David Barbour

“Paranormal Activity is never boring, but its mechanical thrills aside, it is surprisingly anodyne.”

“Punch suggests a way out, one that takes extraordinary bravery to achieve.”

“The good news is that, aside from one questionable casting decision, David Mamet's brackish masterpiece is in solid hands in Patrick Marber's production.”

“Choose your stars wisely, don't expect too much, and you'll have a reasonably good time.”

“And, with a nimble cast elevating the material at every turn, Once Upon a Mattress radiates an infectious sense of fun.”

“Cheers to Audra McDonald and company to bringing it so rivetingly to life.”

“That the characters keep reaching out to help each other is a beautiful thing.”

“The best thing about Miranda Cromwell's sometimes uncertain production is the opportunity it gives four lead actors to do strong, stunning, and, in some cases, highly original work.”

“And in this production, it feels revelatory once again.”

“Linney here restores it to its full luster.”

“As Lloyd and his excellent trio of actors make devastatingly clear, the use of the singular in the title is an understatement; this is a drama rife with betrayals…”

“An immaculate revival...The wonder of Jack O'Brien's production is how it embraces the creaks in Miller's dramaturgy, making them seem irrelevant to the real business at hand.”

“Quite possibly the most exciting new musical of the Broadway season...It also takes the nod for most-improved new musical.”

“'Beetlejuice' keeps raising its voice without ever making much of an impression, largely because its creators have been unable to...make one care about its six principals.”

“To quote the title tune, this Kate is absolutely bellisimo.”

“In its acute writing and total professionalism, the production is well worth a visit.”

“This one has the manner, but there's an element of personality missing.”

“It's hard to escape the feeling that a very casual piece of source material has been blown up far beyond its limits into something only intermittently charming-and often perplexing.”

“Overall, this is a fairly auspicious debut...The trouble with 'Waitress' lies in the book, which is much broader and brassier than its source material.”

“I still find the first act a little calculated in its charms and a tad precious in its sensibility; however, the second act pays off delightfully.”

“Her work alone is probably reason enough for this revival.”

“You may very well enjoy it, but I hope that someday you get to see the play that Arthur Miller wrote.”

“The 39 Steps is a delightfully silly entertainment that proves that less can indeed be more, as four actors play dozens of characters in this adaptation of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller.”

“They haven't engaged with 1776 so much as they have marked it up with a highlighter, garishly underlining points that are obvious in the original text.”

“What might have been a gut-punch melodrama ends up a half-hearted musical bildungsroman -- one that, for all its infusions of local color -- is surprisingly antiseptic.”

“Without a solid, unbreakable connection between actor and audience, it becomes a display of theatrical craft for its own sake.”

“At the Lyceum, it feels like a seismic event. When was the last time Broadway saw a musical as brazenly original and brutally candid as this?”

“Almost Famous is yet another conscientious, inspiration-free film adaptation, dedicated to recreating the original's key moments without ever acquiring an identity of its own.”

“It's both highly professional and not good enough.”

“denuding the lead character of any irascibility and egotism…leaves him diminished”

“It’s a brazen piece of holiday counterprogramming and, in its cold blast of common sense, it couldn’t be more welcome.”

“Bad Cinderella is a strangely rudderless enterprise. This Cinderella is all dressed up with nowhere to go.”

“Even in its more formulaic moments, the show continues to surprise.”

“Becky Shaw is every bit as alarming (and amusing) as its title figure.”

“Line by line, Between Riverside and Crazy delivers as much pleasure as any play in New York right now.”

“Near the end, when the big secret is out, there should be plenty of displacement and upset to go around; instead, everyone is hustled into a happy-ending tableau that feels almost comically unearned.”

“Letts, who often thinks the worst of his characters and is rarely wrong, offers an alarmingly mordant comment on the current paranoid style of American life.”

“direction that spells out the subtext and telegraphs the show's outcome early and often.”

“...it takes a cunningly gifted actress to make [Izzy] believable.”

“The result is arid, a musical that can't decide why anyone is singing.”

“'Carousel' is one of the very few examples of genuine tragedy in the musical theatre canon, and this production honors it in its own unique way.”

“Much improved from its 2024 incarnation, it nevertheless remains a curious cat, a problematic vintage musical transformed by a random (if cannily chosen) production concept.”

“A certain sketchiness plagues 'Choir Boy'...The principals could use some fleshing out...Still, McCraney conjures this hothouse world with mordant wit and warmth.”

“Without making a fuss or employing dubious dazzlements, stirs one to the core.”

“Randy Skinner's tap-happy production delivers plenty of sly amusement thanks to a ferociously talented sextet of triple threats.”

“Greif's staging is both well-paced and nuanced, never losing sight of the heartbreak at the story's center.”

“But this high-prestige vehicle is an in-between affair, unable to live up to the cinematic dazzle of its source material yet never finding its own identity as an alternate version of its stranger-than-fiction true story.”

“Eureka Day is the best kind of satire, written with keen sympathy for its characters and their all-too-human foibles.”

“The time has never been riper for a revival of this beautiful show.”

“A new production of that oft-revived classic, 'Fiddler on the Roof,' that is original, vibrant, and, at times, surprisingly disturbing.”

“An abundance of interesting ideas never coalesces into the hallucinatory, revelatory experience the show seems to promise.”

“In their hands, this looks to be Shepard's masterpiece, his work most likely to stand the test of time.”

