Critics’ picks for theater and Broadway in New York

Broadway review by Adam Feldman “Keep it light, keep it tight, keep it fun, and then we’re done!” That’s the pithy advice that the indignant 16th-century housewife Anne Hathaway (Betsy Wolfe) imparts to her neglectful husband, William Shakespeare (Stark Sands), as a way to improve his play Romeo and Juliet, which she considers too much of a downer. It is also the guiding ethos of the new Broadway jukebox musical & Juliet, a quasi-Elizabethan romp through the chart-toppers of Swedish songwriter-producer Max Martin. A diverting synthetic crossbreed of Moulin Rouge!, Something Rotten!, Mamma Mia! and Head Over Heels, this show delivers just what you’d expect. It is what it is: It gives you the hooks and it gets the ovations.  Martin is the preeminent pop hitmaker of the past 25 years, so & Juliet has a lot to draw from. The show’s 30 songs include multiple bops originally recorded by the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and Katy Perry, as well as tunes that Martin wrote—or, in all but two cases, co-wrote—for Pink, NSYNC, Kesha, Robyn, Kelly Clarkson, Jessie J, Céline Dion, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Ellie Goulding, Demi Lovato, Adam Lambert, the Weeknd and even Bon Jovi. (Notably absent are any of his collaborations with Taylor Swift.) “Roar,” “Domino,” “Since U Been Gone”: the hit list goes on and on. As a compilation disc performed live, it’s a feast for Millennials; its alternate title might well be Now That’s What I Call a Musical! & Julietl | Photograph: Matthew Murp

Theater review by Regina Robbins  Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia unfolds across two timelines. In the early 19th century, a Cambridge graduate works as a tutor on an English country estate, overseeing the education of a precocious young lady; nearly two centuries later, in the same house, three scholars seek to unravel mysteries left unsolved in the past. Among the subjects it surveys are mathematics, physics, history and music, and these interests are not merely academic; they are directly related to the play’s structure and plot. Real talk: This isn't a carefree evening at the theater. It is, however, a balm to the soul as much as a workout for the brain, and its current Off Broadway revival reminds us why this 1993 play about what’s lost to time has, so far, proven timeless. Bedlam, a small but mighty ensemble company that reinvigorates the classics by ruthlessly reconstructing them, gets high marks for this production. As usual, director Eric Tucker lets the audience see the theatrical gears turning, staging the action on a set (by John McDermott) that erodes both the boundary between past and present and the one that separates performers from the audience. Yet he keeps the strands of the story from becoming a confusing tangle, which is no mean feat considering how much Stoppard puts on our plates: Regency Era sexual liaisons, modern-day professional rivalries (complicated by sex) and glorious questions about science, art and the meaning of life. The playwright has cultivated thi

Three deadpan blue-skinned men with extraterrestrial imaginations carry this tourist fave, a show as smart as it is ridiculous. They drum on open tubs of paint, creating splashes of color; they consume Twinkies and Cap'n Crunch; they engulf the audience in a roiling sea of toilet paper. For sheer weird, exuberant fun, it's hard to top this long-running treat. (Note: The playing schedule varies from week to week, with as many as four performances on some days and none on others.)

If theater is your religion and the Broadway musical your sect, you've been woefully faith-challenged of late. Venturesome, boundary-pushing works such as Spring Awakening, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Next to Normal closed too soon. American Idiot was shamefully ignored at the Tonys and will be gone in three weeks. Meanwhile, that airborne infection Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark dominates headlines and rakes in millions, without even opening. Celebrities and corporate brands sell poor material, innovation gets shown the door, and crap floats to the top. It's enough to turn you heretic, to sing along with The Book of Mormon's Ugandan villagers: "Fuck you God in the ass, mouth and cunt-a, fuck you in the eye." Such deeply penetrating lyrics offer a smidgen of the manifold scato-theological joys to be had at this viciously hilarious treat crafted by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, of South Park fame, and composer-lyricist Robert Lopez, who cowrote Avenue Q. As you laugh your head off at perky Latter-day Saints tap-dancing while fiercely repressing gay tendencies deep in the African bush, you will be transported back ten years, when The Producers and Urinetown resurrected American musical comedy, imbuing time-tested conventions with metatheatrical irreverence and a healthy dose of bad-taste humor. Brimming with cheerful obscenity, sharp satire and catchy tunes, The Book of Mormon is a sick mystic revelation, the most exuberantly entertaining Broadway musical in years. The high q

Steve Cohen, billed as the Millionaires’ Magician, conjures high-class parlor magic in the marble-columned Madison Room at the swank Lotte New York Palace. Audiences must dress to be impressed (cocktail attire is required); tickets start at $125, with an option to pay more for meet-and-greet time and extra tricks with Cohen after the show. But if you've come to see a classic-style magic act, you get what you pay for. Sporting a tuxedo and bright rust hair, the magician delivers routines that he has buffed to a patent-leather gleam: In addition to his signature act—"Think-a-Drink," involving a kettle that pours liquids by request—highlights include a lulu of levitation trick and a card-trick finale that leaves you feeling like, well, a million bucks.

