Tim Teeman

For a satire, “Chinese Republicans” is told disappointingly straight. Stiffly mounted, it doesn’t fully explore its own extremes, especially in Ellen’s swings of behavior and belief. The formation and dynamics of a group of true “Chinese Republicans” would make for a more intriguing show. Instead the play fillets its important, though well-worn, themes of racism and misogyny rather than examining the grit and nuance of characters and relationships. However, a quietly powerful final scene — revealing the reassertion of white patriarchy alongside one character’s weary determination to maintain her place within it — means “Chinese Republicans” concludes with a resonantly meaningful thud.

For a satire, “Chinese Republicans” is told disappointingly straight. Stiffly mounted, it doesn’t fully explore its own extremes, especially in Ellen’s swings of behavior and belief. The formation and dynamics of a group of true “Chinese Republicans” would make for a more intriguing show. Instead the play fillets its important, though well-worn, themes of racism and misogyny rather than examining the grit and nuance of characters and relationships. However, a quietly powerful final scene — revealing the reassertion of white patriarchy alongside one character’s weary determination to maintain her place within it — means “Chinese Republicans” concludes with a resonantly meaningful thud.

While fascinating in its ambition, pretty early the momentum of the play stalls, and Bug becomes an arduous descent into loud shouting and, ultimately, no answers. Coon and Smallwood’s performances navigating this nightmare slalom are electric. The play, prophetically prescient as it may be, is not.

The plot and characters are equally muddled, with a run-here, run-there, run-anywhere brand of direction that reveals the show hasn’t quite figured out what to do after the girls disappear, or how to recast or progress the film’s open frame of reference. Instead, it hits the main plot points while frustratedly banging its head against all of Picnic’s familiar mysteries. (Important note: this was the show’s second New York performance, so maybe it will evolve over time.)

With its main characters speaking and acting past each other, this Anna Christie doesn’t convincingly locate a strong rope-line from 1921 to now. Instead, it feels as unmoored as one of its barges, and overall a little lost in the muffling mists of that old devil sea.

However, darkness is not what this “Christmas Carol” is about, or where it wishes to dwell. This version relishes simpler things, such as its centerpiece sequence of a newly transformed Scrooge giddily greeting and shaking hands with the audience and overseeing a cavalcade of potatoes, sprouts, apples, oranges and a ginormous bronzed turkey, all transported to the stage via fabric chutes and rope. Amid this bounty, the audience is encouraged to donate to River Fund, a provider of emergency food in New York City.

The musical packs a more precise punch charting the grittier realities of Dougal and Robin’s emotions. It is very funny when Dougal rightly identifies Robin as his kind-of-new-auntie. It is sad when he realizes the truth about his dad, and it is also puzzling that he is so in the dark about it all pre-landing in America; Robin’s relationship with her sister is also under-explained and underwritten. The show is beautiful when it explodes with an old-fashioned song-and-dance number (“American Express”), the pair dressed to the nines, sweeping Fred-and-Gingerishly through the city for one night of expense and extravagance.

A catatonic dullness and brace of stereotypical side characters further clog the pacing of This World of Tomorrow. Its repetitive script is partially lifted by three things: the consistently versatile and engaging O’Hara who brings a sage edge to Carmen, Derek McLane’s vertical-pillar projections that transport the audience back to 1939, and Dede Ayite’s lovely costuming.

The show doesn’t laugh at its characters or at the competition itself, but humorously and movingly unpacks the spoken and silent challenges in the school gym that day. You root for the kids to win, and you nervously hold your breath as they hesitate over the orders of letters as they complete their spellings. Most of all, you marvel at the witty genius behind bringing it all together under the eaves of one exceptional musical.

But while the show’s songs run furiously hot, its characters stay resolutely cold and uninvolving. And, the book—despite Pinkham’s comically authoritative guiding hand—remains a messy puzzle, using the lingering Cold War and 1980s nuclear superpower tensions to implausibly sex up, well, chess.

It’s been over three years since Lincoln Center’s ambitious and winning revival of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of apocalypse-meets-absurdity The Skin of Our Teeth, which originally premiered on Broadway—mid-World War II—in 1942. Now the Public Theater is mounting Ethan Lipton’s knockout-excellent original musical adaptation, The Seat of Our Pants. The show, just shy of three hours long (booking to Dec. 7), is crisply directed (by Leigh Silverman), exquisitely performed by a starry, award-garlanded cast, and one of New York’s musical highlights of the year, on or off-Broadway.

Averse to fully confronting its textual conflicts, The Baker’s Wife instead opts for a mellifluously sung, all-is-fine finale. With its lovely performances this show isn’t just crumbs, but it’s not the full loaf either.

