Steven Suskin

Theatergoers fortunate enough to have seen the original cast in the original productions of such two-part dramas as Nicholas Nickleby and Angels in America will likely tell you that those experiences remain unforgettable. The Inheritance hereby joins that list. Pure theatrical magnificence.

All in all, it's a magical evening from Rapp, Cromer, and the altogether mesmerizing Parker and Hochman. Theatergoers who are not averse to listening and thinking should head over to 54th Street to hear The Sound Inside.

Tracy Letts, well known in these parts for his Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County and as a Tony Award-winning actor (in plays including the 2012 revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), is back at his keyboard, and the results are superb. While his past oeuvre has not been noted for laughs-this is the man who wrote Killer Joe and Bug, after all-time and tide have caught up with the playwright, who battles his own fifty-year mark with wild comic lances thrust at life's annoyances, only to have these darts more or less boomerang. The results are knowing, prickly, and altogether hilarious.

Uncomfortable theater, yes; it's impossible for a play called Slave Play, in this day and age, to be-well-comfortable. But Harris, already acclaimed as an important new voice in the American drama, is on to something here. Modernish audiences are likely to quickly embrace this important new play. Others might well find it uncomfortable, but attention should and need be paid.

Is Freestyle Love Supreme traditional Broadway fare? No, certainly. Would this production be ensconced at the fabled Booth on Shubert Alley without the Messrs. Miranda and Kail serving as co-creators and co-producers? Assuredly not. But based on a back-of-the-ticket-envelope tally, I calculate that Freestyle Love Supreme easily merits inclusion on my list of the six most entertaining shows currently on Broadway. So those of you interested in keen and knowing fast-paced topical humor fueled by high intellect and political insight might want to try to get over to the Booth.

The Height of the Storm is a puzzle built on cobwebs, with a couple of puzzle-pieces purposely missing (or perhaps several pieces too many). This allows Zeller's play, like The Father, to succeed on its own terms, sending you out into the night (after eighty-odd minutes with no intermission) talking, thinking, considering and-yes-puzzling over the affair. But in any case, fully and totally engaged.

What you get is mental magic, sleight after sleight after sleight. Because Brown is a master showman, he doesn't just astound you. He starts off small, leaving you to turn in your seat to your companion to whisper, 'How'd he do that?' By midway through the show (a neat two hours, plus an intermission that allows patrons to clamber across the stage), you are cordially nudging your random neighbor to ask, 'How'd he do that?' By evening's end, you're practically shouting out the question on the sidewalk.

Harold Pinter's Betrayal has returned to Broadway less than six years after the play's last starry, smashingly successful visit. Don't let that dissuade you: The new production at the Jacobs is equally excellent, equally exciting, and likely to be a premium-ticket sellout for the duration of its 17-week engagement. This thanks to incisive performances from Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Cox, and Zawe Ashton, plus an intriguing and often surprising production from director Jamie Lloyd.

Terrence McNally's 1987 two-character play observes a pair of mismatched middle-aged misfits who are stunned to discover-in the light (clair) of the Manhattan moon (lune)-that the future they've both long given up on might just be found in the other's imperfect arms. Mismatched characters, yes; played here by the mismatched but equally brilliant Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune positively soars.

The roaring lion against the timid lamb. The giant Goliath against defenseless David. The Fleet Street hierarchy against an Aussie sheep farmer. Everybody loves the underdog. James Graham, in his play Ink, spins a yarn for our times about a true underdog. A foul, grasping, immoral, and altogether despicable underdog. Against all odds, Graham gets us to vehemently root for this antihero-whose name is, yes, Rupert Murdoch-and vicariously share, from the edge of our seats, in his improbable early victory.

Is this a potential addition to the list of classic Broadway musicals? No; but Tootsie is fast and funny. Very funny, with a rapid stream of jokes and gags and some of the most mirthful choreography since those Mormon boys went to Uganda. Plus, it's got no fewer than five skillful comedy performances. After months in the mirthless Broadway musical desert, let's be appreciative of the evening's accomplishments.

After two years, the revival has finally opened at the same theater but with a different star and different producers; the director behind the project, Michael Mayer (of Spring Awakening), remains. What is revealed is a facile but overdrawn comedy-drama which is highly entertaining much of the time, with too much of that time spent on wild theatrics and glib characters cracking wise.

And mind you, the show is all special effects. But while there is a good deal of machinery and a greater deal of millions behind it all, the specialest effect that shines through-and, truly, makes Cursed Child what it is-is high-grade theatrical imagination. We can easily list the admirable production staff: Christine Jones (sets), Katrina Lindsay (costumes), Neil Austin (lighting), Finn Ross and Ash Woodward (video), Gareth Fry (sound), Jamie Harrison (illusions and magic), Carole Hancock (hair, wigs and make-up) and Imogen Heap (composer and arranger). It is not quite so easy, though, to separate their accomplishments: everything blends in to create this wizardrous mélange. Prime among Tiffany's team is 'movement director' Steven Hoggett, of both Once and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Cursed Child is a true collaboration between Tiffany and Hoggett, and quite something to see.

