Thom Geier

While audience’s may struggle to connect with Zero’s depressingly circular journey, Director Scott Elliott’s production soups up the material with remarkable visual flair. Derek McLane’s evocative and versatile set, with a back wall of shelves holding antique desk lamps and office machines, yields multiple surprises as wooden filing cabinets open to reveal bedrooms and coffins and other locales. Jeff Croiter’s striking lighting and Stan Mathabanes sometimes jolting sound contribute to the overall tone of the piece, by turns discomfiting and provocative. There is a great deal of skill invested to refresh this century-old cautionary tale, but The Adding Machine doesn’t quite add up.

Yes, the show feels padded in places and runs well over the 90-minute running time Mindelle promises from the stage — though it’s well under the three-hour tour of the S.S. Minnow of Gilligan’s Island and boasts a much higher laugh-to-punchline ratio. Plus, the hard-working, eager-to-please cast lean into the silliness of the material while delivering legitimately strong vocals on familiar tunes from Dion’s extensive catalog of hits. Titaníque, complete with that Frenchified accent to emphasize the final syllable, is one of the funniest musical comedies in years. It cruises into dock amid ocean-high waves of laughter.

No matter. This is a solid production of a play that continues to reflect aspects of American life and works its way into our heart and consciousness with an almost gravitational pull. While Linda gets some of the showiest speeches — which Metcalf delivers with attention-demanding skill — Willy remains its absolute center. His plight could be that of any white-collar worker on the verge of obsolescence due to a cheaper Gen Z workforce or, more likely, the advent of AI. And in a career-best performance, Lane shuffle-steps across the stage while his eyes dart around in a state of addled bewilderment. Though he’s unmoored from reality as well as his own life, he manages to close one final deal. And we’ve all willingly signed on the dotted line.

How times have changed. The ballroom kitties now elicit whoops and the audible opening of fans from theatergoers who no longer have to be dragged to cross-dressing performances. Cats itself remains a lightweight bit of fluff and most of the large cast blends together into an indistinguishable clutter of furry limbs and puffed-out wigs. But there’s no denying how much fun this production is – and how even a flawed show can find a path to rebirth via Eliot’s vaunted Heaviside Layer. These old cats might just have a tenth life in them after all.

That is the genius of Gionfriddo’s script, and of Cullman’s clockwork direction, which relies on the cast to help change scenes in ways that suggest the precision timing of an old-fashioned bedroom farce. I’m a bit puzzled by the stylized simplicity of David Zinn’s set, a mostly blank and interchangeable black-box space that unfolds in the final scene to reveal a generic upper-middle-class sitting room, brightly lit by Stacey Derosier. But that choice does help strip away any and all outside distractions so that we can focus more clearly on the archetypal characters who are not rooted in any particular place. They seem to be stepping straight out of psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, with all their flaws and contradictions and raw humanity on display.

Despite providing some meaty roles to talented actors, Dog Day Afternoon feels like a really expensive workshop of a play that could have used a few more rounds of revisions to better balance and update the material and its tricky swirl of elements. The unanswered question here is: Why? Why turn this classic movie into a stage play? It’s as if Warner Bros. Theatricals barged into a theater, guns in hand but without a fully fleshed-out plan, and then had to cobble together an escape on the fly where nobody loses too much face (or their lives).

In the end, Kon’s New York production of The Seagull is the joke, an impossible dream dashed in both countries, so he signs up to direct an artistically empty spectacle to advance his career. The play creates parallels between how both Russian censorship and American greed make it nearly impossible to create real art. Despite some misfires and unevenness, the play offers a crucial lesson: Russian authoritarianism may seem like the clear evil, but America’s obsession with turning art into profit can be similarly stifling for artists who want to make political work.

One drawback of this modern interpretation of The Seagull is the decision to center the new show entirely on Constantine/Kon, which gives short shrift to Chekhov’s other main protagonists (who here receive much sketchier treatment). But Molochnikov is less interested in grappling with a classic than using it as a proxy for the threat to artistic expression by institutional censorship. In that regard, Seagull: True Story can pack a powerful punch — perhaps never more so than when Anton comments as he’s dragged off to prison, “Something like THAT could never happen in America, right?” It’s a good question, well timed for an era when the Trump administration has publicly targeted artists and institutions it loathes. This show reminds us that freedom, like love, must be nurtured and defended on a daily basis lest it fall into disuse — or worse, into the hands of a tyrant who would quash it.

A wistful nostalgia courses through Public Charge, a reverence for a recent past when government workers epitomized competence and know-how to produce real change. USAID has been dismantled; career diplomats sidelined or removed. What has been lost is not only lasting change but the idealism needed to reclaim the former status quo.

Giant is a riveting and timely drama that reminds us of two central truths: the debate over Israel is a long and complicated one where no side comes out unsullied and great artists are often flawed humans with prejudices and blind spots as big as their talent.

It’s also no way to treat Dumas’s classic. Or to update it for modern audiences in a way that feels fresh. The director, Peter Flynn, seems overwhelmed by the scope of the material; some numbers end, bizarrely and abruptly, while the soloist is walking off stage into darkness. Monte Cristo misses both the novel’s romanticism and its propulsive energy. Despite noble intentions and some promising elements, call this one down for the count.

In her stunning playwriting debut, Korean American actress Jeena Yi has managed to create a masterpiece. Jesa, a Ma-Yi Theater Company production now playing at the Public Theater, is an instant classic that blends elements of domestic drama (subset: fractious family reunion), ghost story, and anthropological study of the Korean tradition known as jesa. This annual gathering allows families to commemorate their dead ancestors through a combination of food, ritual bowing, and the generous pouring and consumption of the boozy, rice-based spirit soju.