Theater review by Raven Snook Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors goes for the jocular. Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen's silly, sexy spoof of Bram Stoker's bloodcurdling novel replaces horror with humor, centering on a pumped-up, preening, pansexual vampire (a drop-dead gorgeous James Daly) who is suffering through an eternal-life crisis. When his milquetoast British lawyer (Andrew Keenan-Bolger) arrives in Transylvania with property deeds to sign and a fetching photo of his fiancée, Lucy (Jordan Boatman), the Count hears London calling. Greenberg and Rosen throw everything at the castle wall to see what shticks: Puns, punch lines, pop-culture gags, malapropisms, slapstick and quick changes induce giggles (and occasional groans) as five crackerjack actors sink their comic teeth into the material. Under Greenberg's spirited direction, most of them portray more than one character. Ellen Harvey is a hoot as Lucy's pompous father and Dracula's maniacal manservant, and Arnie Burton—who has flaunted his multi-character prowess for years in shows like The 39 Steps and The Government Inspector—makes a meal out of his roles as Lucy's homely, horny sister and the no-nonsense, female, heavily German-accented Dr. Van Helsing. Although it doesn't always reach the delirious heights of Charles Ludlam’s The Mystery of Irma Vep, with which it shares a bloodline, this fast-paced show is much funnier than, say, Mel Brooks' sucky Dracula: Dead and Loving It. The design is as over-the-top as the tone,

Self-described “bubble scientist” Fan Yang's blissfully disarming act (now performed in New York by his son Deni, daughter Melody and wife Ana) consists mainly of generating a dazzling succession of bubbles in mind-blowing configurations, filling them with smoke or linking them into long chains. Lasers and flashing colored lights add to the trippy visuals.—David Cote   TIME OUT DISCOUNT TICKET OFFER:THE GAZILLION BUBBLE SHOWIt will blow you away!!!Tickets as low as $49 (regular price $79) Promotional description:After twenty years as a Master of Bubbles, Fan Yang brought his unique brand of artistry to the Big Apple in 2007 and has since wowed bubble lovers of all ages. The Gazillion Bubble Show truly is a family affair for Fan: His wife Ana, son Deni, daughter Melody and brother Jano all can be found on stage in New York and around the world performing their bubble magic. Audiences are delighted with an unbubblievable experience and washed with a bubble tide; some even find themselves inside a bubble. Mind-blowing bubble magic, spectacular laser lighting effects and momentary soapy masterpieces will make you smile, laugh and feel like a kid again.THREE WAYS TO BUY TICKETS:1. Online: Click here to buy tickets through Telecharge2. By phone: Call 212-947-8844 and mention code: GBTONYF453. In person: Print this offer and bring it to the New World Stages box officePerformance schedule: Friday at 7pm; Saturday at 11am, 2pm and 4:30pm; Sunday at 12pm and 3pm Running time: 1hr. No

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Doug Simon and Bud Davenport wear many hats in their enthusiastic presentation of Gutenberg! The Musical! Not only are these overeager friends from New Jersey the authors of a highly unpromising new tuner about the 15th-century inventor of the printing press, but they also narrate this show, explain their writing choices and play every part; their roles are differentiated via dozens of yellow baseball caps with the characters’ names spelled out on them, like the shirts in the doomed original production of Merrily We Roll Along. Having spent their life savings to rent Broadway’s James Earl Jones Theatre for a one-night backers’ audition, hoping to corral producers for their project, they throw everything they’ve got—and, alas, more—into songs that are very bad at the very best. “Gutenberg! Darn tootin’-berg,” they sing in their show’s big opener. “He’s the best chap around / At least in this town / Sure as shootin’-berg!” If they seem nervous, that’s because they’re taking a mighty big risk up there; after all, as Doug’s late mother once told him, “You gotta put food on the table and you can’t eat dreams!” So the open laughter that their amateurish presentation evokes from the audience might seem a bit cruel—that is, if Doug and Bud were real wanna-be writers and not the fictional heroes of Scott Brown and Anthony King’s silly-smart, sweet-natured and very funny meta-musical, and if they weren’t being played by the hilarious Andrew Rannells and

