Tim Teeman — Theater Critic

This production wants you to have immense fun, and to never forget the well-known horrors just over its horizon—the relationship between Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz is imperiled by Nazism’s charge, a smashed window is stunningly conveyed by petals of falling paper. It also wants you to get, well, liquored up. Just what kind of night does Cabaret on Broadway intend you have? Glug pricey drinks and nibble on charcuterie and dwell on the effects of fascism, bigotry, and violence that Cabaret animates? The night this critic attended, an unruly person, likely inebriated, was thrown out for reaching at Redmayne.

For one, both Succession and this adaptation, directed by Sam Gold (who is married to Herzog) know how to crunchily position drama and wit, profundity and comedy, alongside one another. This brilliant Enemy of the People is notably funny in both its smarts and pacing, and even its later gathering darkness—when Stockmann is viciously trounced and isolated by his townsfolk—is studded with light, and the certainty of his self-preservation.

It has been a brisk, and pleasant analysis, but it feels in some ways too slight, rushed, and not investigative enough—like a decorous, beautifully modulated TED talk. Page alludes to the power of playing a villain, and what it has meant to him, and how intense it has been for him at times. But we hear no more of this. How has playing villains, Shakespearean and not, affected him, or changed anything of him? And what of women? Apart from Lady Macbeth’s opening salvo, we hear nothing of Shakespeare’s villainous women—we need more of Lady M, and others like Goneril. What of revelatory text spoken by villains that may be illuminating or complicating that isn’t so well-known? But Page is a charming, consummate raconteur, and this is still an inviting feast—it’s to his credit he leaves us wanting way more.

What also distinguishes it are its Broadway royalty-level, award-garlanded stars, Kelli O’Hara and Brian D’Arcy James (Tony-nominated this year for Into the Woods), who are more familiar to audiences for playing good or engaging lead characters. Instead, here they play a couple on a relentlessly degrading, depressing, downward spiral. As Kirsten Arnesen and Joe Clay, at least for the first 10 minutes, they represent the kind of sexy partnership who would ordinarily fizz and shine—both are attractive and charming performers—but in Days of Wine and Roses they fall to pieces in front of us, the most toxic of partnerships in free fall.

The piercing poetry of Williams’ words flickers into life many times, but also feel missed and blurred. Nonno’s poem, as it is finally delivered—about an olive branch observing the sky—feels underwhelming, rather than a profound underline. Williams may have known or imagined a way to crystallize The Night of the Iguana into knowability—but this almost 3-hour production feels lost, even as its actors valiantly attempt to do the same.

There is, strangely but maybe tellingly, very little reflection of the racist history staring the Lafayettes in the face, or what their responsibility should be toward it. Instead, the family is stuck in the fault-line of the two meanings of the title of the play. The audience I sat among sighed at the characters’ insensitivity and myopia, and their ability to say and absolutely do the wrong thing, or ignore what is right in front of them. Appropriate shows how the persistence of racism and prejudice does not just come down to the practice of overt racism, but the practice of unthinking, lazy, deliberate ignorance.

However, this shaky narrative framing does not affect the joy and brilliance of Buena Vista Social Club’s supreme execution of music and dance. Thanks to its excellent ensemble of musicians and singers, we can all be grateful that, as Juan says to the audience at the end, “a sound like this... tends to travel.”

“An object at rest stays at rest,” Liam sings in his final song, “Building Momentum,” which is a song about crafting one’s own destiny, the future that makes sense to you. And in the decisions and end-points of the characters on stage—and in their final rock-out dance and singing—that is the emphatic common theme. The song is not a plea for understanding and acceptance of any kind. It is, like the rest of How to Dance in Ohio, a funny, joyful, and cheering assertion of both diversity and self-determination.

The production, directed by Michael Greif, has a through-line of sweetness that overrides a roughness of New York City living it implies but never delivers on—and spiritually never wants to dwell in. Its mean streets are not that mean, its central romantic storyline never rises to a passion that the audience feels invested in, and its family dramas are of the safe, after-school special kind. This is, at its heart, a warm bath of a musical; Camille A. Brown’s fabulous choreography supplies a welcome and impressive swagger.

Spamalot’s expertly written and performed silliness is endless, beguiling, and winning, and so well-done that—despite the gay and Jewish clunkers of songs—the musical remains a daffy, rollicking night out. The final confetti canon—a Broadway staple, and often a last desperate roll of the dice in any show—here feels absolutely perfect.

Even as they finally resolve to “go,” in this Godot—as in every Godot—Shannon and Sparks remain stuck in the perennial purgatory that follows the utterance of that final line. However, this production comes with the cushion of comforting companionship its two lead actors skillfully conjure and convey. It’s a rare production that you want to carry on waiting for Godot with Didi and Gogo, but this is one.

However, the musical—music by Manilow, book and lyrics by Sussman, directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle—only makes an occasionally compelling case that the Harmonists (Ari Leshnikoff, Erich Collin, Erwin “Chopin” Bootz, Robert Biberti, Harry Frommerman, and Cantor Josef Roman Cykowski, aka “Rabbi”) should be better remembered by history. The unevenly staged Harmony is a shakily constructed set of misfiring elements, whose most compelling beats around Nazism, Antisemitism, and bigotry—all points resoundingly and rightly made—feel imposed and didactic rather than flowing naturally from the source material.

