Terry Teachout — Theater Critic

On the credit side is an unusually fine piece of acting by Norbert Leo Butz as Special Agent Carl Hanratty (played in the film by Tom Hanks). Tom Wopat, one of Broadway's finest singers, shows off his ever-reliable pipes as Frank's father, and Mr. Tveit is thoroughly likable as Frank. The most that can be said about Jack O'Brien's staging, alas, is that it's efficient, while Jerry Mitchell's choreography is as facelessly derivative as the songs. Best of all is Kerry Butler as Brenda Strong, Frank's hapless girlfriend. Ms. Butler has somehow contrived to give a performance glowing with truth in a show that's devoid of it.

Mr. Rock has never acted in a stage play, and his inexperience shows-he's a bit stiff at times-but you can see that he's well on his way to getting where he wants to go. His colleagues are stunningly good, especially Mr. Cannavale, who has the biggest part and makes the most of it...Don't let the stupid title put you off. If you do, you'll miss one of the best new plays to come to Broadway in ages.

Mr. Rock has never acted in a stage play, and his inexperience shows-he's a bit stiff at times-but you can see that he's well on his way to getting where he wants to go. His colleagues are stunningly good, especially Mr. Cannavale, who has the biggest part and makes the most of it...Don't let the stupid title put you off. If you do, you'll miss one of the best new plays to come to Broadway in ages.

Ms. Marshall, who did so well by 'The Pajama Game' and 'Wonderful Town,' takes a while to get going this time around, perhaps because the book is stale...'Anything Goes' has the air of a safe option, a risk-free show designed to take the minimum number of chances and please the maximum number of people. That it succeeds in the latter goal is mainly due to Ms. Foster (and, of course, Cole Porter). Her Reno Sweeney is definitely worth the price of two tickets.

Mr. Williams's performance is equally predictable, but it's not his fault, for he's playing the tiger as written: The script calls for a superficial Hollywood-style performance, and he obliges, sounding not unlike Bruce Willis playing the wisecracking baby in 'Look Who's Talking.' It doesn't help that his one-liners aren't sharp enough, though Mr. Williams does his best to make them snap...'Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo' is still mediocre.

The professionals are back. Well into one of the dimmest Broadway seasons in recent memory, Rob Ashford has lit the lights with a smart and satisfying production of 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,' the Frank Loesser-Abe Burrows musical that taught a generation of viperine office politicians how to stick a shiv into their bosses without leaving any fingerprints on the handle. Needless to say, it's Daniel Radcliffe, better known as Harry Potter, who's filling the seats, but it's Mr. Ashford who deserves most of the credit for the artistic success of this hard-charging, high-flying revival of a show whose gleaming craftsmanship is as self-evident today as when it opened on Broadway a half-century ago.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the naughty boys of 'South Park,' have teamed up with Robert Lopez, one of the co-creators of 'Avenue Q,' and the results of their collaboration are pretty much what you'd expect: slick and smutty. 'The Book of Mormon' is the first musical to open on Broadway since 'La Cage aux Folles' that has the smell of a send-in-the-tourists hit. Casey Nicholaw ('The Drowsy Chaperone') has staged the musical numbers with cheery energy, and the cast, especially Nikki M. James, is terrific. But don't let anybody try to tell you that 'The Book of Mormon' is suitable for anyone other than 12-year-old boys who have yet to graduate from fart jokes to 'Glee.' A couple of reasonably effective production numbers notwithstanding, it's flabby, amateurish and very, very safe.

Not only is 'Priscilla' a sequin-encrusted dragfest without a heart, but it's one of the biggest missed opportunities in the recent history of Broadway, a pointless musical version of a sweet little movie out of which something smart—and, yes, touching—might easily have been made. Instead we get human cupcakes.

Not only is 'Priscilla' a sequin-encrusted dragfest without a heart, but it's one of the biggest missed opportunities in the recent history of Broadway, a pointless musical version of a sweet little movie out of which something smart—and, yes, touching—might easily have been made. Instead we get human cupcakes.

