Erik Haagensen

“Thanks to her beautifully buoyant, intoxicatingly sensual revival, I am a convert.”

“Thanks to the lazy writing and acting, Mengers goes missing.”

“Obviously, those were patrons unconcerned with being in the dramatic moment, and that is undoubtedly the audience for ‘Jekyll & Hyde.’”

“‘Orphans’ remains as synthetic as ever, only now Tom Sturridge, Ben Foster, and Alec Baldwin do the bravura thesping.”

“There’s no use putting up a fight with ‘Kinky Boots.’ This is the feel-good musical of the season. Yes, Harvey Fierstein’s funny book is a bit too bald, Cyndi Lauper’s catchy songs are more lyrically repetitive than they should be, and director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell slights character and story in favor of splashy production numbers.”

“The tuner coarsens its self-effacing, quietly observant source with cheesy soap-opera backstories, forced Lifetime-movie subplotting, and self-righteous hot-button-issue pressing in an obviously manipulative attempt to stir our emotions.”

“Capote’s wispy memory tale, told principally in carefully carved prose, may be hypnotic on the page, but it’s dull onstage, with too much narration and not enough drama.”

“Both breathtakingly funny and quietly poignant, this Chekhov-inspired work—for which knowledge of the Russian master’s plays is not a requirement—is pure joy from start to finish.”

“Taylor lays her out there, warts and all, with relish and consummate skill.”

“Johansson's mangled rhythms and self-consciously thick Southern accent frequently impede clarity, and the actor is never able to show us Maggie's shifting strategies for achieving her goal.”

“Coarse, excessively anxious for laughs, and deficient in the repression rampant in 1950s small-town Kansas, the production strands its 12 actors in several very different plays.”

“In Daniel Sullivan’s unevenly directed production, Pacino entertainingly holds the stage, winning laugh after laugh, but he makes a miscalculation fatal to the play’s core.”

“‘Golden Boy’ is grand and glorious theater.”

“Mamet certainly believes in punishing his audience.”

“Alas, the show still makes my teeth hurt.”

“I would urge everyone to check out Roundabout Theatre Company's thoughtful, committed production.”

“Nobody escapes ‘Chaplin’ unscathed.”

“The show would probably feel more at home at Madison Square Garden than on the stage of the St. James Theatre.”

“He is so convincing in his give-and-take with Harvey that we almost begin to see the mischievous sprite.”

“You know you're in trouble at 'Leap of Faith' even before the show starts, when actors pretending to be revivalists distribute what are supposed to be dollar bills to the audience, so we will have something to put in the collection basket when it's passed.”

“You'll likely applaud much more than that in Wilson's grandly satisfying revival.”

“I can't call Lydia R. Diamond's 'Stick Fly' a good play, not with its penchant for overripe secrets, melodramatic revelations, and lazy plotting.”

“Whatever made Bonnie and Clyde special is missing from this sentimental musical, as are sufficient character development, adequate dramatic thrust, and any kind of subtext.”

“I once saw a "Blithe Spirit" directed by Harold Pinter for London's National Theatre in which virtually every laugh was killed by Pinter's apparent desire to explore the dark underbelly of Noël Coward's frothy comedy. Director Richard Eyre hasn't gone quite that far with "Private Lives.”

“For those well-acquainted with the work, the result is a cruelly tantalizing miss.”

“Finally where it belongs, on Broadway, it can be seen now for the towering American tragedy that it is, as essential to our culture as ‘Long Day's Journey Into Night’ or ‘Death of a Salesman.’”

“Arianda triumphantly makes the role her own, with perhaps just a gallant nod to Holliday's indelible performance, in director Doug Hughes' loving and intelligent revival at the Cort Theatre.”

“I don't think my problem with 'Jerusalem' is that I don't get it. I just don't buy it.”

“Under Jack O'Brien's impersonal direction, the talented cast works hard to make an impression.”

“It may be Stoppard's best play, and even an indistinct production can't subdue its poignancy and wisdom.”

“Renée Elise Goldsberry is best when scrambling to avoid the inadvertent cultural condescension this highly educated daughter of an African-American doctor keeps stumbling into with Margaret.”

“There are pleasures to be had, of course, and it's always instructive to watch the work of such consummate actors.”

“Whatever it lacks in technique it more than makes up for in expression.”

“Work as imaginative and wholly successful as ‘Brief Encounter’ doesn't come along every day.”

“A 1997. Encores! concert managed to unearth charms in the problematic material. No such miracle is occurring at the Broadway Theatre.”

“The resulting show is wise, warm, witty, and entirely wonderful.”

“You should never stage ‘The Miracle Worker’ in the round.”

“Surprisingly, Ephron seems more taken with the milieu than the man, who comes across as a rather standard-issue every-guy-for-himself narcissist.”

“Nevertheless, the show still fails to persuade.”

“There's barely a cliché left unturned in John Logan's 'Red,' a two-hander about the late-in-life creative struggles of artist Mark Rothko, arriving direct from London's Donmar Warehouse.”

“A ramshackle yet agreeable film comedy with plausibility issues has here become an even more ramshackle and outlandish musical comedy that consistently diminishes its source.”

“Unfortunately, what emerges is a thinly written, awkwardly constructed melodrama.”

“Still, in director Doug Hughes’ tough-minded, well-acted production, this gimlet-eyed look at the cost of selling out builds to a climax of harrowing emotional devastation.”

“John Lithgow delivers a riveting turn in the title role of this crackling entertainment.”

“Bold, unflinching, and ingeniously constructed, this is a show not to be missed.”

“I can come up with no other excuse for the presence of David West Read’s purported comedy about the adult-film industry, ‘The Performers,’ at the Longacre Theatre.”

“‘The Trip to Bountiful’ is an American treasure, and Wilson and his wonderful company show us why in this not-to-be-missed production.”

“His vivid performance is rigorously honest, with a breathtaking emotional transparency.”