Thom Geier — Theater Critic

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.