Enough about 'Spider-Man' already—Tom Stoppard is back on Broadway! Only time will tell whether 'Arcadia' is Mr. Stoppard's masterpiece, but it isn't premature to call it one of the key English-language plays of the postwar era, and even in a staging that is less than satisfactory, it makes a rich and affecting impression. Now for the bad news: David Leveaux's revival of 'Arcadia,' which was originally mounted in London two years ago with a different cast, isn't much better than adequate. When you're talking about a high-profile revival of a great play, good enough won't cut it.

I won't say that a better playwright might not have been able to make something watchable out of this clichéd scenario, but what Miller made out of it in 1972 was pretty much what you'd have expected from a second-rate writer born in 1939 who had drunk deep from the well of the '60s and now proposed to inform his audiences that their parents' values were comprehensively corrupt. Hence the coach, a boorish, ill-educated stage-Irish blowhard who proudly displays pictures of Teddy Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Fightin' Joe McCarthy on his mantelpiece and salts his small talk with good old-fashioned ethnic slurs of the highest possible voltage, thereby alerting the audience to his lack of enlightenment. Hence, too, his 'boys,' all of whom are louts save for Tom, who clearly speaks for the author (and who is played in this revival by the author's son).

Herein lies part of the phoniness of 'Good People.' Of course people like Margie and Mikey exist, but I doubt it's a coincidence that they are exactly the kinds of people who fit into the familiar sociological narrative that permeates every page of this play. In Mr. Lindsay-Abaire's America, success is purely a matter of luck, and virtue inheres solely in those who are luckless. So what if Mikey worked hard? Why should anybody deserve any credit for working hard? Hence the crude deck-stacking built into the script of 'Good People,' in which Mikey is the callous villain who forgot where he came from and Margie the plucky Southie gal who may be the least little bit racist (though she never says anything nasty to Mikey's wife—that would be going too far!) but is otherwise a perfect heroine-victim.

If neatness is what you expect from John Guare's 'A Free Man of Color,' you'll be doomed to disappointment. Mr. Guare's ambitious new play, which tells the fantastic tale of Jacques Cornet (Jeffrey Wright), a 19th-century millionaire playboy from New Orleans who happens to be black, has a cast of 33 and runs for 2½ crowded hours. Yes, it sprawls, but for all its hectic messiness, 'A Free Man of Color' is one of the three or four most stirring new plays I've seen since I started writing this column seven years ago.

I must point out, however, that what Mr. Sullivan has done all but turns on its head the plain meaning of the text of 'The Merchant of Venice.' For my part, I prefer to see the play directed in an unsparingly harsh manner that doesn't paper over its ugliness, the way that Barbara Gaines staged it for Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2005. But Mr. Sullivan's softer-edged interpretation works on its own terms, and no matter how you think 'The Merchant of Venice' ought to be done, this version will sweep you along with such hell-bent momentum that you'll forget there was an intermission.

Mr. Reubens's Broadway debut is, among other things, a comeback attempt, two widely publicized run-ins with the law having forced him into involuntary semiretirement. With $3 million in the box-office till to date, it looks like a success. I'm fine with that: Mr. Reubens has paid his debt to society, and this show, adroitly directed by Alex Timbers, the co-creator of 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,' is good for plenty of laughs. Appearances to the contrary, however, 'The Pee-wee Herman Show' is not really a children's show, so don't bring the kids unless you're prepared to do a fair amount of heavy-duty explaining.

Given a high-powered cast like this one, everything might have come up roses anyway, but Ms. Scott, who is about as Spanish as I am, turns in a chirpy, lightweight performance that conveys nothing of Pepa's sensuality. (Carmen Maura, who played the same character in the film, was the very embodiment of that savory quality.) Ms. Benanti, by contrast, makes a bold and energetic impression as Candela, galloping away with the best-in-show ribbon. Mr. Mitchell's part, however, borders on outright invisibility, while Ms. LuPone's spectacular gifts are wasted in a supporting role that allows her to do little but sing two forgettable songs and run around tearing her hair.

