Tim Teeman — Theater Critic

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.

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.'

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.

Invective, repetition, manly backchat: the Mamet staples are here, but truly what gives with the damn coins? The actors make as much sense as they can of the foggy mystery and verbal extremity Mamet has written for them around these misplaced little shiny objects, but the playwright's hot air-so visible on Fox News this week-barely seems to merit his characters' heightened tempers, much less our interest. Still, Rockwell rocks it.

Even after an uneven opening stretch, and even if you are not quite sure what is going on after that, it doesn't matter. The Little Prince is a meditative experience, a bath of colors and sounds, directed and choreographed by Anne Tournié. The show's shifting tableaux are best experienced as a kind of fairground for the senses, no illicit substances required. It is unusual to see something on a Broadway stage that is a visual treat, without overdoing the visuals-that conveys wonder but subtly. It feels experimental, unpolished, and ambitious, all in good ways.

What Shane embodies is before us in the many and varied current attacks on the LGBTQ community, and trans youth in particular. It may even explain the paucity of out sports-people 20-plus years after Take Me Out's debut. Yet finally, Take Me Out also offers a vision of inclusion, of both finding a place, finding friendship, and finding a home. It comes with costs, but it's there-a genuinely unexpected field of dreams.

What makes the show, directed by Moises Kaufman, so current is the villainous presence of New York politician Frederic Tiggens (John Dossett), who is worried by the alliances and potential power of two minorities coming together, and formulates a number of despicable schemes to wreck the bar, and the semblance of a multi-cultural community within. In Tiggens, we see Donald Trump and all his discontents down through history-right down to the casual betrayal of the angry and disaffected voters whose support he courts to gain power. The stories on the complicated, jumbled, and overcrowded set do intersect, but what resonates most acutely today is how those in power seek to turn the marginalized against each other in order to maintain power.

The stolen moments of the play-Messing letting Ernestine silently imbibe the world and events around her-make the most impact, as well as its affecting denouement (in which Finn, again, is a standout), when Ernestine attempts to finally finish the cake (and my, how you will panic over her lifting a container of flour). As it confronts the big and small questions of existence and time itself, Birthday Candles itself proves simultaneously over-baked and under-baked, but its performers ensure it is served warm.

There is nothing surprising in the show, which opens tonight on Broadway. This is a slickly corporate, officially sanctioned slice of legacy clean-up. Two and a half hours of glittery hagiography. If you expect a musical that examines Jackson's life, controversies, and legacy, forget it. If you want to see anything which even mildly challenges the deification of Jackson, or interrogates his celebrity and actions with depth and nuance, this is not the show for you.

Tony winner Rashad's performance in this Manhattan Theatre Club production is pristine, sharp, deeply felt, caustic, and warm. Faye is a bullshit-destroyer on contact, and Rashad immediately imbues her with such depth of personality-rigid bearing, direct eye contact with whoever she speaks with-she has created one of the most distinctive and engaging characters on the Broadway stage this winter.

I think what is most powerful about the show, as with Nottage's Sweat, is how convincingly epic it quickly makes the everyday feel. Here are very small lives which seem huge, thanks to brilliant writing and just-as-brilliant acting. It is also notable that Clyde's features a happy ending, for everyone. The temptation with a drama like this is to go 100 percent gray and scratchy realism, but Nottage does not do that. The end brings together all the themes in one sandwich. Until then, each character has struggled to make their personal best, but then the climactic sandwich-the sandwich that may yet undo Clyde-is a creation of them all. And with their signature ingredient deployed, they are free.

This musical is truly awful and truly nuts, but-intentionally or not-it neatly reflects straight back to the audience the cartoon and circus the royal family has become both in the eyes of the world, and in the world's own making. De Waal appears before us in front of a wall of flashing lights, and exits the same way-in the glare of the paparazzi. But the paparazzi aren't the villains here; they are merely fulfilling their editors' and audience's desire to see pictures and get the story. As the musical makes clear, the royal family -a fusty institution desperate for an injection of glamor-needed Diana too. Eventually Diana recognizes her own power, and uses the media for her own ends.

The collision of musical styles and Kushner's clever, witty lyricism makes Caroline, Or Change a haunting, unforgettable musical. This critic loved its ambition, even if it was occasionally perplexing and opaque. Like Angels in America, the material fleshes out detail and the personal-trousers, musical instruments, comic books, lost coins, and bank notes-while also being proudly political, and showing how centrally politics exerts itself as a force on people's lives.

The collision of musical styles and Kushner's clever, witty lyricism makes Caroline, Or Change a haunting, unforgettable musical. This critic loved its ambition, even if it was occasionally perplexing and opaque. Like Angels in America, the material fleshes out detail and the personal-trousers, musical instruments, comic books, lost coins, and bank notes-while also being proudly political, and showing how centrally politics exerts itself as a force on people's lives.

It is not just lip-syncing, though, which implies a very basic act of impersonation or mimicry. For one, O'Connell masters every rustle, movement of the body, caught breath, laugh, rise of emotion. Every sound that is on tape, every pause, everything is replicated by her. But she also inhabits the character of Higginbotham commandingly too, sitting there, facing us.

While the play, directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, was not written in response to events of right now, it is a timely and sometimes moving interrogation of what it means to be a Black man at this moment. The play speaks bluntly and directly to an audience about what racism, inequality, aspiration, love, sexuality, tragedy, success, and happiness look like to a broad group of Black men in contemporary Brooklyn. It is unabashedly earnest.

Is This A Room is a gripping, highly recommended piece of theater, and also an unexpectedly intricate ballet. The 70-minute, deservedly multi-award winning play, which opens on Broadway tonight at the Lyceum Theatre, is an enactment of the transcript of what was said when the FBI first came to the Augusta, Georgia, home of former Air Force linguist and intelligence contractor Reality Winner on June 3, 2017.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson is one person, but in Lackawanna Blues-the show the Tony Award-winning performer has written, performs and directs, opening tonight at Broadway's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre-he becomes a voice of many. And, thanks to Santiago-Hudson's dexterity of interpretation, the many characters he embodies immediately become familiar and intriguing to us.Ruben Santiago-Hudson is one person, but in Lackawanna Blues-the show the Tony Award-winning performer has written, performs and directs, opening tonight at Broadway's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre-he becomes a voice of many. And, thanks to Santiago-Hudson's dexterity of interpretation, the many characters he embodies immediately become familiar and intriguing to us.

Of course it's worth the wait. Of course anyone planning their own return to Broadway should buy a ticket. It is one of the cleverest, wittiest, flashiest musicals in town-and sets up home in New York after rave reviews wherever it has played, including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it began life in 2017, and London's West End. On Sunday night, over 18 months later than anticipated, Six has its long overdue, much deserved moment to shine.

Of course it's worth the wait. Of course anyone planning their own return to Broadway should buy a ticket. It is one of the cleverest, wittiest, flashiest musicals in town-and sets up home in New York after rave reviews wherever it has played, including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it began life in 2017, and London's West End. On Sunday night, over 18 months later than anticipated, Six has its long overdue, much deserved moment to shine.