Thom Geier — Theater Critic

Thiessen and Jacoby, the only men in the main cast, are saddled with seriously underwritten roles that deserve to be on the periphery: This is essentially a rom-com about two women, and the guys are merely obstacles to the couple getting together in the end. The actors even team up for a duet to wallow in their second-fiddle status and improbably lament, “I wish I could diagnose / why men never get that close.” (Dart’s lyrics tend to be very on the nose.) Hint: It’s not about you. It was never about you. This show misses so much of what made Beaches a phenomenon, in addition to an attention-grabbing turn by Midler in her prime. Filmgoers, women especially, were drawn to the focus on a longtime, entirely platonic female friendship as something that’s every bit as emotionally satisfying as any traditional boy-meets-girl romance. There’s not much that’s satisfying about the flotsam that’s washed up on the shores of the Majestic.

The Balusters is the latest in a series of contemporary stage comedies that are less interested in traditional drawing rooms than in drawing blood — skewering the foibles and hypocrisies of progressive lefties who also happen to be theater’s most reliable ticket buyers. It doesn’t stray into over-the-top horror fantasy like Tracy Letts’s The Minutes or the extremes of cultural appropriation like Larissa Fasthorse’s Thanksgiving Play. Nor does it boast a show-stopping comedic detour like the suburban parents’ Zoom meeting from hell in Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day. Lindsay-Abaire’s play more closely resembles the century-old Victorians of Vernon Place, boasting a sturdy frame on which the first-rate cast can express themselves with great craftsmanship. It doesn’t seek to push the genre into bold, modern directions — no glass-walled modern extension, thank you — but to embrace the virtues of a well-constructed contemporary satire. A gut renovation isn’t needed. The Balusters has good bones.

There may be a paucity of Knicks fans at the Nederlander Theatre, which is probably for the best. Schmigadoon! is a show by and for musical mavens — and they should climb any mountain, never walk alone, and rock the boat (without sitting down) to get themselves a seat.

Coward is no Beckett. Unlike Godot, there really is a suave Frenchman who wooed Julia and Jane (in Pisa and Venice, respectively) and arrives in the play’s rushed final scene. But when Mark Consuelos turns up as Maurice Duclos, it’s a bit of a letdown — and not just because the daytime TV veteran speaks in a voice that’s barely European much less French. The character is basically a human MacGufffin meant to generate friction among the four primary players in Coward’s romantic farce. The revelation of the heroines’ premarital sex lives — once so shocking that London censors initially banned the play — now seems rather quaint. Still, Ellis and his cast have ginned up enough boozy shenanigans in Fallen Angels that the lingering buzz carries you through the show’s duller and more dated sections.

Ayo Edibiri and Don Cheadle are two of our finest screen performers, radiating an intelligence and likability that should serve them well in the first Broadway revival of David Auburn’s Pulitzer-winning 2000 drama Proof. They play a father and daughter bound together by a love of advanced mathematics, a connection that’s further honed when Edibiri’s Catherine postpones college to care for Cheadle’s professor father during his troubled final years. And yet director Thomas Kail’s production feels more dutiful than deep, an oddly bloodless exercise in melodrama that keeps its passions bundled up as if girding for a frigid Chicago winter.

The latest film-to-stage adaptation to land on Broadway is a curious fact-based yarn about a Pennsylvania man unjustly convicted of a brutal rape and murder who sat on death row for two decades before he was exonerated thanks to DNA evidence. The basis for The Fear of 13 is a 2015 documentary that stands out by shunning the usual rogues’ gallery of interviews for a single talking head: Nick Yarris, a compellingly chatty fellow from outside Philadelphia who escaped execution and relates his tragic life story with mesmerizing skill even as you constantly question the authenticity of some of his details.

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.