I had no trouble imagining a play by Mr. Thompson about the Scottsboro trials that could have introduced a new generation to one of the most troubling episodes in modern American history-but I doubt that any Broadway producer would have sunk a dime into it. In its place, then, we get a musical that slathers this terrible tale in a thick coat of musical-comedy frosting that has been spiked with cheap, elephantine irony. I can't imagine a nastier-tasting recipe.

With that sole exception, this is as fine a production of 'Driving Miss Daisy' as I can imagine. It is so fine, in fact, that I was astonished to be reminded that this is the play's Broadway premiere: The whole of its original 1,195-performance run in New York took place first at Playwrights Horizons and then at the John Houseman Theatre. Fortunately, it is being mounted in one of Broadway's most intimate and well-proportioned spaces, the 804-seat John Golden Theatre. This means, however, that tickets for the 16-week limited engagement of 'Driving Miss Daisy' are going to be hard to obtain, so do whatever you have to do to get one. Perhaps some hotshot at PBS will get the bright idea to tape the production-it would look terrific on TV-but I wouldn't count on it.

Mr. Lauria, whom TV viewers will remember from 'The Wonder Years,' knows a dream part when he sees one, and makes the most of this one. He plays Mr. Lombardi like a warmer but comparably tough version of George C. Scott's Patton, and lurking beneath the buzzsaw bluster of his win-or-else tirades is a stealthy note of Pattonesque desperation, the fear that he'll blow his last chance to make it as a head coach. Indeed, I was startled by the cinder-dark passion with which Mr. Lauria assures Keith Nobbs, the geeky reporter-interlocutor who narrates 'Lombardi,' that he'd 'just as soon die' as watch the Packers slip back into second place. I believed it, and so will you.

'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson' is a not-exactly-history play in which the life of America's seventh president is given what might be called the Jon Stewart treatment (i.e., lots and lots of Irony Lite) and set to the style of rock known as 'emo' (i.e., unabashed emotion accompanied by a just-kidding wink that draws the deadly sting of sincerity). And what are the results? Mixed—but also, if a middle-age critic may dare to say so, hugely encouraging.

So why in the name of the bottom line is this awful play-for it is truly, excruciatingly awful-back for a second go-round? The answer is Mark Rylance, who starred in 'Boeing-Boeing' and is now giving another over-the-top performance as Valere, a fathomlessly vulgar, monstrously vain street player who has been thrust upon Elomire (David Hyde Pierce), the celebrated 17th-century playwright, and his resident drama troupe by the princess (Joanna Lumley) who is the company's all-powerful patroness.

Now that David Cromer's 'Our Town' has closed, 'A Life in the Theatre' is the New York show to see. I wish that Mr. Stewart had a stronger partner opposite him, but his performance is rich enough to carry the play all by itself.

So what went wrong? Pretty much everything, though by far the worst offender is Ms. Hawkins, a British film and TV actor of some note whose performance as Vivie couldn't be further off the mark. Shaw's stage directions describe Vivie as the quintessential example of 'the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman ... strong, confident, self-possessed.' For Ms. Hawkins to play her as a squeaky, flighty semitomboy is thus nonsensical, and the fact that she swallows at least half of her lines renders large chunks of the play all but unintelligible.

So what went wrong? Pretty much everything, though by far the worst offender is Ms. Hawkins, a British film and TV actor of some note whose performance as Vivie couldn't be further off the mark. Shaw's stage directions describe Vivie as the quintessential example of 'the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman ... strong, confident, self-possessed.' For Ms. Hawkins to play her as a squeaky, flighty semitomboy is thus nonsensical, and the fact that she swallows at least half of her lines renders large chunks of the play all but unintelligible.

You may have guessed that I didn't expect to like 'The Pitmen Painters,' which by all rights should have been ludicrously heavy-handed. Sometimes it is, but more often Mr. Hall has rung fresh changes on his familiar formulas, and the result is a satisfying piece of entertainment that makes its points without leaving you too badly bruised about the head and shoulders.