Tim Teeman

Together, Groban’s Todd and Ashford’s Mrs. Lovett are seductively comedic, tragic, and desperate—he slitting throats upstairs and then dispatching bodies down a Willy Wonka-ish chute into the fiery furnace for Mrs. Lovett to somehow expertly de-sinew and butcher into pies. If Todd seems lost in his madness but in outward control, Mrs. Lovett seems more attached to reality even if she is more lost in her mind. As he sings about killing, she reminds him they have to actually get rid of a body.

Dancin’ is mostly spectacular, until it suddenly isn’t—before ramping itself up again for the finale. An audience member behind me whooped through the first act and into the bravura first number of the second. And then their whoops hushed as the show dialed itself down. The difference in energy, not just on stage but in the theater, was stark; it was as if someone had stuck a pin in a balloon.

This is clearly intended as the dark underline, and to be subtly damning-meets-ironic. However, the more resonant melody at the end of Parade is a harking back to a past, and Leo and Lucille Frank, as characters on stage rather than real life, are not strong enough counter-presences to its nostalgic swooning. Whatever final critique is being attempted by Leo’s plaintive stare is lost in the folds of a lush melody that, rather than denouncing a dark past, elevates and embraces it.

Those final moments are in stark contrast to the main body of the play. There is no set decoration, no props. When characters put on dresses, have parties, freak out over letters, and—most infamously in Nora’s case—slam the door on the family home, there are none of those things. The characters say they are doing things, but they are just speaking to each other. The Helmer children, Ivar, Bob, and Emmy are mentioned, they are played with and chided—but they are not seen. This stylistic trickiness is seductive at the start, but its obsessive negation of any conventions begins to annoy; thankfully the excellent actors do not.

The three actors try to wring as many of the laughs and jolting moments from the script as possible. But they are navigating a mostly flaccid narrative which feels like a boring treasure hunt with lots of clues and teases, but ultimately no glinting treasure.

The urgency of the second act, and the energetic peaks in the men’s performances—particularly Pope’s—give The Collaboration some much-needed electricity, but the stilted staging of the play leaks power and focus from a show which determinedly keeps its protagonists a mystery.

Guirgis’ play is full of these piercing, inconclusive sub-plots and character portraits—an intricately composed feast of voices where everyone is more than an easy definition of good or bad, and the chorus of views and competing interests is really the melting pot of the city outside the theater, sieved and delivered with sharpened brio on stage. As New York gets quieter in these Christmas weeks, it may be the perfect time to hear those voices at full volume.

It’s taken 10 years for this production to make its way from London’s Menier Chocolate Factory via an Olivier Award-stop in the the West End to New York, and the NYTW’s small stage makes it even more of a treat—we can hear the voices and harmonies close-up (orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick and music design by Kai Harada). Somehow director Maria Friedman and choreographer Tim Jackson fill the stage with pods of movement and activity as loopy, tantalizing, and exacting as the lyrics, whether it be Mary’s drunken tirade and falls, bread rolls being used as missiles, or the wonderful company lurching as one towards the audience as the Blob, into which Sondheim and Furth distilled their version of the exhausting tastemakers (“Faabulous”) who govern the cultural conversation.

Some Like it Hot (Sam S. Shubert Theatre, booking to Sept 3, 2023) is a razzle-dazzle puzzle—a proudly old-school Broadway musical based on the much-beloved 1959 film that also aims to take account of the times it is now showing in. The dancing and singing are a delight; Some Like it Hot reminds you that in shows both exquisite and terrible—and everything in between—brilliant Broadway dancers and musicians are the unsung backbones of so many productions. They deserve a special round of applause for their work in this show.

If you’re a Neil Diamond fan, you’ll be in clover. All around this critic, his devoted faithful waved, pointed to the sky, swayed, whooped, and sang. A Beautiful Noise is a jukebox musical (Broadhurst Theatre, booking to September 3, 2023) only for those who love Neil Diamond—or for people who want to hear “Sweet Caroline” played with theater roof-raising gusto. If you’re not a Neil Diamond fan, you’ll have to figure out how much you want to hear “Sweet Caroline” played with theater roof-raising gusto, and make your ticket-buying choice accordingly.

Two distinct strands emerge during KPOP. One is an amped-up music and dancing extravaganza, which when it really takes light is visually and aurally exciting (the boy band's 'Shake It' is a total thriller near the end). Leaning into its concert heart, the show relies on the smooth execution of its songs (Helen Park and Max Vernon), alongside excellent choreography (Jennifer Weber), lighting (Jiyoun Chang), sound design (Peter Fitzgerald and Andrew Keister), projections (Peter Nigrini), and costumes (Clint Ramos and Sophia Choi).

Playing both narrator and all the characters is no small feat-as reflected by the warm standing ovation for Mays the night this critic attended. But the magic of this production, adapted by Mays, Susan Lyons, and director Michael Arden, is down a lot to Laffrey's stupendous stage design, which is a riot of trickery and surprises, Ben Stanton's lighting, and Joshua D. Reid's sound design.

We are all charmed, beguiled. He says he does not have a swimmer's body, but a drowner's body. The Brooklyn YMCA is less a building than a smell, he conveys in one barnstorming riff. Birbiglia finds humor in everything around him-and tells it so smoothly he makes it look effortless. This ease on stage is a good camouflage of an ingenious comic technician. This is not the lackadaisical piece of theater it seems, but tightly constructed and wittily performed.

