Thom Geier

It's tempting to dismiss the new musical adaptation of Pedro Almodóvar's seminal 1988 movie farce Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown as a hot mess. But in truth, this ill-conceived Broadway production is more of a lukewarm gazpacho — which is almost fitting since a version of the dish, seasoned with Valium, figures prominently in the plot.

Yes, the show delivers a history lesson about America's racist past by employing an array of theatrical tropes that are frankly racist themselves (shuffle-and-jive dance steps, Stepin Fetchit comedy routines, blackface, etc.). The virtually all African American cast plays the Scottsboro defendants in a naturalistic way while employing more stylized, controversial minstrel performance methods to play the story's white characters: the slutty white women who cry rape, the racist sheriff who arrests and beats the prisoners, and the New York Jewish lawyer who swoops in to defend them in court. As intentionally broad as the performances often are, the actors are terrific — and the effect is to underscore both the horror of the Scottsboro case as well as the ways in which popular culture has reinforced racial stereotyping.

There is a lot of high-minded talk throughout the play — is art an elitist pursuit or truly for the masses? — but it yields little in terms of dramatic tension or surprise. And for such a fundamentally didactic show, the takeaway seems rather simplistic. It's like a paint-by-numbers exercise in extolling the virtues of art.

Even if you're not familiar with David Lean's 1946 movie melodrama Brief Encounter, you will find yourself caught up in writer-director Emma Rice's brilliantly reconceived stage adaptation, now playing at Broadway's Studio 54 following a successful run last winter at Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse. (EW's original review). Despite playing in a much-larger theater, the show loses nothing of its considerable wit or charm.

With time, I suspect that she too will get into the rhythm of director Trevor Nunn's smartly executed production. There was always something a little odd about making a star vehicle for Zeta-Jones out of a show that is very much an ensemble piece. A certain balance has been restored to A Little Night Music in its current incarnation. As the song goes: Isn't it rich! A-

One understands the desire to goose material that is both potentially dry and well past its sell-by date. (In the wake of AIG and Bernie Madoff and Lehman Brothers' own collapse, doesn't the Enron scandal seem so 2001?) But subtlety gets lost in the process: At one point, Butz's Skilling literally stomps his foot like a petulant 2-year-old when Lay sides with Roe in a corporate dispute — an over-the-top gesture that undercuts any effort by the production to make its characters more than cardboard stand-ins for American Big Business excess and immaturity. Goold further muddles the satire with kitchen-sink showmanship, employing everything from a barbershop quartet of traders to a mini-ballet by lightsaber-wielding execs. He even creates anthropomorphized 'raptors' to represent the shady debt-laden shell companies that led to Enron's ultimate unraveling. We see Fastow and Skilling kill the raptors at the end, but there's no real-world explanation of what they're doing; Goold is too caught up in his theatrical conceit to serve the fact-based story he's trying to tell. Too often, in fact, Enron plays like 60 Minutes on acid.

But the show, newly revived on Broadway under the thoughtful direction of Terry Johnson, proves to be surprisingly sturdy — despite the three-inch pumps donned by the cross-dressing Cagelles at the Saint-Tropez nightclub that Georges and Albin call home. Herman's score is studded with melodic winners, including the gay-rights anthem 'I Am What I Am,' which closes the first act on a stirring and deeply moving note. Delivering that show-stopper is Douglas Hodge, a transplant from Johnson's 2008 London revival of La Cage. Hodge is practically perfect as the fey Albin, a tricky role in which an actor could easily slip into caricature or sentimentality. Hodge manages a careful balance, delivering a performance that is both hilarious and heartfelt; his character is admittedly over the top, but he always feels real. As his partner, the La Cage manager Georges, Kelsey Grammer proves to be an equal partner in carrying the show. Grammer has a surprisingly strong singing voice (better than his rendition of the 'Frasier' theme song might suggest), and he never makes you doubt his commitment to Albin or his son; you feel the anguish as he seeks to reconcile the conflicting desires of his two loves.

But the show, newly revived on Broadway under the thoughtful direction of Terry Johnson, proves to be surprisingly sturdy — despite the three-inch pumps donned by the cross-dressing Cagelles at the Saint-Tropez nightclub that Georges and Albin call home. Herman's score is studded with melodic winners, including the gay-rights anthem 'I Am What I Am,' which closes the first act on a stirring and deeply moving note. Delivering that show-stopper is Douglas Hodge, a transplant from Johnson's 2008 London revival of La Cage. Hodge is practically perfect as the fey Albin, a tricky role in which an actor could easily slip into caricature or sentimentality. Hodge manages a careful balance, delivering a performance that is both hilarious and heartfelt; his character is admittedly over the top, but he always feels real. As his partner, the La Cage manager Georges, Kelsey Grammer proves to be an equal partner in carrying the show. Grammer has a surprisingly strong singing voice (better than his rendition of the 'Frasier' theme song might suggest), and he never makes you doubt his commitment to Albin or his son; you feel the anguish as he seeks to reconcile the conflicting desires of his two loves.