Theater review by Adam Feldman  Here’s my advice: Go to hell. And by hell, of course, I mean Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell’s fizzy, moody, thrilling new Broadway musical. Ostensibly, at least, the show is a modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice: Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy goes to the land of the dead in hopes of retrieving girl, boy loses girl again. “It’s an old song,” sings our narrator, the messenger god Hermes (André De Shields, a master of arch razzle-dazzle). “And we’re gonna sing it again.” But it’s the newness of Mitchell’s musical account—and Rachel Chavkin’s gracefully dynamic staging—that bring this old story to quivering life. In a New Orleans–style bar, hardened waif Eurydice (Eva Noblezada) falls for Orpheus (Reeve Carney), a busboy with an otherworldly high-tenor voice who is working, like Roger in Rent, toward writing one perfect song. But dreams don’t pay the bills, so the desperate Eurydice—taunted by the Fates in three-part jazz harmony—opts to sell her soul to the underworld overlord Hades (Patrick Page, intoning jaded come-ons in his unique sub-sepulchral growl, like a malevolent Leonard Cohen). Soon she is forced, by contract, into the ranks of the leather-clad grunts of Hades’s filthy factory city; if not actually dead, she is “dead to the world anyway.” This Hades is a drawling capitalist patriarch who keeps his minions loyal by giving them the minimum they need to survive. (“The enemy is poverty,” he sings to them in

Hamilton: Theater review by David Cote What is left to say? After Founding Father Alexander Hamilton’s prodigious quill scratched out 12 volumes of nation-building fiscal and military policy; after Lin-Manuel Miranda turned that titanic achievement (via Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography) into the greatest American musical in decades; after every critic in town (including me) praised the Public Theater world premiere to high heaven; and after seeing this language-drunk, rhyme-crazy dynamo a second time, I can only marvel: We've used up all the damn words. Wait, here are three stragglers, straight from the heart: I love Hamilton. I love it like I love New York, or Broadway when it gets it right. And this is so right. A sublime conjunction of radio-ready hip-hop (as well as R&B, Britpop and trad showstoppers), under-dramatized American history and Miranda’s uniquely personal focus as a first-generation Puerto Rican and inexhaustible wordsmith, Hamilton hits multilevel culture buttons, hard. No wonder the show was anointed a sensation before even opening. Assuming you don’t know the basics, ­Hamilton is a (mostly) rapped-through biomusical about an orphan immigrant from the Caribbean who came to New York, served as secretary to General Washington, fought against the redcoats, authored most of the Federalist Papers defending the Constitution, founded the Treasury and the New York Post and even made time for an extramarital affair that he damage-controlled in a scandal-stanching pamphle

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  “When you’re in harmony, you’re in a trance,” sing the members of a 1930s German vocal group in the opening number of Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman’s heartfelt and often stirring Harmony. “Others went marching, / Not us, we’d dance!” At first pass, this attitude is presented as an insouciant strategy for dealing with poverty during the Weimar Era; later, when the Nazis rise to power and escapism turns into an actual need to escape, it comes to seem more like an indictment.  That idea is already the basis of a classic musical: the trenchant Cabaret, which will return to Broadway this spring. But here, it is almost beside the point. Harmony is based on the real-life history of the Comedian Harmonists, a singing sextet—half Jewish, half Gentile—that rose to fame in the late 1920s. The shadow of Nazi atrocities falls backward over the plot, but only one person onstage knows what is coming: Rabbi (Chip Zien), an older version of one of the group’s members—his nickname comes from having worked as a cantor—who narrates the story in retrospect, dressed in an argyle sweater vest. Although this Rabbi wrestles with questions of implicit complicity, Harmony serves mainly to honor the group’s memory. It tries to find joy amid the mourning, like a funeral framed as a celebration of life.  Accordingly, the musical is strongest as a platform for its talented performers. Director-choreographer Warren Carlyle captures the spirit of the Comedian Harmonists thr

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Reducio! After 18 months, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has returned to Broadway in a dramatically new form. As though it had cast a Shrinking Charm on itself, the formerly two-part epic is now a single show, albeit a long one: Almost three and a half hours of stage wizardry, set 20 years after the end of J.K. Rowling’s seven-part book series and tied to a complicated time-travel plot about the sons of Harry Potter and his childhood foe Draco Malfoy. (See below for a full review of the 2018 production.) Audiences who were put off by the previous version’s tricky schedule and double price should catch the magic now.  Despite its shrinking, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has kept most of its charm. The spectacular set pieces of John Tiffany’s production remain—the staircase ballet, the underwater swimming scene, the gorgeous flying wraiths—but about a third of the former text has been excised. Some of the changes are surgical trims, and others are more substantial. The older characters take the brunt of the cuts (Harry’s flashback nightmares, for example, are completely gone); there is less texture to the conflicts between the fathers and sons, and the plotting sometimes feels more rushed than before. But the changes have the salutary effect of focusing the story on its most interesting new creations: the resentful Albus Potter (James Romney) and the unpopular Scorpius Malfoy (Brady Dalton Richards), whose bond has been reconceived in a s

