Thom Geier

Second Stage Theater seems to be single-handedly attempting to revive the boulevard comedy on Broadway. There was a time when the Great White Way was dominated by such middlebrow, mass-appeal fare, with the late, great Neil Simon as the chief avatar of the genre. Just months after staging Tracy Letts' genial comedy 'Linda Vista,' Second Stage has mounted Bess Wohl's broadly entertaining 'Grand Horizons.' (The show opened Thursday at the Helen Hayes Theater.)

Grier returns in the first Broadway production of 'A Soldier's Play,' which opened Tuesday at Roundabout's American Airlines Theatre - this time as the fearsome, foul-mouthed Sgt. Vernon Waters, who commands his all-black troops as if their every move was a reflection on the future of the race. It's a searing performance from an actor best known for his work in comedies like 'In Living Color' and 'The Carmichael Show.' And he's well-matched by Blair Underwood as the Howard Law School graduate captain who's dispatched to investigate the murder - and who soon learns that this wasn't the work of the locals. And that even the white troops who are none too pleased by the presence of black soldiers - or to get beaten bad by them on the baseball field - may not be the culprits he's quick to suspect.

Alone on stage for the 90-minute running time of the show, which opened Wednesday at Broadway's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Linney skillfully segues between the authorial voice of Lucy and the sharp Midwestern twang of her mother without ever veering into caricature. Bob Crowley's simple set design, supplemented by Luke Halls' video projections, helps set the scene for Linney's performance, which maintains a cunning sense of narrative progression even as she digresses far off the beaten path. (The adaptation is by Rona Munro.) Under Richard Eyre's nuanced direction, she maintains full command of the story even as it meanders from Lucy's hospital stay to flashbacks to her hardscrabble, TV-free Illinois upbringing to glimpses at a future success borne of sacrifice and loss.

Despite its flaws, 'Slave Play' announces the arrival of a bold and challenging new voice in theater. And there's no doubt that Harris has the talent to produce a masterpiece (or five). He also has that rarer quality, drive. In the words of his muse, he is willing to 'work work work work work.'

It's a heroically talented team but the performance I saw was, perhaps understandably, a mixed bag. There were some genuinely clever rhymes (function and liposuction, dog and gulag) and turns of phrase ('Forget about your ego / I'm not your amigo') scattered throughout, but also plenty of verbal stumbles and stalling-for-time riffs.

It's been five years since Bryan Cranston's Tony-winning turn as Lyndon B. Johnson in Robert Schenkkan's 'All the Way.' Now Schenkkan has followed that epic historical pageant with a sequel, 'The Great Society,' opening Tuesday at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre, that like LBJ's second term dwells mostly in the shadows of its predecessor.

Zeller's play, expertly translated by Christopher Hampton, continually leaves us as disoriented as André himself - 'People who try to understand things are morons,' he says at one point - and the accumulation of contradictions is both unsettling and deeply moving. That is particularly true in the gut-check final scene, brilliantly lit by Hugh Vanstone, which is haunting in every sense of the word.

McNally's hopeful and heartfelt dramedy still carries a message for audiences who have grown perhaps even more jaded about love than those of three decades ago. Sex is easy, and intimacy is hard. And cynicism, while always just within reach, doesn't hold a candle to the untrustworthy but undeniable power of sincerity.

Chavkin, her production team and cast are working at the top of their form - and they go a long way to masking some of the show's shortcomings. Mitchell is a better composer than a lyricist, alas, and sometimes leans too heavily on De Shields' narration to advance the plot instead of her occasionally repetitive songs. And the fact remains that there's just not much story here - not nearly enough for a two and a half hour show.

As with many a reimagining of a classic, not all of Fish's gambits entirely work. That Act 2 dream ballet, reworked since the show's run last fall at Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse, is overlong and dramatically muddy. And his most radical departure from Oscar Hammerstein's script comes in the finale with the decidedly understated return of Jud at the wedding of Curly and Laurey.

Would that Gold's production had showed a similar resolve. But he seems to be one of these young Turks who comes to a classic text with ideas - so, so many ideas. And the result is a cluttered mess of a revival that too often threatens to overpower the poetry of the Bard's text and the strengths of some of the production's performances, Jackson's in particular.

Schreck is an engaging storyteller with a delivery that seems improvised even when she is sticking to her winding but always-focused script. Again and again, she manages to explore the politics of constitutional rights through the lens of the personal. And of the individuals left out as Americans saw their rights expand.

Where Sorkin succeeds is in getting us to rethink an American classic without any fussiness or archness. Director Bartlett Sher, who's best known for his Tony-winning work on big musicals like 'South Pacific' and 'My Fair Lady,' strikes the right balance between the epic and the intimate. And he smartly mimics the breakneck pace of Sorkin's film and TV projects, cramming Lee's large and sprawling story in a production that runs just over two and a half hours but seem to just fly by. Despite its infelicities, this 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is crackerjack entertainment.

When Birbiglia runs down a numbered list of his arguments against having kids, most revolve around his own insecurities and suspected shortcomings as a dad. 'If we're being honest with ourselves, kids hold us back,' he says, before edging into more charged waters. 'My best example of this is the history of women.' This is just one of the outrageous, did-he-just-say-that? shockers that Birbiglia laces into his routine - one that he quickly walks back with a convoluted explanation about how 'women are smarter than men, their brains are more sophisticated, and they make 21 cents on the dollar ... How did this HAPPEN!? The answer is...children.'