But the show, newly revived on Broadway under the thoughtful direction of Terry Johnson, proves to be surprisingly sturdy — despite the three-inch pumps donned by the cross-dressing Cagelles at the Saint-Tropez nightclub that Georges and Albin call home. Herman's score is studded with melodic winners, including the gay-rights anthem 'I Am What I Am,' which closes the first act on a stirring and deeply moving note. Delivering that show-stopper is Douglas Hodge, a transplant from Johnson's 2008 London revival of La Cage. Hodge is practically perfect as the fey Albin, a tricky role in which an actor could easily slip into caricature or sentimentality. Hodge manages a careful balance, delivering a performance that is both hilarious and heartfelt; his character is admittedly over the top, but he always feels real. As his partner, the La Cage manager Georges, Kelsey Grammer proves to be an equal partner in carrying the show. Grammer has a surprisingly strong singing voice (better than his rendition of the 'Frasier' theme song might suggest), and he never makes you doubt his commitment to Albin or his son; you feel the anguish as he seeks to reconcile the conflicting desires of his two loves.

The stagecraft seldom disappoints; there are brilliant use of puppets, including a curtain tassel that springs to life and becomes a love interest for hairy Cousin Itt. And the cast, led by Broadway pros Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia Addams, works hard to put over a script that seriously drags in the first act and generally owes more to vaudeville than the dry wit of Charles Addams' original cartoons. Neuwirth interrupts her morbid love song 'Just Around the Corner' with the elbow-poking line 'Coroner. Get it? Death is just around the coroner.'

There is something delightfully, wickedly off about all four characters in Behanding, including Rockwell's Mervyn. 'I always used to hope they'd have one of those shooting massacres at my high school, didn't you?” he says at one point. 'They'd come in, y'know, as they do, dressed like soldiers, just to be different, and then I'd, y'know, do something brave and save everybody. Well, not everybody, else it wouldn't be a high school massacre, but maybe after they got, say, twelve?' And as McDonagh & Co. build the suspense toward what seems to be an inevitably explosive finale, we're forced to ponder why we too seem to be drawn to stories of extreme violence. How much does our collective curiosity about the extreme and the macabre fuel society's nuttiest members to act out their (and our) most out-there fantasies?

If you want to mount a new Broadway production of A Little Night Music, you're best to heed advice based on the biggest hit from Stephen Sondheim's 1973 musical: Send in the movie stars. And so they have, tapping Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones to play the haughty and brazenly adulterous actress Desiree Armfeldt. It's an inspired choice, since Zeta-Jones' Hollywood glam buttresses the role's necessary off-puttingness. And the actress pulls off the challenge, comfortably commanding the stage as if it were just another red carpet to be conquered. While she may not outshine some of Broadway's best-known divas in the strength or quality of her singing voice (it's solid, but a little nasal), she sells her numbers as only a great actress can. And her second-act rendition of 'Send in the Clowns' is an emotional tour de force not to be missed. Likewise, Angela Lansbury offers a master class in character acting as Desiree's ancient mother, Madame Armfeldt, wringing out every poignant beat and punchline.

For Gen Xers on a nostalgia trip, though, this Off Broadway transfer does provide its Memorex-induced pleasures — often embedded Beowulf Boritt's clever set and prop design (at one point, a character gives birth to a Cabbage Patch Kid). Is Rock of Ages nothin' but a good time? Not quite. (Sorry, Poison fans.) But it's frequently more fun than it has any right to be.

Billy Elliot is by no means perfect. Like the original London production, it is still too long (with a seemingly endless curtain call). Some numbers are less melodically compelling ('He Could Go and He Could Shine'), and some scenes are awkwardly staged. But the ideas that work here — and there are many — work magnificently, whether it's presenting the striking miners and the police as opposing choruses or the moving second-act pas de deux with Billy and his older self (New York City Ballet vet Stephen Hanna). In such moments, the potential of Billy Elliot, both character and show, seems both boundless and fully realized. In tough economic times that seem eerily similar to 1980s Britain, in fact, it's easy to imagine projecting all of our recession-weary hopes onto the slender shoulders of a precociously gifted pre-teen boy.