Theater review by Adam Feldman  “Here we are,” says a maîtresse d'hôtel as she seats a table of wealthy people at the fancy Café Everything. “I hope this is acceptable. Your enabler will be here momentarily.” But the plenitude promised by the restaurant’s name is soon revealed to be a grave exaggeration, and the hungry patrons are no luckier finding food at their next destination, a “post-deconstructive” French bistro where tragedy has recently struck. “It is what it is,” sings their waitress, who alternates between wailing and Gallic resignation. “Things are what they are. La vie est la vie.”   The aggrieved would-be diners wind up spending the entire first act of Here We Are in a literally fruitless quest to be fed, and some audiences at this collaboration between the playwright David Ives and the composer Stephen Sondheim may feel similarly confused and undernourished. Yet I should say up front that I enjoyed it very much. Sondheim’s final musical is not quite a full meal—not, at least, as a Sondheim musical per se—but how could it be? After working on the show sporadically for a decade or so, the irreplaceable Broadway auteur died in 2021, having written a fair amount for the first half but not very much for the second.  But if Here We Are amounts to a plate of hors d’oeuvres in the Sondheim oeuvre, it is exquisitely well served in its world premiere at the Shed; Ives, director Joe Mantello and the superb ensemble cast deliver a deluxe production. In the first act, adapte

Theater review by Austin Tracy  Santino Fontana plays Harry Bogen, the central character in Classic Stage Company’s revival of I Can Get It For You Wholesale, and you won’t want to take your eyes off of him—because Fontana is giving a charismatic and nuanced performance, but also because Harry is not to be trusted. A well-intentioned dreamer at first, he slowly devolves into a snake-oil salesman who is willing to spend anything and sell out anyone to make it to the top. The golden patina of his rags-to-riches success in New York City’s garment industry is peeled away to reveal a rotten core. “What money makes, money takes away” is the key lyric in this 1962 musical, which has a score by Harold Rome and a book by Jerome Weidman—whose son, John, has revised it for director Trip Cullman’s charming and haunting revival at Classic Stage Company. Since the younger Weidman is best known for his unsentimental collaborations with Stephen Sondheim, including Assassins, it should come as no surprise that the production doubles down on the darker side of the show, leading us on a journey through the world of business and the monsters who inhabit it. I Can Get It for You Wholesale | Photograph: Courtesy Julieta Cervantes Although Fontana masterfully makes you love to hate him, Adam Chanler-Berat and Sarah Steele keep hope alive as Harry’s partner and his optimistic wife, an adorably sweet pair. And the show makes room for first-rate turns by the actors playing the various women in Harry'

Broadway review by Adam Feldman Sixteen is not sweet for the heroine of the bruisingly joyful new musical Kimberly Akimbo. Adapted by David Lindsay-Abaire from his own 2001 play, with music by Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change), the show has a central conceit that verges on magical realism: Kimberly Levaco suffers from an unnamed, “incredibly rare” genetic disorder that makes her age at a superfast rate. Played by the 63-year-old Victoria Clark, she is physically and psychically out of place among her high school peers, who have more conventional adolescent problems like unrequited crushes. “Getting older is my affliction,” the usually mild-mannered Kimberly sings in a rare burst of confrontation. “Getting older is your cure.”   Life at home in New Jersey with her boozy, incompetently protective father (Steven Boyer) and her pregnant, hypochondriacal and self-absorbed mother (Alli Mauzey) is even less appealing. But as Kimberly stares into a cruelly foreshortened future—the life expectancy for people with her illness is, yes, 16—two agents of disruption reframe her perspective. The first is her aunt Debra (the unstoppable Bonnie Milligan), a hilarious gale force of chaos who blows into town and quickly recruits her niece into an elaborate check-fraud scheme. The other is Seth (the winsome and natural Justin Cooley), a gentle, tuba-playing classmate with an affinity for anagrams that suggests, to Kimberly, that maybe he could shake her up and rearrange her too. Kimberly Aki

Director-designer Julie Taymor takes a reactionary Disney cartoon about the natural right of kings—in which the circle of life is putted against a queeny villain and his jive-talking ghetto pals—and transforms it into a gorgeous celebration of color and movement. The movie’s Elton John–Tim Rice score is expanded with African rhythm and music, and through elegant puppetry, Taymor populates the stage with an amazing menagerie of beasts; her audacious staging expands a simple cub into the pride of Broadway, not merely a fable of heredity but a celebration of heritage. RECOMMENDED: Guide to The Lion King on Broadway  Minskoff Theatre (Broadway). Music by Elton John. Lyrics by Tim Rice. Book by Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi. Directed by Julie Taymor. With ensemble cast. Running time: 2hrs 40mins. One intermission.