Director Kenny Leon keeps the action taut during the 90-minute running time, perhaps too taut. There isn't much breathing room in the production - and the ending is so abrupt that it's a wonder the curtain drop doesn't give the actors whiplash. This is the rare show that would benefit from a longer running time, from more scenes exploring the characters in greater depth.

Tom Stoppard's 1974 play 'Travesties,' which opened Tuesday at Roundabout's American Airlines Theatre in a spirited, quick-paced revival, is a showcase for modern theater's ultimate teacher's pet.

The very concept of 'Rocktopia' feels so dated, like a glorified field trip to the local symphony hall for a High Art-meets-Low Art lesson in music appreciation. (The idea of blending rock and Rachmaninoff is not new.)

The wonderful Emmy-winning actor has been touring versions of the show - sometimes one act, sometimes two - for about a decade now. And he's gotten it to a good-as-it's-gonna-get place. But this modest celebration of the joys of storytelling, which opened Thursday, is at its heart a chamber piece that feels woefully out of place in a Broadway theater.

Even for audiences inclined to feel jaded about revisiting a story from a long-ago school reading list, this '1984' manages to pump new, discomforting life into the mother of all dystopias. Icke and MacMillan also hit on some home truths that feel all too pertinent at a time when so many are called to 'resist' authority. 'The people will not revolt,' O'Brien notes. 'They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what's really happening.'

'The Play That Goes Wrong' sometimes threatens to outstay its welcome and dissipate its considerable charms over time. There is, after all, a fine line between repetition for comic effect and the tedium of beating a punchline until it is good and dead. But the Broadway production is considerably tighter than the one that played two years ago on London's West End...For much of its two-hour running time, 'The Play That Goes Wrong' offers a hilarious tribute to the spirit of the theater and the mantra that the show must go on - served up with a thick slice of ham.

McGregor is confident and sexy, using badinage as a bandage over wounds he'd rather not examine too closely. Nixon...is a worthy foil, wearing dowdy dresses and a look of wry resignation. Gyllenhaal, a pixie-cut dream girl, has a chillier but still effective presence. But director Sam Gold's fussy production blurs the distinction between scenes with a single drab set and cast-sung interludes of '60s pop. Not only is it harder to follow the tricky plot (and its plays-within-plays), but the songs suggest a kumbaya solidarity among the characters that undercuts the show's message about the challenges of forging connections. B+

Akhtar packs a lot into his scenes, in terms of both coincidence-heavy personal drama and talky disquisitions on religion and politics, but he usually manages to pull back from the edge of too-muchness. Director Kimberly Senior...shows an admirable restraint in her well-paced scenes...Dhillon, an American-born actor who's spent much of his career working in the U.K., shows more stiff-upper-lip reserve in the early scenes, merely pacing and fidgeting to signal Amir's discomfort in his own skin. It's an approach that doesn't go far enough to establish Amir's coiled volatility. The rest of the cast seem more attuned to the demands of the material; Mol in particular radiates a sensuous intelligence that is enormously appealing. B+

Andnow it's landed on Broadway at last in a hilarious and star-packed evening of theater in-jokes that often plays like a nonmusical version of Forbidden Broadway...Director Jack O'Brien's production reteams Tony winners Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, who these days pack a bigger punch at the box office than in terms of natural onstage chemistry. The two play old friends...But while Lane commands the stage with his quippy narcissism (abetted by some of McNally's strongest meta-jokes), Broderick continues his recent run of stiff, somnambulent, and overly mannered stage performances. The energy and pace of the show deflate whenever he opens his mouth...The rest of the cast, though, enlivens characters who can border on the thanklessly one-dimensional...Despite McNally's considerable revisions, there's just not enough plot here to sustain a two-and-a-half-hour show -- and what plot there is can seem thinner and more obvious than Abraham's toupee...It's Only a Play is a poison-pen mash note to New York theater, at once gleefully bitchy and affectionate. B+

Dennehy, a two-time Tony winner, has been a steady presence on Broadway in the last few decades--and he brings a stalwart, hunched-over gravitas to Andrew, a self-serious young man who's brief youthful indiscretions naturally give way to a Rockefeller-Republican conservatism. The real surprise here is Farrow, returning to the Main Stem for the first time in 18 years...She's a real actress, and she uses her considerable tools and her wonderful voice to evoke Melissa's girlish naivete, her teenage petulance, and then her grown-up insecurity...Love Letters reminds us that class can not only us in our place, but thwart any effort to forge real connections outside of ourselves. B+

Culkin is sensational as Dennis, a talkative schemer whose occasional stumbles in no way impede his innate sense of self-confidence. Cera is nearly as strong as Warren, a willfully quirky boy who collects action figures and vintage toasters and who endures Dennis' poetic rants of invective against him like a pound puppy who craves attention no matter what form it takes...At 18, Gevinson is closer to her character's age than her castmates--but she can seem less at ease on stage for reasons that have nothing to do with Jessica's natural discomfort hanging out in a strange apartment with a virtual stranger.