Tim Teeman

The show is a call to come together, and a call for change. Byrne is seen as a quiet man, wry and cerebral, but the political era we are in has made him determinedly loud, an activist even. Don't let the grey suit and beautiful theater curtain fool you. This excellent show isn't a misty harkening to an 'American utopia,' but a charged, focused challenge to create and maintain one. Cynicism and defeat haven't yet claimed Byrne. As this show makes resoundingly, eloquently clear, Byrne believes in his vision. He knows how tough the fight will be to achieve it. He still thinks we can do it, and he still believes in its beauty.

Maybe the rosy-colored flamingoes are an echo of this too, this warm throbbing color of life and promise. Whatever, Elliott and Tomei play their stuttering progress to romance with both flare and sensitivity, as well as for belly laughs. She wants to do something but can't. He wants to respect her space but isn't sure she wants him. And their body language tells the audience everything about how hot they are for each other.

On Broadway, necessarily, the play is bigger in every way; to this critic, some things are gained, others are lost in the increase in this scale. The performances are larger and broader, particularly in the deliberately off-kilter theatrics of the play's first segment. But the new, spectacle-sized aspect of Slave Play on Broadway also muffles some its most chilling moments and some of its most disturbing tableaux.

The Height of the Storm is written by Florian Zeller, translated by Christopher Hampton. Most recently in New York, we saw Zeller-translated-by-Hampton's The Mother, starring Isabelle Huppert, and in that-just as here-a blur of time and perspectives adds a general sense of bafflement to the drama on stage.

Of course, it's impossible to write about Derren Brown's show without writing about Derren Brown's show. He would smile at that. He's a wonderfully dry host for this evening of surprises, a skillful overseer of magic and illusion (he strenuously denies that he is a psychic). He toys with people, but not cruelly. He is charming, wry, brisk.

Pinter-and the brilliant trio of actors here-treat this uneasy dance as a particularly British game, where everyone is terrifically polite and sporting when they should be shouting, screaming and throwing suitcases out of windows. Instead, here a life-changing revelation is followed by a clipped inquiry into favorite books and summer holiday destinations.

As its two stars and title suggests, this is a production of dualities, and so the question of who does it better may depend on how you respond to either of these men and their stories.

Not that the thumping, pumping Moulin Rouge allows you to dwell on its misogyny. This is musical as spectacle, so if you don't exactly feel the peril and passion of Christian and Satine's doomed romance, then no matter, because another visual bonbon will be thrown at you soon enough.

Two thoughts occurred while watching the Broadway revival of Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, which opens Thursday night at the Broadhurst Theatre (booking to Aug. 25). Why couldn't this have opened a few weeks ago and been eligible for the Tony Awards? It would have been a strong contender for Best Revival of a Play, and its two stars, Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon, likely contenders for Best Actor/Actress in a Play.

If you are a fan of the film, there are plot similarities and divergences. Actually, the story careens all over the place, which doesn't matter because the performances are mostly excellent and the sets by David Korins notably stunning (including a mansion living room seemingly redecorated mid-performance).

It is not as grotesquely majestic as the pile of mannequins-as-dead-bodies in Taylor Mac's Gary, but Bunny Christie's duskily lit, toppling towers of newspapers and filing cabinets in Ink is another design marvel of this Broadway season.

Tootsie as a musical is a confusing mélange, and not for the sexual and romantic attractions and farce-heavy confusions it sets in motion by lead character Michael Dorsey's (Santino Fontana) cross-dressing. The Broadway version of the 1982 movie-which starred Dustin Hoffman as Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels-is both chaotic and apologetic, with a sharper and better book than it has music.

There is the pleasure, for the first half anyway, of Arthur Miller's All My Sons-which opened Monday night on Broadway (at the American Airlines Theatre, to June 23)-of well-executed theatrical convention; the reassurance of a revival done traditionally and done right.

Gary is a farce, a piece of messy circus whose many tones and shades will likely divide audiences and critics. But there is nothing like it on Broadway, and that is to be welcomed. It is an argument for art, and a passionate call for resistance-a pie of clashing ingredients just as is served for tea in the play. All three characters make their own brave moves at the end to effect some kind of change.

The play is as zippy as A Doll's House, Part 2, but whereas that felt new, fresh, and subversive, Hillary and Clinton feels like very old and well-trodden ground, a mash-up of every single argument you've ever heard (with very little new insight) in favor and against Hillary Clinton.

Hadestown has so much fun telling, as it puts it, this 'sad tale' that even though this retelling of a well-trodden Greek myth feels slight, it also makes for a joyful performance. Anaïs Mitchell's musical, which opens on Broadway tonight at the Walter Kerr Theatre (to September 1), is delicious to look at and listen to-truly, my new earworm is 'Way Down Hadestown'-even if its story is as wan as its central couple.

As the play ended, this critic thought about another-sadly invisible-play about desire, grief, need, and sexuality standing somewhere off in the shadows, while center stage Burn This stood shakily on its feet, bursting with energy and completely out of time.

You won't leave feeling miserable, but neither will you be slapping your knees. But this production of Oklahoma! feels less 'dark' than sensibly and successfully inquisitive. Fish and his cast ask reasoned questions of a musical that has contained all these questions in plain sight for many years-and in this Oklahoma! those questions are answered with vivid, pugnacious confidence.

The joy of watching Glenda Jackson as Lear in Sam Gold's lean and clear production is that she doesn't approach every well-known speech or phrasing at a grandiloquent gallop. Jackson's most noticeable verbal extravagance is an almost comically elongated rolling of her r's, and so 'crawl' becomes crrrrrrrrrawl.' (She also played Lear in 2016 in the U.K., though in a different, critically hailed production; it too rang with the present-day echoes of Brexit.)

Oh no, the heart sinks, another jukebox musical on Broadway. So many-Cher, Donna Summer-have been varying degrees of cringe. But after leaving Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations, which opened tonight at the Imperial Theatre (to November 24), a happy revelation: This jukebox musical not only has life, it also has wit, intelligence, while also looking stunning and full of energy.

The sparkling revival of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate on Broadway (at Studio 54, through June 2) is glorious to watch, a sumptuous treat. But whatever gender controversies the musical, originally mounted in 1948, once provoked, whatever issues it raised about male control and female compliance, have been cheerfully erased.

Be More Chill feels squawkily split between camp sci fi romp and searing teenage-life-today commentary. The title itself is the last annoying puzzle. If anything the show suggests that we all have to live with our insecurities and other inner demons; the trick is not to let them dominate us.

Both the fun and menace of Sam Shepard's True West-and the latest Broadway adaptation which opened tonight has both in vivid bursts-is to see two brotherly opposites swap sides and spirits.

Choir Boy has grown in theater size since its 2013 off-Broadway success, and some of the elements have grown beautifully in accordance, prime among them Pope's performance. The character never defines himself as gay. He doesn't deny it, and indeed there is evidence later on that he is, or is attracted to men. The shower scenes in the play not only reveal a lot of flesh, but also hidden desires (and more fear). But, he says: 'Sick of people calling me something I ain't doing. I'm just Pharus.'

Daniels' Atticus is folksy and ruffled, without Peck's idealistic though hardened eye. He keeps his head down. He doesn't want to confront anything. Daniels plays him as a man in eternal retreat, even if he is confronting racism in its most dangerous form. Daniels' Atticus is there and also absent, while everyone around him wants him to look up, be present, take a more obvious stand.