To match the living circumstances of its lead character, the play feels a deflating mess, with puzzling performances and staging as if no one involved quite knows what it is—comedy, whimsy, or low-key tragedy? Of course, a play can be all those things, but I Need That jerks uneasily around many registers, never finding its heart, or dramatic or thematic purpose. The play is as muddled as Sam’s home, with characters not really speaking to each other. It grouches along, just as Sam and Foster mull the world around them, but—thanks to so many similar stories and characters on TV and film—we know where this is headed

You know a piece of theater has done something right when, many days later, it is still provoking pin-pricks of intrigue, revelation, and mystery in one’s mind. And so it is with Stereophonic (Playwrights Horizons, to Nov. 26)—one of the most original, stunningly designed, and technically dazzling plays in New York right now. Stereophonic is a must-experience, rather than simply a must-see.

Here We Are, mostly and regardless of some lovely performances, leaves no profound emotional impression at its end. It sure tries. When in its closing seconds the characters tell us what their experience meant to them, it feels like a stab at redemption and learning that comes across as more puzzling overshare, because for most of the production has not sketched any kind of ongoing emotional or psychological impact of their various trials and tribulations. It is so bizarre and rushed. Why do this now? What have they recognizably gone through, who have they been to each other in front of us, to suddenly reveal this stuff?

The Tony-winning (for Carousel) Mendez, Radcliffe and Groff share a terrific collective chemistry that roots and animates the show. That does not mean the transfer of this Sonia Friedman-directed show from New York Theatre Workshop is issue- or problem-free; oddly, it has sprouted unwelcome oddities in its upsizing. But it’s mainly still just as terrific it was in its luminous downtown incarnation. Even its newly spawned dents can’t shatter the whole, because the performances—not just the leads, the whole company—zing throughout. The lyrics and music are Sondheim at his most waspish and wise; days later, the songs are still buzzing in my mind, insisting on being hummed.

It is promising when a theater set gets its own round of applause, and David Zinn’s vibrant and ingenious imagining for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, booking to Nov. 5) on Broadway deservedly gets just that when the full interior glory of the imagined hair braiding shop in Harlem just off 125th Street reveals itself. Along with its bustling set of chairs, hair model posters, a Ghanian flag, and much, much Barbie-ish pink, Jocelyn Bioh’s play, set in the pre-pandemic summer of 2019 and produced by Manhattan Theatre Club, has all the energy and rich character interplay that her excellent award-winning 2017 play, School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play, possessed.

Etheridge says she knows her son would want her to live, and embrace life, and this is what she has tried to do. She ends the show with “Come to My Window,” encouraging her fans to sing along. They do. It’s a crowd-pleasing end to a show that resoundingly succeeds as a concert, rather than a piece of theater. As Etheridge sings in “Here I Am Again,” music is her lifeblood—both energy and salve. “The song,” she sings, “will never end.”

Etheridge says she knows her son would want her to live, and embrace life, and this is what she has tried to do. She ends the show with “Come to My Window,” encouraging her fans to sing along. They do. It’s a crowd-pleasing end to a show that resoundingly succeeds as a concert, rather than a piece of theater. As Etheridge sings in “Here I Am Again,” music is her lifeblood—both energy and salve. “The song,” she sings, “will never end.”

A modern audience, a 2023 audience, must travel to 1961—and to Davis’ very deliberate narrative balancing act—to meet the play not just when it was written, but how it was written. This wonderful cast does precisely that, playing the laughs for every ounce of hilarity to be gleaned from them, and then in a sudden turn confronting racism and white supremacy head-on. Ol’ Cap’n, and all he represents, are shown to be both vicious and ridiculous.

A modern audience, a 2023 audience, must travel to 1961—and to Davis’ very deliberate narrative balancing act—to meet the play not just when it was written, but how it was written. This wonderful cast does precisely that, playing the laughs for every ounce of hilarity to be gleaned from them, and then in a sudden turn confronting racism and white supremacy head-on. Ol’ Cap’n, and all he represents, are shown to be both vicious and ridiculous.

And yet, still, at the end, Bloom does make us laugh. But there is no easy reconciliation with Death; what we finally see, what Bloom finally imagines, is an uneasy tango to that “cum tree” song. The living, Bloom astutely concludes, don’t have a choice. Sorry for the downer, she intimates, but jokes can’t and don’t help. We must all live with Death.

And yet, still, at the end, Bloom does make us laugh. But there is no easy reconciliation with Death; what we finally see, what Bloom finally imagines, is an uneasy tango to that “cum tree” song. The living, Bloom astutely concludes, don’t have a choice. Sorry for the downer, she intimates, but jokes can’t and don’t help. We must all live with Death.

Díaz’s skills as an illusionist are faultless, but the show feels off-kilter as a piece of theater. Díaz feels impressively in charge of his tricks, but not the show as a show. His audience interactions feel stilted and off. One little boy who was shepherded up on stage was lightly (not unpleasantly, but oddly) joshed with. Another amazing illusion required the participation of a female specifically, Díaz said. But, having watched the illusion (which really does have you rubbing your eyes in disbelief), this audience member was left thinking: that could have been a male. Why a female specifically?

“Do you really think people are going to be talking about this in fifty years?” he adds a moment later, showing his crystal ball is just as faulty as it is functioning. The final shot soon-to-be-completed, the men know giddily that freedom will soon be theirs. But what they don’t know is that Jaws will go on to become the cultural totem we know it as today—and it is in the humorous and profound gap of past and present, known and unknown, and ignorance and wisdom that The Shark Is Broken wittily excels not just as a clever time capsule, but as an examination of male bonding and competitiveness, ego, frailty, fame, and film-making. Which is to say: you don’t miss the shark for one second.