David Finkle

“The night I was there chuckling and occasionally laughing out loud boasted, in proper alphabetical order, Scott Absit, Mario Cantone, Jeff Hiller, Jackie Hoffman, Christopher Jackson, Ben Mankiewicz, Andrea Martin, Nia Vardalos, Rita Wilson, Pack himself, and Reyfel herself.”

“As directed with relatively sure hands by Lonny Price and Matt Cowart and choreographed by Jennifer Rias, the enthusiastic cast rises—and perhaps rises above—the script’s middlingly enthralling script.”

“Affecting a slightly bent and not entirely confident gait, Brody—who bears no resemblance to the bald Yarris of the documentary—can’t be faulted in the least for his portrayal.”

“Instead, I disappointedly report that Titanique—narrated by uncanny Dion lookalike Mindelle as an arch diva—is my idea of lowbrow entertainment at its just about lowest.”

“The last undeniable Death of a Salesman irony for this revival: Once again Arthur Milller’s monumental script proves deathless.”

“Were this a second or third Rosenblatt play, he might have matured enough to realize he could have accomplished his angry mission with a compact and more forcible 90-minute one-act.”

“This remarkable revival, once again directed by Anne Kauffman, feels so much more potent.”

“Tutty’s appealing looks, pure voice, comic instincts, and obvious acting skills, and somehow resemblance to a living Teletubby make him the huge plus for a vital Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) run.”

“By the act-ending moment when Chenoweth is downstage center declaring with 'This is Not the Way' that the 2008 financial crash that bankrupted David won't stop her, only boredom has set in.”

“No description here, other than to say that its like may not be equaled on any stage this season or possibly for a few seasons to come.”

“Nevertheless, he tosses off this tough-minded literary Marc with athletic ease.”

“Rather, this new production can be described in two words: severely cheapened.”

“For, sorry to say, the Stranger Things: The First Shadow plot isn’t an entirely whoop-de-do affair.”

“What’s on display is unmitigatedly glorious.”

“This powerful: Whatever law firm out there listing George Clooney as a client now (or at one time) is well advised to brace for legal pursuit.”

“It’s a major reason, though hardly the only of abundant reasons, to make Operation Mincemeat gleeful obligatory viewing.”

“He continues piling on nasty disturbances and ugly revelations so that he haphazardly risks audience resistance.”

“I can report that they are clearly intended to be humorous and thereby often succeed as amusing. But—and this is a big but—they don't often rise to the level of funny.”

“Unfortunately, the Mattison-Carey score it boasts (?) resembles too many of the scores audiences presumably favor these days.”

“Iglehart winningly embodies a well-loved national figure, and A Wonderful World, directed by Christopher Renshaw and co-directed by Iglehart and Christina Sajous, benefits mightily from this, telling a story that, as a matter of the facts told, wasn’t all toothy smiles.”

“Somehow, it’s sad to be confronted with the news that the violence so stealthily and widely afflicting our society today has infiltrated so far as to include treating Shakespeare’s text violently.”

“The result—which gloriously stars Nicole Scherzinger as fading silent-screen idol Norma Desmond—is unique.”

“At Kenny Leon’s very welcome Our Town, patrons are guaranteed to appreciate Thornton Wilder’s genius every, every minute.”

“There’s something touching is his removing the unseen mask—the imagined make-up he obviously never literally brushed on—that in this final Yellow Face development lifts the self-involved piece to a praise-worthy height.”

“The answer involves a must-see trip to The Hills of California, instantly an early entry into the best-play-of-the-season sweepstakes.”

“Perhaps he wants things precisely this way.”

“In other words, the transfiguration of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is, sorry to report, a travesty.”

“The heart of rock and roll is still beating.”

“Pulling all this together — with Jack Knowles’ dramatic lighting, Adam Cork’s sound and original music, and Ash J. Woodward’s striking video design — is Rupert Goold. Ever since he startled Manhattan audiences with his 2008. Macbeth, he has never lowered his standards. He has only raised them. Patriots is a new high.”

“In other words, Kreitzer, Gould and director Chavkin rely on the cast to turn second-rate material into first-rate audience-grabbers.”