It was strange, leaving for a breath of fresh air at intermission during Kimberly Akimbo (Booth Theatre, booking to April 23, 2023), to realize that my face had been creased in a constant smile since curtain-up. Sometimes, many times, that smile had broken out into a laugh, because this Broadway musical based on David Lindsay-Abaire's play of the same name is extremely funny. And even when this musical, transferred from a successful off-Broadway run at the Atlantic Theater, isn't funny-because the book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire come with piercing, meaningful jabs too-there is something about Kimberly Akimbo's execution that feels springy and light at its heart. Under Jessica Stone's assured direction, and clever, layered music by Jeanine Tesori, it's a delight, the standout new Broadway musical of the season so far.

Rarely has rock 'n' roll looked and sounded as boring and tedious as it does in the strange Broadway mess that is Almost Famous (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, booking to April 9, 2023). This is odd, as the musical is based on the popular Oscar-winning film, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, who also wrote the book and lyrics for the stage show (music and other lyrics by Tom Kitt). Semi-autobiographical, it features teenage journalist William Miller (Casey Likes) as he wheedles his way, by faking being much older on the phone, into following a dysfunctional rock band called Stillwater to make his writing debut in Rolling Stone in 1973. The result, on stage, is wince-inducing-a leaping, sing-songy, wishy-washy, toothless, sanitized, and humorless version of what that era of rock 'n' roll was.

The writing and direction are scythe-sharp and precise, and Hawkins' and Abdul-Mateen's are two superlative performances-for this critic, the standout of this current Broadway season so far: energetic, witty, mischievous, searing, tender, and vulnerable.

Willy Loman should be the focus of Death of a Salesman. It is his flailing death spiral that forms the narrative heart of Arthur Miller's legendary play. But in the latest Broadway revival, starring The Wire and Treme star Wendell Pierce as Willy, which opens tonight (Hudson Theatre, through January 15, 2023)-with the Lomans played by an all-Black lead cast-the production's anchor is Willy's wife Linda, played by the simply stupendous Sharon D Clarke.

The Broadway revival of the Tony-winning '1776' is best as a fascinating history lesson, and at its most dragging when the mostly-not-all unmemorable songs take us away from that.

Yes, this play is radical in its characterization of disability and disabled people, in giving nuance, spirit, life, and agency to characters and actors often denied all of those. It shows why writing and directing material like this should not be radical, it should just be. Cost of Living is a beautiful and thrilling piece of theater about the various tendernesses of simply being human, as well as a bracing challenge to all kinds of cultural forms and genres to follow its example.

Stoppard writes with moving power about finding out the truth about oneself while understanding why that truth was obscured for so long. We see how and why people may run from themselves and their identity, but never so far that one is ever completely out of sight of where one came from.

Despite the attractive projections of Afghanistan and San Francisco, there is no relief to be found in the staging of the show. Characters do that weird thing of walking round in circles and to the left and right a bit to convey walking long distances or negotiating spaces with unseen doors or streets. The biggest bizarre design decision is to not feature actual theater-filling, kite-flying. Come on, you're in a Broadway theater doing The Kite Runner! What about finding a striking way to recreate the amazing races Hosseini evokes so beautifully on the page. But no. Instead, all that lingers is the heavy pall of homophobic, simplistic ugliness-and so many unanswered questions.

As it turned out, Mr. Saturday Night was perfect to watch on a Sunday afternoon. It's billed as a musical comedy, but really it feels like an amiable comedy with some songs scattered on it, like icing sugar on a light sponge. Its star Billy Crystal wrote the book with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel; the music is by Jason Robert Brown, and lyrics by Amanda Green. The show is a ranging 2 hours and 40 minutes (opening Wednesday night at the Nederlander Theatre, booking to Sept. 4), but in the spirit of many good things on stage, it does not dawdle under John Rando's easy-as-it-goes direction, instead ambling pleasantly and un-challengingly along at its own pace.

Selina Fillinger's POTUS, (Shubert Theatre, to Aug. 14) about seven women in the backrooms of the White House trying to save the unseen male president from himself, has extremely funny, sustained moments of pan-meets-frothing-boil and then moments when the dials are turned down, and proceedings lightly simmer. These quieter stretches are not fatal-you just want the comedy to return to its delicious nuttiness; as its subtitle has it: 'Or, behind every great dumbass are seven women trying to keep him alive.'

Generally, however, they seem beached and static as a couple. He sees a poker game as more important than her opening night and is furious with her when she financially helps him. There are dry oil wells and phony bond deals, and finally jail. The show leaves the audience with the problem of not really having anyone to cheer for, or castigate. They are clearly an incompatible couple, and we are forced to spend an evening with them, not making any sense of their union. They have a child whose presence is passingly alluded to. Nick is not a crook, just weak; Fanny is not an overbearing partner, just loyal. And there we have it, over and over again.

Whatever else, Letts holds a black mirror up to us about where we are and where our society and we may be headed as Republican extremists and democracy's destroyers take hold of local, national, and international politics. It is not just our vote that matters, The Minutes makes clear, but our active participation in the frayed-to-torn thing we still call democracy.