Adam Feldman

“It’s a pleasure to be reunited with flawed, fractious but ultimately endearing classmates of this crowd-pleasing play.”

“The Balusters, as performed by Leon’s very fine ensemble, is an entertaining and well-observed look at the blusters of the privileged few.”

“Arden and scenic designer Dane Laffrey, whose past collaborations include Maybe Happy Ending and A Christmas Carol, have again created a world we’ve never seen onstage before: surprising, thrilling, sometimes genuinely unsettling.”

“It's an awfully hard one to resist.”

“With the exception of its Cee Cee, alas, almost everything about Beaches is C-minus at best.”

“Schmigadoon! delivers exactly what it promises: good old-fashioned musical fun.”

“It gets where it needs to go; what it lacks, at least for now, is elegance.”

“No, The Fear of 13 isn’t bad, and you can pay hundreds of dollars to see it onstage if you like.”

“This shattering new production cannot be overlooked.”

“After an already-legendary Off Broadway debut at the Perelman Arts Center in 2024, this production—under the chosen name Cats: The Jellicle Ball–has now re-inhabited Broadway, where it remains a categorical triumph.”

“As dark as it sometimes gets, the play encourages all of us to see the good inside even damaged goods.”

“But none of them can save what is otherwise a hollow and desultory maladaptation.”

“It’s a provocative study in the ongoing challenge of asking giants to watch their step.”

“Primo tickets for Every Brilliant Thing cost more than $400, and if you don’t mind spending top dollar on a dime-thin show, this one won’t disappoint; it’s diverting and at times even touching.”

“The slipperiness of ostensible skepticism into utter credulity is what makes Bug continue to resonate so powerfully today.”

“Once again, the show blows its assets; shackled to storytelling that is arguably worse than ever, Chess goes down in forfeit.”

“Icke's Oedipus is continuously engaging and smart, and it is exceedingly well performed by a cast that also includes Teagle F. Bougere, Bhasker Patel and Ani Mesa-Perez as aides and employees.”

“Like the rest of the show, however, the score doesn’t quite cohere; it feels like less than the sum of its parts.”

“This production, directed with superb acerbity by Joe Mantello, marks the playwright's overdue Broadway debut, and it doesn’t disappoint.”

“Whitney White's direction elicits a triumph of ensemble acting whose equipoise is a perfect realization of the play's own themes.”

“What he delivers in Ragtime is, quite simply, some of the most magnificent singing I have ever heard on Broadway.”

“Harrison’s performance aside, the play’s blows are hit and miss: connecting here, grazing there but not quite landing a proper hit.”

“But although Reeves and Winter are the main reason most people will go to this Godot, it is this revival’s other assets—the direction, the set and above all Dirden and Thornton—that keep it from being an exercise in meta stasis.”

“The result is a slender but amusing 90-minute evening of Broadway entertainment.”

“This show, the mother of all jukebox musicals, is nothing if not familiar—and in this case, familiarity breeds contentment.”

“That same level of commitment extends to all of Dead Outlaw.”

“This show is a bona fide crowd pleaser: a warm hug that pulls you into its generous bosom.”

“Just in Time is a helluva good time at the theater.”

“Enjoy this Broadway hybrid that is tuneful and poetical:A most delightful model of a modern operettical.”

“Go and enjoy, but don’t be surprised if you soon forget that Stranger Things has happened.”

“If not, though—if, like Floyd or like me, you find yourself killing time without being moved—Floyd Collins’s admirable musical ambition may remind you that sometimes when exploring you make thrilling discoveries, and sometimes you just get stuck.”

“Somehow, I enjoyed the overall experience of Smash.”

“Perhaps fittingly, the best reason to see Old Friends is the oldest thing in it: Bernadette Peters.”

“Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, this is an old-fashioned candy shop of a show, where tasty confections are sold in bulk. When Boop! is corny, it's candy corn.”

“Brown’s show deserves better than the serial missteps of this 85-minute faux pas de deux.”

“For everyone else, Good Night, and Good Luck is probably bad news.”

“Because it is so tautly and distinctively written, and since most of the actors are good, Glengarry Glen Ross still basically works; it still hooks you in.”

“It’s the show’s most stunning transformation of all—the folding of multiplicity back into singularity and sincerity—and Snook makes it a thing of beauty.”

“As much as you may think you need what Othello calls ‘the ocular proof,’ the production is not a must-see.”

“Fortunately, the plot is just a hanger for the musical numbers, which is where Buena Vista Social Club comes to thrilling life.”

“This one takes a seat at the table, where—rising to the occasion—it makes speeches, makes trouble and makes excellent theater.”

“Even as Menzel's Jesse climbs to new physical heights, the lumbering Redwood brings her down.”

“The result is—how you say?—exquisite.”

“All In is first and foremost funny—often very, very funny.”

“McDonald’s voice has equal parts of both, and she uses it to deliver an unforgettable star turn.”

“A progressive school takes its mumps in Jonathan Spector's spiky comedy.”

“With an analytic precision that is tempered by sympathy and humor, Headland expertly renders the shifting dynamics and allegiances within the family and the couples: the gang-ups and ambushes, the protective measures and defensive thrusts.”

“Together they make musical-comedy magic—and musical comedy, when performed this well, never gets old.”

“For the first time in my experience, this show is really elfin’ good.”

“Instead, Tammy Faye serves us a likable, sincere gal doing the best she can in a world whose machinations she doesn’t understand.”