The Queen of Versailles doesn’t come to vanquish the Siegels or skewer their beliefs and lifestyle, or to contextualize or condemn Jackie and the bubble of crazy she lives in. She doesn’t face any personal or moral reckoning; she just carries on. What she really wants, why she really wants it, and what this musical really understands about any of it remains firmly concealed under those dustsheets.

One of the unwritten rules of American politics is that the vice president should never outshine the president. Eli Bauman’s 44: The Musical, tonally-strangely both an uproarious spoof and also very earnest tribute to Barack Obama, shatters that tradition, with the character of Joe Biden (Chad Doreck) spectacularly dominating the stage as the star of an uneven show, which is playing at the Daryl Roth Theatre through Dec. 7.

But deeper questioning and nuanced ambiguities aren’t really what Messy White Gays is about. Droege—famed for his impersonations of Chloë Sevigny—is a formidable joke writer, and in previous shows like Bright Colors and Bold Patterns and Happy Birthday Doug, his well-crafted volleys of insults, jokes, and gay-cultural observation were leavened with character evolution and observation. Messy White Gays is a different proposition—more a high-voltage, extended comedy sketch than fully realized play. The gags come…well…thick and fast. “There’s a problem.” “What? Is Lisa Rinna back in the cast of Chicago?” You may laugh, you may gasp (particularly at the literally blowout finale), and Messy White Gays may also make you want to stay in for the rest of your lives.

This isn’t conveyed sentimentally, but gently. And it is there right in front of us, in scenes—sprouting from James’ professional pursuit—that major on the composition and meanings of space and the universe. Observe the set itself: the black background, clunkily big couch, and the crucible of carpet containing the play’s frustrating, frustrated, yet winning characters. This imagined room, this stage, is its own modest planet, everyday and also otherworldly, spinning away from us but also right there: fixed, meaningful, and shining bright.

Of course, if you’re a devoted fan you may experience Romy & Michele: The Musical differently. By hewing so close to the movie, the pleasure in the intended nostalgic echoes—there is even very literal ’80s/’90s nostalgia beamed on to background screens—may make for a pleasurable evening. But at the performance I attended the applause after nearly every number (with one or two enthusiastically-received exceptions) was politely tepid at best.

The play speaks to itself, it speaks to us, and it encourages a dialogue straight back at it. In this sense, it is its own highly effective consciousness-raising exercise, looking at us in our present day where the principles of equality and progress are becoming derided and imperiled. What the women thought they were confronting and vanquishing in the early 1970s remains all too prescient.

The point perhaps is to emphasize the change we shall see in the second act, but it still plays as a straight glorification of mindless arrogance and violence, as we watch him and his group of friends stalk and swagger around the stage, setting their menacing exploits to a butch, staccato rhyme. Both the settings and direction feel queasily framed and dismally flat.

Reeves and Winter make you feel it when the men embrace—as if one is holding on to the life raft embodied by the other—and when they quietly care for each other, strange day after strange day. If this is stunt casting, then it is stunt casting with a sweetened depth. Their Didi and Gogo are a plausible flipside to Bill and Ted, for whom loyalty and friendship were the bedrock of their heroism. Whether Beckett intended it or not, and no matter the forces of nihilism assailing them, you feel this Didi and Gogo are going to be excellent to each other for eternity.

The musical—directed by Whitney White, and adapted from Damon Cardasis’ 2017 movie—switches between the heart-tugging register of Ulysses’ sense of isolation, and the snap and pop of its excellent soundtrack (at least two songs should be released as singles, right now). The show’s choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie fills the stage with consistently gorgeous fire and flair. Qween Jean’s costumes—riots of color, sparkle, dramatic silhouettes, and flattering detail—are lead characters in themselves.

Created and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, and directed by David Mendizábal, Mexodus is an inventive, technically impressive spectacle, both loudly propulsive and low-key meditative.

The really great thing in this all-star revival (Music Box Theatre, booking to Dec. 21) is those men are played by Bobby Cannavale, Neil Patrick Harris, and James Corden, the latter serving up an early-season comedy masterclass.

The play, directed by Sam Helfrich, darts between eras and modes of storytelling, not really settling on a compelling through-line. We hit the major McQueen life moments and personality traits—difficult childhood, abuse, working class background, the snobbery he initially endured, drugs, homophobia, sexual expression, his taking over at labels like Givenchy, suicide—but they jangle in a baffling muddle on stage.

The return of Mamma Mia! to Broadway, “for a limited six-month engagement,” is bargaining on ABBA fans’ eternal desire to hear their favorite songs again (and again). Judging by the man tapping his feet behind me, the many hands waving in the air, and the whooping that accompanied the show’s better-executed set pieces, its producers and the Winter Garden Theatre could be right in calculating on one of theater’s surer bets.