“McDonald and Shannon slip into their characters' battered souls, finding new shadings and tiny revelations that make them seem freshly conceived.”

“But they struggle to knit the grim central narrative (consisting of family secrets, borderline child abuse, and murderous sibling rivalry) with wisecracking snowmen, cavorting reindeer, and Finnish funnymen.”

“The fleet and funny 'Fully Committed' proves to be an ideal vehicle for Ferguson, letting him display his full range of comic skills.”

“Some very nice, talented people have gotten themselves into Getting' the Band Back Together, which can be best described as a tribute-band version of a Broadway musical -- it has the form but none of the content.”

“A leading man offers a performance that is one for the books. It's a satisfying evening all around.”

“Martin McDonagh has been specializing in his own brand of bloodstained comedy for a quarter of a century now, so it's probably inevitable that the blood might get a little tired.”

“It doesn't take very long for one to realize how efficient 'Hello, Dolly!' is when it comes to spreading delight.”

“"Some have complained that Here Lies Love glamorizes the Marcoses, an argument that is hard to credit, especially when their crimes pile up during the show's second half.”

“Thanks to the brilliance of its construction and the power of its insights, you can call it, without contradiction, a modern masterpiece.”

“If his special comic attack has long tickled you, I Need That is probably unmissable.”

““In Transit” manages to create a reality-distortion field that left me feeling the MTA isn’t the hostile environment I know it all too well to be.”

“The result is more scattered and less gripping than one imagines Vogel intends. Still, it has its moments of real power.”

“It's an argument we can't hear enough right now and Bioh makes it with uncommon eloquence.”

“Wilson was busy building a universe, and the more one spends time in it, the more one realizes what a splendid place it is.”

“Belflower's play makes its points through comedy and perceptive commentary; it brings to Broadway a much-needed jolt of fresh thinking.”

“Cheers to Theater for producing this rangy, mordant new play and giving it the first-class production it deserves.”

“You can't say King Kong is a good musical, but it is a fascinating oddity, and, despite the largely negative press, I wouldn't count the big guy out yet.”

“Staged at a stately pace, with an uneven company, grating music, and a star in her own personal universe, this is not a 'Lear' for the ages.”

“I cannot think of a show that, in its commercial transfer, has managed so thoroughly to shed so much of its stardust.”

“It is a vivid historical canvas that will send shivers through anyone worried about the rise of fascism.”

“It's a peculiar production, staged with tremendous brio yet never as engaging as one might hope.”

“It is both a powerful account of love misdirected and a bulletin from a hurting American heartland.”

“The original script is a solid piece of construction leavened by considerable wit and ideas that still provoke and stimulate; by adding all this froufrou, a once-powerful drama now packs all the sting of, well, a butterfly.”

“While waiting for the staging to gain some momentum, dark questions lurk: Why is the cast so unattractively dressed?”

“An unusually gentle piece, it nevertheless sends a chill up one's spine.”

“A work that could have succumbed to all sorts of excess miraculously never puts a foot wrong.”

“Mean Girls is loud, fast, insistently chipper, and fitfully hilarious; it is also deficient in the qualities that make a musical memorable.”

“Bruce Willis gives a performance that is largely uninflected and lacking in energy; one never feels the desperation associated with being held captive by a madwoman.”

“Still, if you're a fan of 'Miss Saigon,' this is a first-class revival, both in terms of its cast and production values.”

“Do you enjoy watching Billy Crystal do what he does better than anybody, weaponizing punchlines and detonating them for explosive laughs? Head to the Nederlander now.”

“The result is shiny, professional, and uninspired, a passable entertainment that struggles to avoid invidious comparisons with its predecessor.”

“Nothing in this life is perfect, but 'My Fair Lady' comes awfully close...It can even withstand Sher's production, which is covered with directorial fingerprints but has no strong point of view.”

“The production is neither well-cast nor particularly well-directed...much of 'Network''s satire seems pretty elementary.”

“The current version is going to make a lot of people happy, for very good reason.”

“We rarely get theatrical tragedy of this scale and intensity, and the modern political world, with its carefully curated imagery and brutal power games, is the perfect setting for it.”

“If this isn't the 'Oklahoma!' of one's dreams, it offers a strong vision that speaks to this moment.”

“The visual and aural distractions diminish the work.”

“I don't care if it is March; if you see it, you're practically guaranteed to leave the theatre in a holiday mood.”

“Mitchell's direction is a great help, as is the enormously likable and often ferociously talented cast he has assembled.”

“Thanks to Arden and his talented company, this moral has never seemed more urgent.”

“Once Upon a One More Time often feels sadly passé. It suffers from princess fatigue.”

“Kenny Leon's Broadway revival…can't quite make up its mind about several key matters.”

“If the current production is not ideal, the show remains a stunner with much to say about today's poisoned political discourse.”

“It's so top-heavy with talent that it sometimes has trouble getting around.”

“All I can tell you is that I -- a lover of British comedy down to the Carry On films -- was stirred to laughter only occasionally.”

“Not really a play for the ages, Pictures from Home is, nevertheless, such an delightful display of star techniques and temperaments that it can't help but give pleasure.”

“Romping through this trio of one-acts set in the famous New York hotel, the stars breathe life into the long-dormant boulevard comedy genre.”

“What keeps the play riveting is the vigor with which Harmon considers every side of the central question, creating confrontations from which nobody emerges unscathed.”