“Instead, it is utterly enchanting.”

“The musical offers a pleasing depiction of that joy and that mask, if not of those multitudes.”

“That drama does not translate, alas, to this attenuated theatrical version.”

“But those newcomers may be surprised to find that what they thought was a tragedy about young people crushed by societal constraints is actually the sad tale of two nice kids who die from a lack of adult supervision.”

“Part of what makes this revival so absorbing is that you don’t always know where to look—at the actor on stage or the same actor live on screen.”

“By the end, Our Town has revealed itself to be a devastating, frighteningly profound meditation on moments that are at once insignificant and infinitely full.”

“Every chance Asian-American artists get to tell their own stories—even insular ones of foolishness and compromise—is a step to the future, face forward.”

“As ancient in its way as any, this is a story of human sacrifice.”

“But when the end result is a 90-minute slog, it doesn't matter much if the synthetic banality is a feature or a bug.”

“Sometimes the old can be full of surprises. That’s the running premise of The Roommate, which brings together two very different senior citizens”

“Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! is not just funny: It is dizzyingly, breathtakingly funny, the kind of funny that ambushes your body into uncontained laughter.”

“Yet the play gains momentum as it goes on, thanks partly to the engaging commitment of the cast but also to Wiliams's skill with specifics: This play shines in the details.”

“Lange is magnificent, especially in this production’s most moving scene: a long passage that the script calls the Phyllis Ballet.”

“To audiences hungry for glitz this year, The Good Gatsby may be good enough.”

“Perhaps that explains why this production, despite the talent involved, left me unmoved, and with a nagging question that Vanya might relate to: So much work has gone into this, but what’s it all for?”

“In a world that often seems far from those values, Herzog's play shines like a candle in the dark.”

“Life’s too short for this Cabaret.”

“Moon is a star. Beneath Ali's failed efforts to look cool are a mess of strong feelings—she's at an age where everything seems important—but beneath those strong feelings is the actual cool of a young performer with the self-possession to own a Broadway stage.”

“The result is richly satisfying multitrack production.”

“They have what the musical lacks: a clear and compelling aesthetic.”

“Elsewhere, despite some lovely music and several strong performances, The Outsiders tends to attenuate the characters and situations it draws from S.E. Hinton’s popular young-adult novel and its 1982 film adaptation.”

“On its own terms, it’s often sensational.”

“The main attraction is the pull of the circus itself.”

“This version of the play is a plea to the audience.”

“Plunkett's truthfulness pierces through the sentimentality, and there's something elemental in the combination of love and loss that this pair embodies.”

“Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway revival, directed by Scott Ellis, is mostly very effective.”

“If Days and Wine and Roses isn’t exactly galvanizing—it’s too classy for that—it is effectively sober.”

“By comparison, flaws that were already noticeable Off Broadway seem more pronounced.”

“Whether it was designed for them or not, they've made their own space on Broadway now, and proved that they belong.”

“Friedman’s production meets the audience halfway, and a Broadway audience today just might be able to make up the difference as it couldn’t in 1981. Cross your fingers: It might finally be ’Merrily’s’ time.”

“Not so with Spamalot, a show that works both as a vessel for Monty Python nostalgia and a platform for the comic talents of this generation of Broadway performers.”

“This is the showcase role that longtime Kritzer fans—another group that includes, full disclosure, me—have been waiting for, and she grabs it by the throat in a full-tilt comedic and vocal tour de force, culminating in the delightfully ostentatious ‘Diva's Lament.’”

“As enjoyable and affecting as Harmony is—and as timely, with antisemitism on the rise worldwide—it doesn't make the case that, among all that we must never forget, the Comedian Harmonists merit quite this degree of remembrance.”

“The most interesting moments of this good-natured but threadbare comedy, which Rebeck wrote during the pandemic lockdown, touch on the relationship between physical objects and memory.”

“Affection is the key that opens the show's comedy: You feel for Doug and Bud, and even root for them.”

“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.”

“Intense and lean, it handily outmatches the preceding scenes of uneasy boatmates bobbing in the drink.”

“If this is the future, please send it back.”

“It's a brazenly straightforward drawing-room farce, created for light amusement and delivered on a platter by a properly silly cast of six.”

“It’s an experience unlike any other you’ve ever had on Broadway.”

“Our complicity with such cycles of populist fervor—whether, depending on your ticket, as spectators from a safe distance or as extras in a mob scene—is the loudly beating heart of Here Lies Love, a party that hides a mordant critique of civilization and its discotheques.”

“Once Upon a One More Time is a well-assembled and entertaining diversion.”

“Amid such excellent atmospherics, you may not care when the play itself creaks.”

“There’s no show on Broadway quite like Grey House, a play that manages (at least until the end) to exhale hilarity and horror in the same icy breath.”

“It moves like a funeral procession for itself.”

“But they are sewn together, by book writer David Thompson and co-writer Sharon Washington, with narrative threads too flimsy to keep them attached to each other or to us.”

“It’s a dramatic dream team; what’s missing is drama.”

“I leave it to the jury of theatergoers to determine whether the larger legal argument that Miller makes in Prima Facie follows necessarily from Tessa’s specific experience. But about Comer’s performance there can be no doubt: This is a powerful and moving star turn.”

“FastHorse effectively roasts her characters as turkeys, trussed by their own self-consciousness.”

“They push through the pain and keep on pushing, but the fun of watching them peters out.”