Theater review by Adam Feldman  [Note: Corbin Bleu currently plays Seymour opposite Constance Wu as Audrey, with Bryce Pinkham as Orin and Brad Oscar as Mushnik.]  Little Shop of Horrors is a weird and adorable show with teeth. Based on Roger Corman’s shlocky 1960 film, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s 1982 musical tells the Faustian story of a dirt-poor schlub named Seymour (Jonathan Groff), a lowly petal pusher at a Skid Row flower shop, who cultivates a relationship with a most unusual plant. What seems at first a blessing—a way for the lonely Seymour to earn money and to get closer to his boss, Mushnik (Tom Alan Robbins), and his used and bruised coworker, Audrey (Tammy Blanchard)—soon turns sinister. The plant, whom he names Audrey II (designed by Nicholas Mahon and voiced by Kingsley Leggs), requires human blood to grow, and Seymour doesn’t have enough of his own to spare. He doesn’t want to feed the beast, but he can’t resist the lure of the green. Arguably the best musical ever adapted from a movie, Little Shop does for B flicks what Sweeney Todd does for Grand Guignol. Librettist Ashman and composer Menken—who, between this show and their Disney animated films, did more than anyone to return musical theater from its mass-culture exile in the late 20th century—brilliantly wrap a sordid tale of capitalist temptation and moral decay in layers of sweetness, humor, wit and camp. Their extraordinary score bursts with colorful rock & roll, doo-wop, girl-group pop and R&B; As

Once a week, after closing time, 10 people convene at the city’s oldest magic shop, Tannen’s, for a cozy evening of prestidigitation by the young and engaging Noah Levine. The shelves are crammed with quirky devices; there's a file cabinet behind the counter, a mock elephant in the corner and bins of individual trick instructions in plastic covers, like comic books or sheet music. The charm of Levine's show is in how well it fits the environment of this magic-geek chamber of secrets. As he maneuvers cards, eggs, cups and balls with aplomb, he talks shop, larding his patter with tributes to routines like the Stencel Aces and the Vernon Boat Trick—heirlooms of his trade that he gently polishes and displays for our amazement.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Merrily We Roll Along is the femme fatale of Stephen Sondheim musicals, beautiful and troubled; people keep thinking they can fix it, rescue it, save it from itself and make it their own. In the decades since its disastrous 1981 premiere on Broadway, where it lasted just two weeks, the show has been revised and revived many times (including by the York in 1994, Encores! in 2012 and Fiasco in 2019). The challenges of Merrily are built into its core in a way that no production can fully overcome. But director Maria Friedman’s revival does a superb job—the best I’ve ever seen—of overlooking them, the way one might forgive the foibles of an old friend.   As a showbiz-steeped investigation of the disillusionment that may accompany adulthood, Merrily is a companion piece to Sondheim’s Follies, with which it shares a key line: “Never look back,” an imperative this show pointedly ignores. Adapted by George Furth from a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the musical is structured in reverse. We first meet Franklin Shepard (Jonathan Groff) in 1976, when he is a former composer now leading a hollow life as a producer of Hollywood schlock; successive scenes move backward through the twisting paths on which he has lost both his ideals and his erstwhile best pals, playwright Charley (Daniel Radcliffe) and writer Mary (Lindsay Mendez). The final scene—chronologically, the first—finds them together on a rooftop in 1957, as yet regardless of their doom,

For more than two decades, this proudly old-school series has offered a different lineup of professional magicians every week. It's an heir to the vaudeville tradition: Many of the acts incorporate comedic elements, and audience participation is common. (If you have children, bring them; they make especially adorable assistants.) The show has recently moved to the private upstairs dining room at Monte's Trattoria, and the ticket package includes a three-course red-sauce Italian meal. You get a lot of value and variety for your magic dollar, and in contrast to some fancier magic shows, this one feels like comfort food: an all-you-can-eat buffet to which you’re encouraged to return until you’re as stuffed as a hat full of rabbits.

Theater review by Adam Feldman Red alert! Red alert! If you’re the kind of person who frets that jukebox musicals are taking over Broadway, prepare to tilt at the windmill that is the gorgeous, gaudy, spectacularly overstuffed Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Directed with opulent showmanship by Alex Timbers, this adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie may be costume jewelry, but its shine is dazzling.  The place is the legendary Paris nightclub of the title, and the year is ostensibly 1899. Yet the songs—like Catherine Zuber’s eye-popping costumes—span some 150 years of styles. Moulin Rouge! begins with a generous slathering of “Lady Marmalade,” belted to the skies by four women in sexy black lingerie, long velvet gloves and feathered headdresses. Soon they yield the stage to the beautiful courtesan Satine (a sublimely troubled Karen Olivo), who makes her grand entrance descending from the ceiling on a swing, singing “Diamonds Are Forever.” She is the Moulin Rouge’s principal songbird, and Derek McLane’s sumptuous gold-and-red set looms around her like a gilded cage. After falling in with a bohemian crowd, Christian (the boyish Aaron Tveit), a budding songwriter from small-town Ohio, wanders into the Moulin Rouge like Orpheus in the demimonde, his cheeks as rosy with innocence as the showgirls’ are blushed with maquillage. As cruel fate would have it, he instantly falls in love with Satine, and she with him—but she has been promised, alas, to the wicked Duke of Monroth (Tam Mutu)

