Brendan Lemon

“Erivo gives Celie a more believable core than did the galvanic interpretation of Fantasia in the previous Broadway outing.”

“Like the victims of those enslaved warriors, I felt pummelled by the experience.”

“Willis’s line readings are flat, and he is atrociously slow at picking up Metcalf’s cues.”

“Villafañe and the Emilio of Josh Segarra, who has that untranslatable appeal that Cubans call sabor, are so winning that you find yourself forgiving the lapses.”

“Knightley invests Thérèse with a splendid abandon but her line...”

“Initially the actors appear more interested in posing than in acting, but eventually they form a true ensemble.”

“The staging lacks flow, as do the book and lyrics (by Steven Sater).”

“By the time this initially delightful, eventually repetitive Broadway extravaganza ends, you too may feel a slight impatience not only with Shakespeare but with the entire musical theatre genre.”

“Fleming’s stage persona is too wholesome to make us believe fully her flights of temperament.”

“No matter how many emotionally effective touches the actors and their director, Diane Paulus, provide, the evening keeps returning to those mostly forgettable tunes.”

“The petite, cartoonish Chenoweth offers not so much radiant allure as expert mugging.”

“David, who lacks stage technique but compensates with instinctive comic timing, does not hog all the best lines.”

“The pleasure of the evening lies in the way it is both eminently sensible and completely nonsensical.”

“The too-capacious venue is more ocean than river, and the emotional impact suffers.”

“He persuades us that it was not sexual licence that led to the Nazis but the Nazis' fear of freedom that led to the camps.”

“Adding to our enjoyment are Hedwig’s fanciful costumes, which were designed by Arianne Phillips.”

“That’s roughly how I would describe the musical Bullets Over Broadway.”

“After a string of recent less-than-smashing Broadway adaptations, Disney wanted something it could market not only to the parents-with-children crowd but also to date-night couples looking for a few laughs.”

“And it becomes apparent that the musical Rocky subscribes to the method of Mamma Mia! – the previous piece of cheese to take over this theatre, the Winter Garden, for aeons – for ensuring a hit: wallop the audience for the final 15 minutes.”

“The production would be unthinkable without Porter.”

“Clarke is affected but not affecting, and a Breakfast without a fetching Holly isn’t much of a meal.”

“There’s nothing very vile in Scandalous.”

“The tense, touching performance of Dancy as an uptight intellectual and Arianda’s lushly comic turn as the high-energy seductress do not quite compensate for the overextended central conceit.”

“The Book of Mormon, the endlessly cheery, intermittently enjoyable new Broadway musical, can be defined by what it is not.”

“And a lucky thing, too, since it is Lane and Hoffman’s ace comic timing, as well as the astringent poise of Bebe Neuwirth, as the mother Morticia, that keep things palatable.”

“The point here isn’t story but style, and American Idiot delivers its predictable message (life, especially its US variety, can sometimes suck) in spectacular fashion.”

“Unfortunately, Beane’s book also tends to lose the basic plot thread, which unravels from helping the team win a game to a fairly generic message of uplift.”

“Matilda, with book by Dennis Kelly and music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, belongs in such company.”

“Civil equality for gays is a heartening sign of progress, but preaching its virtues is less compelling than dramatising its complexities.”

“On the Town, now in joyous, amusing revival on Broadway, was created not by Laurents but in part by two of his future collaborators, the composer Leonard Bernstein and the director Jerome Robbins, Laurents’ remark could be chiselled above the proscenium of the Lyric Theatre.”

“The challenge mostly eludes this production, directed by Sam Gold and featuring such first-rate actors as Ellen Burstyn and Mare Winningham, in which the village innocence tends toward the overdone.”

“Maybe it would have shaken the remaining scenes of this production, staged by David Leveaux, to life.”

“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful – but could be even more wonderful with ruthless editing to prevent a sense at the finish of ‘10 minutes too long’.”

“Nixon has given numerous first-rate performances in contemporary fare – at this same theatre, she etched a fine portrait of motherly grief in Rabbit Hole.”