Wouldn't it be loverly to have Lerner & Loewe's magical My Fair Lady back on Broadway? And wouldn't it be 'warm and tender' if it were a tasteful staging which captured the style and grace of the fabled original? Well, Bartlett Sher's new staging at the Vivian Beaumont is and does. The Lincoln Center Theater My Fair Lady is absobloominutely loverly, and you can quote me on that.

Mantello once again demonstrates his sensitive touch for high drama, as in The Humans and Other Desert Cities. He and set designer Miriam Buether have some tricks up their joint sleeves, about which the less said the better the surprise. (Mantello was very much on my mind entering the Golden, having spent the prior two evenings at Angels in America-in the original Broadway production of which he vibrantly created the role of Louis Ironson.)

This is plenty enough to put Farinelli and the King on the highly recommended list. But the drama, I'm afraid, doesn't match the rest of the evening. The plot is intriguingly promising, yes; but the execution is merely functional. After a while, we begin to think that the play is built around the star's performing strengths, as opposed to the performance being built to support the play. Rylance's strengths are myriad, of course; and his wife/collaborator knows every trick he has in his overflowing sack. Sure, why not give him a role which displays them all? Only we feel like we are watching him display them all. And we know, from years of watching excellent actors, that they are likely at their best when they are not simply playing to their strengths. Rylance is delightful and delicious and exuberant and altogether lovable here; but we are seeing the actor, not a dramatically-realized version of Philippe V. Rylance is altogether excellent; the fault, to paraphrase Cassius, is not in our star.

And here, from Manhattan Theatre Club via the Royal Court, comes another doomsday play. Lucy Kirkwood's The Children is a sturdy drama; interesting, arresting, and enigmatic enough to hold interest for its almost two-hour running time. It has crossed the sea intact, importing director James Macdonald, his design team, and his cast of three. All do a fine job, making The Children a worthwhile evening in the theatre. But is worthwhile, one wonders, enough?

What, you might ask, does it signify when we start our discussion of a new musical by praising the sets and costumes? Well, just what you think it signifies. My guess is that SpongeBob SquarePants will be a favorite with its target audience, sending enchanted crowds pouring forth from the playhouse agog with delight and loaded down with show merchandise. Which, I suppose, is the goal of new Broadway musicals of this ilk. So everyone should be delighted, except for those who aren't.

Leguizamo talks a lot about bullies, some of whom are explicitly identifiable (and result in suitable reactions from the partisan crowd). The man knows his audience, and his Latin lesson is a treat.

There's music in the air at the Barrymore: sweetly lush, jasmine-scented melody which bathes the stage-and the audience-in an evening of enchantment. The Band's Visit is the title, from composer/lyricist David Yazbek, bookwriter Itamar Moses and director David Cromer. A uniquely unconventional musical told in a new manner, it follows pretty much in the steps of Fun Home, Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen: which is to say, it is another musical which tracks a new, different and exciting path.

All this aside-and despite our thorough admiration for the career and life of the eighty-nine-year-old Prince of Broadway-the entertainment wears thin in the second act. Here we have a show which only exists by virtue of song selections from the Prince catalog, written by three dozen fellows. (While one woman-Betty Comden-is credited on the title page, there isn't a word of hers in evidence.) In such a venture, some material is likely to be included for reasons other than suitability. You could indeed do all Sondheim, all the time-but then that wouldn't be Prince of Broadway, would it?

As the Bard once said, or nearly so: 'To thine own audience be true.' Michael Moore, that renowned, brashly-impudent political provocateur, knows his audience. He has always been keen at smelling fresh blood in the air, usually facing off against one Goliath or another; and he is known for ambushing his particular bogey man with lacerating skill and buoyant relish. Setting his sights on you-know-who-the nominal leader of our great land, presently in self-imposed exile from his abode twelve blocks up the avenue from the Belasco-Moore plucks his prey, like a pre-Thanksgiving turkey; stuffs a juicy crabapple in its mouth, like a Christmas suckling pig; and sets the roaster on slow burn.

Almost thirty years later, Six Degrees is something of a period piece. Guare illustrates in a roundabout manner how the cellphone and the Internet have thoroughly changed the world we live in, as the plot stands on circumstances that would be instantly resolved with a quick call (or e-mail) and a Google search. Conversely, Guare's jabs at the Broadway musical Cats remain uncomfortably and wickedly current.

Mark Bell has directed, and under his expert hand the performances all go wrong; the scenery goes wrong, to catastrophic effect; even the sound cues go wrong, and when was the last time you heard sound cues generating applause? All told, The Play That Goes Wrong goes uproariously right.

Ruffalo is likable, honest and direct, more plebeian than the other Victors I have seen (although I did not see Pat Hingle, who had already left the original production before I got there). Shalhoub, the former TV actor who has demonstrated his stage-worthiness with searing performances in Golden Boy and Act One, is a marvel as the successful brother. Walter almost sheens with success, on the surface; but the actor from the first allows us to see the depths that work beneath. Shalhoub can express his character's psychology by simply buttoning and unbuttoning his suit jacket; by play's end, he is gnawing at his fingernails.