Theater review by Adam Feldman [Note: This is a review of the 2017 Broadway production, which moves Off Broadway to New World Stages in 2019 with a new cast.] Ah, the joy of watching theater fail. The looming possibility of malfunction is part of what makes live performance exciting, and disasters remind us of that; the rite requires sacrifice. There is more than schadenfreude involved when we giggle at, say, a YouTube video of a high-school Peter Pan crashing haplessly into the scenery. There is also sympathy—there but for the grace of deus ex machina go we all—and, often, a respect for the efforts of the actors to somehow muddle through. Mischief Theatre’s The Play That Goes Wrong takes this experience to farcical extremes, as six amateur British actors (and two crew members who get pressed into service onstage) try to perform a hackneyed whodunnit amid challenges that escalate from minor mishaps (stuck doors, missed cues) to bona fide medical emergencies and massive structural calamities.  Depending on your tolerance for ceaseless slapstick, The Play That Goes Wrong will either have you rolling in the aisles or rolling your eyes. It is certainly a marvel of coordination: The imported British cast deftly navigates the pitfalls of Nigel Hook’s ingeniously tumbledown set, and overacts with relish. (I especially enjoyed the muggings of Dave Hearn, Charlie Russell and coauthor Henry Lewis.) Directed by Mark Bell, the mayhem goes like cuckoo clockwork.  If you want to have a goo

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  An itinerant Black preacher with a burnished silver tongue and a bushel of schemes up his sleeve, Purlie Victorious Judson (Leslie Odom, Jr.) is irrepressible—not that the white folks around him don’t try. Even after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling for desegregation, Purlie’s childhood home in rural Georgia seems frozen in time: a cotton plantation owned and ruled by Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee (Jay O. Sanders), the same bullwhip-wielding Dixie tyrant who chased our hero out of town two decades earlier. When Purlie returns to Cotchipee County, plotting to collect a long-denied inheritance, a major dust-up is all but guaranteed. And since Purlie Victorious is a comedy, with the merry subtitle A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, it is also clear who will come out on top. Victorious is, after all, his middle name.  Ossie Davis’s 1961 play—in which the actor and activist originally starred opposite Ruby Dee—may not seem a likely candidate for revival. Comedies often age badly, and comedies about race are even riskier. But Purlie Victorious doesn’t crack: Directed knowingly by Kenny Leon, the show’s new Broadway production is a joyous affair, broad in comedy and in spirit. Davis populates his play with deceptively familiar types (the simple-minded country girl, the loyal mammy, the villainous Confederate, the simpering Uncle Tom) who have more dimensions than expected; the actors who inhabit them take manifest delight in subverting stock f

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  The jokes pop like corn on a cast-iron stove in the musical Shucked. They pour out in a ceaseless succession of happy little bursts, one after another—pop! pop!—to be buttered and salted by a game and endearing cast. Are those cobs in the actors’ pockets, or are they happy to see you? Both. And if a few kernels fail to inflate, they’re forgotten amid the bounty: Before you know it, you’re gorged to satisfaction on a big, tasty bag of Broadway puff.   Shucked was originally conceived as an adaptation of the long-running TV variety show Hee Haw, and although it is no longer connected to that property, it embraces its roots in tele-vaudeville. Set mostly in the ultra-rural enclave of Cob County—whose cheerfully inbred residents, fenced off from the rest of America by a wall of corn stalks, have not left its confines in generations—the show tells a “farm to fable” tale that pits the slickness of the city against the hickery of the sticks. A pair of narrators, played by Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley, help guide us through the maize maze of the story. But the plot is essentially a framework, as sturdy but hole-ridden as Scott Pask’s tumbledown set, for Shucked’s primary selling point: laughs, and plenty of 'em. The country-fried score, by the accomplished Nashville songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, includes rollicking comedic numbers and a sprinkling of sincere character songs. The latter fall to the central romantic couple, Maizy (Car