Once the bathtub gin has been dispensed, though, everybody is a little worse for wear. LaChiusa’s script also sags in the middle section, amid all the lush couplings, and then hurries through a series of tragedies and near-tragedies as the characters wake up to the reality of their lost night. Just as you’re tempted to check your watch, Rogers’ Queenie reappears — as if anticipating when we might need our glass refilled. She perks up any room she’s in, and elevates every number — from the rollicking “Welcome to My Party” to her sassy duet with Warren’s Kate, “Best Friend,” to the reflective romantic duet with Aladdin’s Black, “People Like Us.” She’s truly the life, and soul, of this Wild Party.

But there’s a herky-jerky quality to the production, starting with director Ciarán O’Reilly’s uneven pacing and odd blocking. (After an opening scene with Broderick and Baker mostly seated, he has Hughes and Baker merry-go-round Charlie Corcoran’s cozy set in a way that makes utterly no sense for characters quietly discussing Jay’s out-there behavior while the actor’s out of the room.) The other problem is Broderick. While he nails the solipsism of a man who’s lived in pampered privilege so long that he’s oblivious to the impression he actually gives, the actor continues his recent run of highly recessive performances capped by unorthodoxly mannered line readings.

He’s also never really alone with his thoughts. By this time, he’s not merely implicated the audience in his journey but recruited us to be his companions, his aides-mémoire to that every-growing list, and his cheering section. How can we not root for Radcliffe as he delivers a tour de force, serotonin-boosting performance that’s as powerful as any drug currently on the market? Every Brilliant Thing is the funniest, most life-affirming show about suicide. It provided so much uplift that I didn’t even mind being called “old.”

Director Knud Adams does an admirable job trying to calibrate between the wild swings in tone and seriousness, leaning on the choir to smooth some of the more rugged transitions. They consistently draw our attention away from the absurdities of the plot and the hurried attempts to ground the characters in a kind of reality. Plus, their red-hued outfits (designed by Brenda Abbandandolo) simultaneously call to mind the multiple threads of the story. They read as church choir, red communist comrades, or Christmas carolers, depending on the moment.

Clarke’s resulting play, Bughouse, is a visually evocative but dramatically inert performance piece that touches on Darger’s troubled personal story, his penchant for self-isolation, and his fixations on Catholicism and threats to childhood innocence (which he often depicted with graphic violence and nudity). But the script by Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) consists mostly of an undiagnosed schizophrenic’s stream of consciousness rants, interrupted by the occasional aural hallucination (mostly the voices of nuns and young girls).

Ziegler’s Antigone isn’t the same play you read in high school. It’s a far more urgent work that resurfaces one of Western literature’s first female revels, and gives her a new and vital sense of purpose.

Wallace Shawn’s best known collaboration with director André Gregory is the 1981 Louis Malle film My Dinner With André, in which the two denizens of the downtown arts scenes engage in a rambling philosophical discussion over dinner at the now-defunct Café des Artistes. Gregory, 91, is now directing the 82-year-old Shawn’s latest play, What We Did Before Our Moth Days, a three-act domestic drama that’s as wordy, erudite, and esoteric as its title.

Near the end, while we waited for their total distance to be tallied, the tuckered troupe launched into a re-creation of OK Go’s routine from the music video “Here We Go Again.” It was impressively perfect. Burnout Paradise is a real feat of endurance, for the dogged cast as well as the audience. Over time, I felt mostly exhausted by the sensory overload. And deeply sympathetic for performers willing to subject themselves to the requirements of this show eight times a week. Your mileage may vary.

While Bigfoot! seems to borrow from other musicals featuring misunderstood outsiders and political subtexts — Bat Boy, Toxic Avenger, and Urinetown all spring to mind as influences — the story here seems almost an afterthought. There’s a Saturday-morning cartoon quality to the plot and most of the characters, especially under the broad, subtlety-free direction of Danny Melford (who also handles the simple choreography). Some of the references, while consistently amusing, have a throwback quality. When Tam’s physician slaps Bigfoot’s passed-out mom to rouse her, she jolts upright and responds, “Are you a doctor or Ike Turner?” (Perhaps Ruffin didn’t want to offend more recent slap-happy celebrities such as Will Smith.) At another point, the doc compares the potential dangers of the oversize Bigfoot to “a drunk moose or a Kennedy brother.”

The cast is consistently strong under Chay Yew’s direction, but I kept wishing that the characters and plot had been more deeply fleshed out so that we understood the message here. There are interesting ideas here, but Lin’s script at times seems undercooked and in other moments veers into spelling out ideas that would have more impact if they had been left unsaid.

While director Rory McGregor moves his cast nimbly around the wide wood-panel-lined stage that represents multiple locations in their on-again-off-again affair (designed by Scott Pask and lit by Stacey Derosier), he doesn’t bring much clarity to White’s challenging nonlinear script — which wallows in narrative confusion as it plunges both the audience and the characters into repeated bouts of alcoholic amnesia between some harrowing depictions of addiction at its worst.

Fans of Joyce will find much to savor here, and much to dissect. Newbies can get lost in the rhythms of the author’s language as well as the trickiness of the plot, which tends to drag in the overlong first act. (It pays to arrive early enough to download the plot synopsis produced for the show and shared via QR code outside the theater.) But this feels more like gloss than adaptation, an exercise that captures elements of the source material without ever standing on its own terms.

Despite the polished delivery by the barefoot cast, the story can get confusing. Aside from Kene’s character, who feels obliged to exit after accidentally killing a woman while driving drunk, you never really get a grasp on any of these people as individuals. Stephens’ script seems to have slipped into the uncanny valley itself, with fuzzy descriptions of the human experience that offer moments of piquant poetry before slipping back into generalities that are amplified by repeated use of the second person.