Thom Geier — Theater Critic

Given the advances in technology, you can imagine a future in which coders will be able to re-create the Neil Diamond concert experience in hologram form. (The star, now 81, retired from touring four years ago due to a battle with Parkinson’s.) For now, though, Swenson & Co. offer a reasonable facsimile of Diamond in the flesh for fans to soak up. Or, to paraphrase that quintessential Diamond hit “Sweet Caroline,” they try so hard, so hard, so hard.

The concert portions of the evening are a cotton-candy delight. Helen Park and Max Vernon have written a handful of pulsing K-pop gems that feel like they'd fit right into a Seoul top 40 playlist, with pulsing beats, solo vocal runs, tight harmonies and occasional interjections of rap. The talented cast deliver the goods, aided by Jennifer Weber's crisp and energetic choreography, Clint Ramos and Sophia Choi's flashy costumes, Jiyoun Chang's dramatic lighting and Gabriel Hainer Evansohn's sleek scenic design.

Birbiglia has a way of swallowing his punchlines, of going off in tangents that circle back to hard truths, that signal his gift for shaping an overarching narrative within the confines of the stand-up form. Yes, there are jokes - like his comedic complaint about how Airbnb's are guilty of false advertising for failing to deliver breakfast - but many serve as popcorn kernels strewn along the path to his larger point. (A point that he often then subverts with a perfectly timed punchline.) When you're in the good company of Birbiglia, after all, it feels perfectly normal to laugh in the face of death.

Birbiglia has a way of swallowing his punchlines, of going off in tangents that circle back to hard truths, that signal his gift for shaping an overarching narrative within the confines of the stand-up form. Yes, there are jokes - like his comedic complaint about how Airbnb's are guilty of false advertising for failing to deliver breakfast - but many serve as popcorn kernels strewn along the path to his larger point. (A point that he often then subverts with a perfectly timed punchline.) When you're in the good company of Birbiglia, after all, it feels perfectly normal to laugh in the face of death.

Now the show is back on Broadway, opening Thursday at the Golden Theatre, where director Kenny Leon has orchestrated two riveting performances from young stars best known for their onscreen work: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ('Watchmen') plays the older brother, Lincoln, a former street hustler with a demeaning and dead-end job as an Abe Lincoln impersonator in whiteface; while Corey Hawkins ('Straight Outta Compton') is younger brother Booth, an unemployed man who gets by shoplifting his basic needs while yearning for his brother's abandoned skills at three-card monte to make some real money.

Now the show is back on Broadway, opening Thursday at the Golden Theatre, where director Kenny Leon has orchestrated two riveting performances from young stars best known for their onscreen work: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ('Watchmen') plays the older brother, Lincoln, a former street hustler with a demeaning and dead-end job as an Abe Lincoln impersonator in whiteface; while Corey Hawkins ('Straight Outta Compton') is younger brother Booth, an unemployed man who gets by shoplifting his basic needs while yearning for his brother's abandoned skills at three-card monte to make some real money.

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.

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.