“Assuring the revival's quality is director Scott Ellis, who elicits top-flight ensemble performances from the cast.”

“That’s all the rationale needed to set the parameters for this bold, unflinching musical gaze at drinking to cruel excess.”

“Nonetheless, I’m reviving it for Harmony, the superb new musical for which Barry Manilow wrote the tunes and Bruce Sussman wrote the lyrics and book.”

“And this leaves Jaja’s African Hair Braiding as insufficiently dramatic, though never less than amusing, as acted by the 10-member cast and directed by Whitney White, who apparently knows exactly what has a braiding outfit buzzing any and every day.”

“Spectators who get Holloway’s full intentions, who follow his incriminating sentiments about the nectar of dead men origins will not only declare themselves scarily entertained but will continue considering the charges he has incorporated about man’s cruelty throughout the ages.”

“But how comic is it, from start to finish?”

“Indeed, it looks as if Meggido has easily pulled off a Broadway marquee example of top-drawer theater madness.”

“Due to Sorkin’s undernourished scribing, the emotions the songs reveal don’t fit the emotion-deprived characters.”

“Let’s just go with an endearing, soil-kicking “Aw, shucks!””

“What might she have thought of this dubious enterprise?”

“Not too long after Pictures From Home gets underway, it turns boring and then abusive to the patrons.”

“It’s one more reason to cheer the much-lauded playwright.”

“It’s a piece of indisputable stage artwork.”

“Having prepared his version for some time, he’s now brought it to Broadway – and magnificently.”

“Crowe’s Penny Lane is in a play, a musical —and not an especially powerful one, at that.”

“It undeniably ranks, perhaps with Arcadia and The Coast of Utopia, as his most exhilarating, most comprehensive, most serious accomplishment.”

“As scrupulously directed by Giles Croft, the actors consistently enliven Hosseini and Spangler.”

“It reopened April 29, 2022, confirming this reviewer’s belief that the property is the best musical — jukebox or no — of the past three years.”

“Classic works don’t need the modern-dress approach that nowadays is a shabby cliché.”

“He’s so assured—in the perhaps forgotten manner of George Burns and George Jessel—he compensates sufficiently to make himself Mr. Every Night of the Week.”

“Watching POTUS, however, I must report—many will agree with me— that the comedy is just about the funniest to split sides on Broadway this comedy-short season or, let’s be even more enthusiastic, any number of seasons past.”

“As of this revival, those notes might have exiting customers happily thinking “Beanie Feldstein, Beanie Feldstein.””

“The revival of Ntozake Shange’s 1976 for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf is stunning in every aspect.”

“With an abundant playwright’s sophistication, Vogel has contributed to comprehending the fathomless complexities of human behavior.”

“On the other hand, it doesn’t quite rise to blue-ribbon garden-show winner.”

“The producers are lucky to have him but hardly lucky enough to make this Mrs. Doubtfire not come across more like Mrs. Doubt[mis]fire.”

“Nonetheless, he has written a theatre piece that unmistakably demands considerable thought and even more unmistakably boasts Deirdre O’Connell’s unbounded talents.”

“For his perspicacity and for his well-honed insistence on perceiving and respecting the life of the Other, playwright Scott is to be profoundly thanked.”

“For already making that unsettling Trump administration accomplishment perfectly clear, Satter deserves many thanks.”

“If theater lovers are smart, they’ll heed the call and go straight to Chicken & Biscuits church.”

“As actor-writer, director, impersonator, harmonica player, he excels.”

“It may be the most heated moment currently on any local stage. For its reflection of a case of national despair, it's not to be missed.”

“It could be said—and will be right here and now—that with Jagged Little Pill Paulus and Cody are contriving a bit too much.”

“Rapp is to be thanked for an indisputably probing play that pays homage to the still potent aspiration to greatness.”

“Another way of putting this is to maintain that Williams’ insistence on the play’s profundities is set aside for a production that skims the text’s surface and is content to do only that.”

“That finale lifts an already exceptional production to an even higher plane.”

