Dan Rubins

“The Lost Boys, with its addictive sense of whimsical wonder, is soaring all on its own.”

“In doing so, this August Wilson veteran also makes the case for the transformational power of theater, too.”

“Beaches is kind of like that, a lovely little show with a sweet heart that's all dolled up for the nearly 2,000-seat Majestic Theatre when it could alight with greater grace somewhere cozier.”

“She’s the chief reason to see Fallen Angels, the next stage of her decades-long affair with Broadway audiences, alit with a flame that only keeps burning brighter.”

“This Death of a Salesman's real magic sizzles in the cast's gutsy, gutting portrait of the Loman family's striving.”

“Deprived of its fidgety tension, this Afternoon isn’t so much a slow burn as a slow melt.”

“Radcliffe is so affable a presence and so charming an interlocutor in each of his audience exchanges that the conceit works as well as it possibly can.”

“The trouble is, that's often an apt description of the show itself, too.”

“The Queen of Versailles may have opened on Broadway with its scaffolding still up, but it’s still compellingly ambitious in its scope and bold in its merciless portrayal of its greed-enflamed protagonist, who fiercely battles her own burgeoning self-awareness.”

“If there’s a deeper meaning bleeding out from Lloyd’s revival, perhaps it’s this production’s exploration of how desperately we try to grapple with the passing of time, toiling to turn each ephemeral moment into a scene worth playing.”

“It’s the revival’s chief weakness that it’s hard to imagine these guys loving any version of each other.”

“Boop!, for all its unmissably ramshackle flaws, is joyously irresistible.”

“And if there’s a good reason to revive Glengarry Glen Ross again, and Mamet’s cavernously amoral depiction of immorality inside it, Marber hasn’t made that apparent either.”

“It's the warmth rather than the whimsy that pilots Operation Mincemeat to an amiable landing.”

“But take away everything except the words and the music here and you’ve exposed how tedious a musical Sunset Boulevard really is, even with a scintillating presence like Nicole Scherzinger at the center.”

“Leon has admirably made Grover's Corners into an inclusive utopia beyond the monochromatic New England idylls that Wilder would have imagined 85 years ago.”

“The Outsiders vibrates with the sort of purposeful storytelling through song that other Broadway newcomers like The Notebook so sorely lack.”

“But it’s rare that the play’s silliness and sobriety intermix—that the knot of satire ever gets tied tightly enough.”

“Sweeney Todd, then, can still shock, even if this production seldom goes for the jugular.”

“Of all the small-town windows to peer into for ninety minutes, Birthday Candles never illuminates the necessity of choosing this one.”

“Suavely performed, this new production doesn’t add all that much substance to the conversation.”

“This production squarely delivers as a potent tribute to the words and music of Stephen Sondheim.”

“The overstimulating production doesn’t help center an already wildly unfocused script.”

“But the overstuffed goodies of the performances come with a price.”

“It's that kind of fogginess that finally makes this production only intermittently memorable and rarely revelatory.”

“In proving that they do, and in bringing Usher’s vivid and complex inner life all the way to Broadway with such gripping vibrancy, Jackson nudges the musical theater form in a startling, new direction.”

“If you see An Enemy of the People—which, to be clear, you should—chances are that the disruptors will stay home for your performance.”

“McCraney's 'Genius Grant' pedigree shows itself most clearly when he steps back and lets the music do the talking.”

“For Fat Ham is scrumptuously satiating now, meatier and far more meaningful than it was in its off-Broadway incarnation.”

“If only it felt a little less old and a little more good.”

“But since the aim of the ambiguity is to support diverse diasporic casting—something most audiences won’t experience unless they see What Became of Us twice—it’s a distancing decision that makes it harder to care about these characters.”

“Her visceral vulnerability in those scenes of childhood assaults cannot be spared by the retrospective certainty of her survival.”

“But if there’s real treasure to be dug out of the script of I Need That, neither von Stuelpnagel nor the DeVitos have shoveled deep enough to strike gold.”

“Lobbing the bleakest imaginable themes at the audience simply to make the play’s lurid twists pay off makes this hollow play less of a job well done than a piece of work.”

“Turns out, the fascinating life of the undervalued painter that inspired them proves a slippery subject to sustain in this occasionally arresting but overstuffed and tonally jumbled show.”

“But a musical made as well as Maybe Happy Ending deserves to be with us for some time to come.”

“It’s got the artificial part down pat.”

“For everything else, MJ The Musical is a thriller.”

“It’s Urie who convinces, for the first time, that this musical isn’t just about a spunky, scrappy princess succeeding against the odds but also a real love story between two moonstruck misfits.”

“For a play about a man who sacrifices years of just being a son in order to be his parents’ photo-biographer, Pictures from Home seems curiously disinterested in exploring this family, and the conversations they might have, outside of Larry’s photography.”

“But it’s Comer’s Tessa, tough and raw, blisteringly believable as she begs to be believed, who wins the case for this play as urgent, necessary theater.”

“Redwood, in the end, can’t find the forest for the trees.”

“It may not be everyone’s cup of moonshine, but it knows exactly what it wants to be and delivers in spades on the promise of its ridiculous premise.”

“Even peppered with choreographic references to an iconic Drag Race lip sync and the sounds of Grindr notifications, Lancelot’s big coming-out disco number is more or less a relic, amusing primarily through the gauze of nostalgia.”

“The First Shadow feels like a dim approximation of what makes the Netflix series so special.”

“If The Great Gatsby doesn’t have the makings of a long-term Broadway resident, it’s become, in its newly minted tension and decadence, a welcome visitor.”

“The Height of the Storm is a disorienting escape room of a play, and even its astounding stars struggle to crack the code.”

“This slightly zany production, deeply felt and deeply funny, sells the show's intelligent warmth with a persuasiveness to rival Harold Hill himself.”

“Woods gives The Notebook the kick in the pants it sorely needs and the dramatic momentum it otherwise seldom earns.”

“The silliness sticks more than the pathos in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a multimedia tour de force from the Australian director Kip Williams and his compatriot Snook, who audaciously puts on about every possible variation of English accent across the play’s two hours.”

“At once clueless and brilliant, terrified of the unknown but fed-up with the familiar, Farrow’s Sharon is rich enough to pay the rent all on her own.”

“The first musical by a Black composer to win Tony Awards for best musical and best score, this well-loved show turns 50 next year.”