Broadway review by Adam Feldman Who doesn’t enjoy a royal wedding? The zingy Broadway musical Six celebrates, in boisterous fashion, the union of English dynastic history and modern pop music. On a mock concert stage, backed by an all-female band, the six wives of the 16th-century monarch Henry VIII air their grievances in song, and most of them have plenty to complain about: two were beheaded, two were divorced, one died soon after childbirth. In this self-described “histo-remix,” members of the long-suffering sextet spin their pain into bops; the queens sing their heads off and the audience loses its mind.  That may be for the best, because Six is not a show that bears too much thinking about. Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss wrote it when they were still students at Cambridge University, and it has the feel of a very entertaining senior showcase. Its 80 minutes are stuffed with clever turns of rhyme and catchy pastiche melodies that let mega-voiced singers toss off impressive “riffs to ruffle your ruffs.” The show's own riffs on history are educational, too, like a cheeky new British edition of Schoolhouse Rock. If all these hors d’oeuvres don’t quite add up to a meal, they are undeniably tasty. Aside from the opening number and finale and one detour into Sprockets–style German club dancing, Six is devoted to giving each of the queens—let’s call them the Slice Girls—one moment apiece in the spotlight, decked out in glittering jewel-encrusted outfits by Gabriella Slade that are Tu

To untimely rip and paraphrase a line from Macbeth: Our eyes are made the fools of the other senses, or else worth all the rest. A multitude of searing sights crowd the spectator's gaze at the bedazzling and uncanny theater installation Sleep No More. Your sense of space and depth—already compromised by the half mask that audience members must don—is further blurred as you wend through more than 90 discrete spaces, ranging from a cloistral chapel to a vast ballroom floor. Directors Felix Barrett and Maxine Doyle, of the U.K. troupe Punchdrunk, have orchestrated a true astonishment, turning six warehouse floors and approximately 100,000 square feet into a purgatorial maze that blends images from the Scottish play with ones derived from Hitchcock movies—all liberally doused in a distinctly Stanley Kubrick eau de dislocated menace. An experiential, Choose Your Own Adventure project such as this depends on the pluck and instincts of the spectator. You can follow the mute dancers from one floor to the next, or wander aimlessly through empty spaces. I chose the latter, discovering a room lined with empty hospital beds; a leafless wood in which a nurse inside a thatched cottage nervously checks her pocket watch; an office full of apothecary vials and powders; and the ballroom, forested with pine trees screwed to rolling platforms (that would be Birnam Wood). A Shakespearean can walk about checking off visual allusions to the classic tragedy; the less lettered can just revel in the f

Theater review by Raven SnookAs you enter through the sequined labial flaps of a vagina and slip down its hot-pink passage to the theater, you may assume you're in for a good time. But entertainment isn't all that co-conspirators Becca Blackwell and Amanda Duarte have on their filthy minds in Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It's That Time of the Month. A mock talk show hosted by a friendly, clown-nosed vulva (Blackwell) and a pervy, testicle-sporting taint (Duarte), this heavily improvised evening feels like a sex-ed episode of Pee-wee's Playhouse, rated NC-17. Amanda Villalobos and Greg Corbino designed the appropriately outré costumes; Corbino's X-traordinary set—an oversize pair of spread-eagled legs—is accented with ovary chairs, spiraling fallopian tubes and bloody maxi pads. There are audience participation challenges, like a sanitary-belt-tying race and a herpes-sore toss. There are gross-out moments, including flying fake feces, extended fart noises and oatmeal (I hope!) depicting vaginal discharge. There are countless cooch-related puns, sketches and trivia. (It's astounding how ignorant some grown-ups are about vaginas.) And other people unexpectedly pop in, including a "slit crew" that helps with the gags and a different interviewee at each performance. (The comedian, singer and self-described "gynecological wonder" Bridget Everett was the special guest on the night I attended.) Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It's That Time of the Month | Photogr

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Some Like It Hot is a well-aimed throwback: a jubilant, oldfangled, crowd-pleasing musical comedy. Like many recent Broadway tuners, it is adapted from a well-loved movie—in this case, Billy Wilder’s classic 1959 sex-and-sax farce about a pair of Prohibition-era musicians, on the run from the mob, who pose as women in an all-girl traveling band. The musical version reheats this story with abundant production values and canny attention to modern sensibilities. If it wobbles a little in its borrowed heels at first, it finishes in the confident stride of a hit.  Directed and choreographed with zest by Casey Nicholaw, Some Like It Hot taps into a classic vein of musical theater, and I do mean taps: This show doesn’t stint on the clickety-clack of shoe against stage. Its central characters, best friends Joe (Christian Borle) and Jerry (J. Harrison Ghee), are not just instrumentalists but also perform a side act as the Tip Tap Twins. (Joe is white and Jerry is Black but, as they sing, ”We’re brothers under the skin.”) After witnessing a gangland rubout in Chicago, they are forced to race off in drag; under the noms de plumage Josephine and Daphne, they soon wrangle their way into a jazz ensemble led by Sweet Sue (NaTasha Yvette Williams) and fronted by a hard-knocked singer named Sugar Kane (Adrianna Hicks).  As Joe and Jerry bond with Sugar, and recruit her into the expanded Tip Tap Trio, romantic complications ensue. Josephine, as Joe, starts fall