“Beetlejuice isn’t worthy to shine the earlier musical’s singing-and-dancing shoes.”

“He is saying the killer phrase in a Jack O’Brien-directed production that’s as close to perfect as it can be for any lover of Miller—and for any believer in the potential of theater to get to you where you live.”

“Instead, why don’t we all acknowledge that the 20th-century version is the one that will stand the test of time?”

“Maybe as 2018 slides into 2019 that’s more Chayevsky‘s problem.”

“Maybe the thing to do with The Cher Show is to regard it as a theater-sized tweet and a fan’s treat.”

“That’s to say she does what the best actors do under these conditions: she raises the dramaturgical level without entirely saving the proceedings.”

“Oh, well, on the Cinderella-o-meter, nowhere does Pretty Woman rise to My Fair Lady level, but perhaps it’s pretty fair enough as these things go.”

“It's perfect in every department, as it almost completely reiterates the movie's dialog verbatim.”

“Although the style fits for the early career of the punk-turned-new wave band, the result is a sloppy evening.”

“No matter by what definition of art you swear, this Travesties—thanks to Stoppard, Hollander, Marber, and everyone connected to it—is that rare thing: Art with a capital 'A.'”

“They’re so much in tandem on the Ibsen-esque conclusion that Sher stages a sweeping-out of such dimensions that it has the potential to put off many a Shaw and Lerner partisan.”

“Unfortunately, the process, not required in real life, is increasingly trying.”

“Proud in your shirt (no one donned a beak at the performance this reviewer attended), you’re guaranteed to get everything you hoped for from the production, a slam-bang success sure to keep the adored singer-songwriter in Margaritas for some time to come.”

“As Hnath ends his eventually wise and even conciliatory parable, that’s the gnawing question Hnath leaves the ticket buyers pondering.”

“It takes the form of a revue at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre that Prince has directed as a valentine to himself, abetted by co-director and choreographer Susan Stroman.”

“The sweets dispensed here have no appeal for me.”

“This blissfully cynical work is as juicy a three-act play as anyone would hope to find in American theater annals.”

“He’s a reason to see this bloated whip-up.”

“Just great--with only the merest reservations that certainly don't have anything to do with the several brilliant Finn songs.”

“O’Brien’s gorgeously etched presentation is as good as it gets.”

“As a result, the final on-stage American Psycho minutes do nothing to sustain a venture that has already overstayed its welcome.”

“If some need a handy definition, it’s kicking up its heels in Scott Ellis’s perfect revival of the Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick-Joe Masteroff musical She Loves Me, at Roundabout’s Studio 54.”

“They tell their story earnestly, but in the end -- and despite its many songs--the enterprise doesn't sing.”

“Putting four-letter obscenities into the mouths of octogenarians -- okay, nonagenarian in Tyson's case -- is a cheap trick but it works.”

“That a musical — a musical! — should recount a gritty slice of American history so beautifully is singularly moving.”

“Nonetheless, it may be that in the long run it signals too obliviously the pessimistic outlook on life about to unfold at length.”

“What you get when you cross this crossed Private Lives and Kiss Me, Kate are a few moments of bland silliness.”

“As I say, you see this An American in Paris for the dancing.”

“If it comes to that, this whole Gigi is lacking in charm, if not nerve.”

“He's utterly captivating, utterly heart-breaking in his transition from a shy boy with a puppeteering inclination to a terrified young man in possibly unbreakable thrall to a virtually autonomous bully who's not reluctant to declare himself the Devil.”

“For those who've seen it--and much of his canon--before, this revival could feel a bit off-balance.”

“Ably portraying the deterioration of amiable veneers under Kimberly Senior's taut direction, Dhillon. Moll, Radnor, Pittman (the lone holdover from the LCT production) and Ashok give Disgraced everything they've got and everything Akhtar's script needs.”

“Sorry to say that one of them is Donald Margulies's newest comedy-drama, The Country House, now at the Samuel J. Friedman.”

“Thanks to Ellis' deft hand and his first-rate cast, what audiences are guaranteed to take with them when exiting is the kind of complete and total happiness that borders on euphoria.”