thanks to composer Brown, the stage. If Diamond was an instant success last November, the intervening months have given her time to add assurance to talent and bring out heretofore hidden facets of the role of Lucile. She is very good indeed. Brown, along with his co-orchestrator, the late Don Sebesky, well understand the massive power of two people singing out at the top of their lungs over crashing cymbals. Platt and Diamond do precisely this, in “This Is Not Over Yet,” and the power crackles throughout the house.

When the time finally arrives for Nora to slam that door with no door in sight, Lloyd and Gilmour have a stunningly abrupt solution which will likely leave you agape. Nothing Mr. Ibsen would have or could have imagined; but for Herzog’s adaptation, and for the 2023 audience at the Hudson off Times Square, it is a jolt that indeed honors—and contemporizes—the playwright’s door slam heard round the world.

I ended my review of Friedman’s 2012 version by calling it “as fine a rendition of Merrily as you’ve likely seen.” What we have now is even finer. I needn’t and won’t suggest you storm the NYTW box office, as this engagement seems to have sold out within hours of going on sale. But unless I miss my guess, word of a Broadway transfer will wend our way before not much more than a day goes by, quicker’n you can say “it only gets better and stronger and deeper and nearer and simpler and freer and richer and clearer.”

A spry and seemingly healthy 44-year old, Birbiglia confesses to a history of serious health issues. Thus we have a rumination on severe obstacles which ought not be funny but, in the author's telling, are positively side-splitting. Along the way he meanders off into myriad tangents-wrestling, chlorine, chicken parmigiana-which provoke torrents of laughter while always circling back to the matter at hand. All the while he reveals himself to be a first-class stage clown with mastery of both verbal and physical arts.

It is not until late in the three-hour ten-minute evening that this Salesman finally starts to crackle the way the entire performance did in London. Specifically, in the office scene in which Willy-on the final afternoon of his life-encounters neighbor Charley (Delaney Williams) and his lawyer-son Bernard (Stephen Stocking). But that's an especially long time to wait through otherwise intermittent high spots.

Countering these assets is the staging. Nuance and subtlety have been discarded in favor of a brash, bold, hit-'em-on-the-head presentation. 1776 was written as a protest musical mixing a strong anti-Vietnam message with a bitter view of then-President Nixon and his administration, the successful implementation of which contributed to the musical's resounding success. 'Momma Look Sharp,' an outspoken folk-tinged pacifist dirge which stands out as a quiet change-of-pace moment in this relatively explosive musical, is here handed over to a stage full of black-cloaked, keening mothers. Effective? Kind of- but more effective than the authors' image of a lonely corpse lying forgotten in the tall grass in the meadow by the red maple tree?

The performers are uniformly excellent. Uranowitz stands out from beginning (as mathematician Ludwig) to end (as his equally mathematical great-nephew Nathan). Krumholtz is equally adept as the conflicted family breadwinner, while Castelow impresses as the out-of-place trophy wife who models for Klimt and nearly disrupts the household. Uranowitz, Augen, and Froushan do stunning work in the play's shattering final scene. (Augen and Froushan, along with Castelow and Neil, played these roles in London.) That said, the stage is filled with too many worthy performances to individually cite.

Frequent Nottage collaborator Kate Whoriskey (director of Ruined and Sweat) has staged a fine production, with a properly 'liminal' set (as specifically called for by the playwright) from set designer Takeshi Kata and properly mystical touches from lighting designer Christopher Akerlind. Jennifer Moeller, meanwhile, gives Aduba an array of startling costumes that might well chasten Diana over at the Longacre. That desperately doomed princess has more actual costume changes than Clyde, yes; but Diana is 40 endless minutes longer than Clyde's, and several of Moeller's greasy spoon wardrobe choices are strikingly more eyegrabbing.

Clarke, a Londoner making her Broadway debut, is not exactly an unknown quantity, given her three Olivier Awards. (These include one for her 2018 performance in this role and another for her Linda Loman opposite Wendell Pierce in the Young Vic's staggering 2019 Death of a Salesman, which fully deserves to be seen on the New York stage). Here, Clarke provides a compelling reason to see Michael Longhurst's production of the Tesori-Kushner musical, which has been imported with an otherwise local cast.

Theatrical astonishment is back on the Broadway boards. The Lehman Trilogy, which has conquered and enraptured audiences since it first appeared, has finally arrived at the Nederlander after a pandemic pause. New Yorkers who missed the production's instantly sold-out limited engagement at the Park Avenue Armory in 2019 have 12 weeks before it moves on to brief stops in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Miss it at your peril.

'It has mass appeal, immediacy, enthusiasm, and an incredibly high sense of style; and it revels in what used to be called 'girl power' but can now more properly be described as simply, or not-so-simply, power. An audience show for a wide audience, Six is a rafter-raising entertainment that'll get you throwing your proverbial bonnet in the air (but please keep that mask on, for now). Even if, yes, a third of the crowned characters portrayed did indeed-in the plot, and in actual history (and in actual herstory)-lose their heads.'

Grand Horizons is a new play, but not new in the Broadway sense. This sort of thing abounded in the third quarter of the last century. Some were hits, often major; does anyone remember Never Too Late? (Middle-aged mom gets pregnant to the shock of her husband, pregnant daughter, and son-in-law, for 1,007 performances.) Watching the first act of Grand Horizons, I was swept back to a different old play, a negligible 1972 offering called 6 Rms Riv Vu. This was mostly because that play demonstrated the comic touch of the then-young Alexander, who has spent a good deal of her career playing more serious fare. Her deft performance in Grand Horizons is decidedly reminiscent of that earlier play, which despite her ministrations and those of the equally young Jerry Orbach proved to be a flimsy comedy trying too hard to compete with ol' Doc Simon, a popular gagman of the era.

Transforming My Name Is Lucy Barton from page to stage in such engrossing manner is quite a feat on the part of the actor, as well as Strout, Munro, and Eyre. Linney gives an astounding performance, circling the truth (whatever that might be) with a supreme ambivalence. The overall effect, on that almost bare platform set within the stage of the Friedman, being that she-the actress and the character-is thoroughly, and nicely, compelling.

At base, we have Harry Connick Jr. singing fourteen or so songs by Cole Porter. Given Connick's way with a tune, his nimble pianistics, and his expert arranging skills, the show-a tour promoting his newest album, True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter-more or less describes itself. Yes, Connick will be swinging along to a high-octane band, concentrating on the music and lyrics of the unlikely songsmith from Peru, Indiana. Rather than simply standing up there and singing the songs, though, Connick has gone out of his way to provide not only a Porter concert but a bells-and-whistles show. And it's a dandy one.