Broadway review by Adam Feldman In the extremely funny 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the British comedy troupe’s lampoon of Arthurian legend, there is only one fully fledged musical number: a cutaway to the roundly ludicrous knights of Camelot, who dance in armored kicklines and describe themselves in such ridiculous rhymes as “We sing from the diaphragm a lot” and “We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot.” The very thought of it prompts the questing King Arthur to question his plans. “On second thought, let's not go to Camelot,” he decides. “It is a silly place.” Cut to the 2005 musical Spamalot, which expands the spirit of that 65-second sequence into a two-act Broadway show. It is a silly piece. Adapted by Eric Idle from the Holy Grail screenplay—with help from composer John Du Prez, and a handful of loaners from other Python sources (notably the Life of Brian song “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life”)—this tongue-in-cheeky pageant still tells the episodic story of King Arthur (James Monroe Iglehart) and his entourage in search of a vaunted relic. But jokes about medieval legend now take a back seat to metatheatrical tomfoolery about musical theater as a genre. Winking at Broadway conventions in a succession of zanily oversold numbers, it is essentially an ongoing parody of itself—so much so that when Gerard Allesandrini spoofed Spamalot for his Forbidden Broadway series, he simply had his actors perform an actual song from the show, “The Song That Goes Like Th

The extended and notoriously disharmonious recording process that led to Fleetwood Mac’s smash 1977 LP Rumours is the inspiration for David Adjmi’s long and beautiful group portrait of a rock band riven along artistic, romantic and pharmaceutical fault lines. Every aspect of the play’s premiere at Playwrights Horizons is excellent in isolation, from the ensemble acting—by Will Brill, Andrew R. Butler, Juliana Canfield, Eli Gelb, Tom Pecinka, Sarah Pidgeon and Chris Stack—to the pitch-perfect original songs by Arcade Fire's Will Butler and the heightened-verité design (including sets by David Zinn, costumes by Enver Chakartash and sound by Ryan Rumery). Mixed together in Daniel Aukin’s meticulously layered production, they cohere into a riveting multitrack train wreck.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served. Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s 1979 Sweeney Todd may well be the greatest of all Broadway musicals: an epic combination of disparate ingredients—horror and humor, cynicism and sentiment, melodrama and sophisticated wit—with a central core of grounded, meaty humanity. But while the show’s quality is baked into the writing, portion sizes in recent years have varied. Sweeney Todd’s scope makes it expensive to stage; its 1989 and 2005 Broadway revivals (and the immersive 2017 Off Broadway incarnation) presented the show with greatly reduced casts and orchestrations. Not so for the thrilling version now playing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, directed by Hamilton’s Thomas Kail: This production features a 26-piece orchestra and a cast of 25 led by Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. It’s a feast for the ears.  Groban plays the title role: a Victorian barber, né Benjamin Barker, who returns to London after serving 15 years of hard labor for a crime he didn’t commit, hoping to reunite with his beloved wife, Lucy, and their young daughter, Johanna. But as he learns from his practical neighbor Mrs. Lovett (Ashford)—who operates the squalid meat-pie shop below his old tonsorial parlor—Lucy poisoned herself after being assaulted by the same lecherous judge (Jamie Jackson) who sent him away, who is now the guardian of the teenage Johanna (Maria Bilbao). With help from Mrs. Lovett and his friend Anthony (Jordan Fish

Theater review by Raven Snook The genuine friendship between Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks distinguishes the latest major New York staging of Samuel Beckett's absurdist landmark Waiting for Godot. As the melancholy Gogo and the upbeat Didi, two tramps killing time in limbo as they wait for a visit that may never come, the actors share a palpable mutual affection; their long collaborative history, which includes The Killer onstage and Boardwalk Empire on TV, imbues their relationship with breathtaking verisimilitude. You really believe these guys have been bickering for as long as they can remember. Theatre for the New Audience's resident director Arin Arbus, known for her lucid mountings of classics, eschews stylization or high concept. The design is quintessential Godot: Scenic designer Riccardo Hernández's dusty thrust stage is dominated by one sorry tree, and Susan Hilferty's ratty costumes are topped with beaten-up bowlers. This Godot isn't commenting on any particular crisis, just the cruelty of existence itself. Like anyone who has lived long enough, Gogo and Didi have seen some shit.  As usual, Act I—in which Beckett establishes the tramps’ repetitive rhythms—is a bit of a slog. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart masked the tedium by leaning into comedy in the play’s 2013 Broadway revival, but Shannon and Sparks don't hide their characters' desperation or dysfunction; they want their despondency to be infectious. They excel at bringing out the aching humanity in these

This musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz addresses surprisingly complex themes, such as standards of beauty, morality and, believe it or not, fighting fascism. Thanks to Winnie Holzman’s witty book and Stephen Schwartz’s pop-inflected score, Wicked soars. The current cast includes Lindsay Pearce as Elphaba and Ginna Claire Mason as Glinda.