Lighting & Sound America

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

“It's a tricky piece, irritating at first, then finding its stride in the middle before an only semi-satisfactory windup.”

“I have rarely felt more held hostage in a theatre.”

“It's not terrible, but it's not special, and too much of it has been done better elsewhere.”

“There's plenty of interesting material here, but it needs focusing and more probing treatment; the characters' pasts are often more compelling than their present.”

“If The Receptionist feels slightly out of date, the suspicion and ruthlessness that drive it never go out of style.”

“More than any other rendering, it speaks directly to today; to my mind, it is unmissable.”

“Allen is one of the biggest finds MCC has brought us in several seasons. He's a dramatist through and through, and he has probing access to each of his characters.”

“Apparently, Torera wants us to root for Elena in pursuit of her career.”

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

“Director Sam Pinkleton continues his hot streak of putting together tight, fast-moving entertainments geared for a young queer audience but with plenty of appeal for other demographics.”

“It also ends on an appropriately bruising note as the young men gin up an array of legalistic arguments that, alas, may very well protect them from the consequences of their actions.”

“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.”

“This is an astounding achievement: A single man fills the stage with characters who are ludicrous, oddly lovable, and heartbreakingly exiled from happiness.”

“All Nighter is one of the best surprises of the winter season, the debut of a sassy, perceptive new voice aided by a gaggle of fresh talents.”

“What's especially impressive is Hunter's ability to trace lives shaped by failure without diminishing them; whatever bad choices they have made, their ability to love endures.”

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

“Not funny enough for straight-up comedy, populated with characters too thin for drama, and lacking a wicked sense of caricature, it struggles to find a consistent, coherent voice.”

“Music City provides plenty of drama and the right songs to go with it.”

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

“But Three Houses is hemmed in by its limitations, talking and singing constantly without saying very much at all.”

“This production puts Sunset Baby where it belongs, next to her best works.”

“It's a numbing, scattershot evening that alternatively wants to amuse us and slap us around.”

“Here, dressed suavely in a tux, he works the room with a comic monologue that, in its creeping absurdity, hair-splitting way with words, and perfect timing, is a model of hilarity.”

“A canny cocktail of dark comedy and social observation, The Comeuppance is the most assured work yet from Jacobs-Jenkins, a writer who finds a fresh approach with each new play.”

“Always a reliable stage performer, he graduates to a new status, that of master of his craft.”

“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.”

“Little more than a procession of gags, sometimes executed with tremendous dexterity, but most of them unconnected to anything resembling reality.”

“Still, it's hard to get away from the idea that Ride the Cyclone is little more than a batch of random songs strung together by way of a forced, silly narrative concept.”

“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.”

“Overall, this is a generally dispiriting evening.”

“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...Palminteri's book only roughs it in, and the often tuneful and literate songs don't dig deeply enough under the story's surface to reach the primal emotions underneath...”

“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?”

“A Walk on the Moon would be a much happier experience if it made up its mind: One minute it sensitively evokes Pearl's awakening, and the next, it gives in to I-shtupped-the-blouse-man jokes.”

“The bumper crop of plays about plays is becoming tiresome.”

“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.”

“America, Who Hurt You? is both diverting and unsatisfying, a call to action that lacks the passion that this moment arguably requires.”

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

“An actress with a limited vocal range, shaky diction, and a small presence, she has struggled with dramatic roles in Nora (Ingmar Bergman's take on A Doll's House ) and The Night of the Iguana.”

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

“Much talent is involved, but, to my eyes, this is comedy in a vacuum, a lot of fooling around for no clear reason.”

“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.”

“For a play this scintillating, it's never too darn hot.”

“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.”

“It may simply be a good example of a piece developed for a local audience that doesn't travel well.”

“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.”

“It's one of the season's more striking performances so far.”

“Throughout, Smith has an uncanny knack for getting inside her characters' heads, anatomizing their dreams, fantasies, and fears.”

“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.”

“Degenerates is fascinating, at times startlingly suspenseful.”

“For all the talent expended on this production, it feels like a faded bulletin from another era.”

“It wants to rattle your nerves, but it sometimes has trouble getting to the point.”

“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.”

“Classic Penguins leans much too hard on immature provocation and not nearly enough on wit.”

“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.”

“Plays as vigorously argued as Giant are rare on Broadway, and Nicholas Hytner 's production delivers it with daggers drawn.”

“The result is a series of static, melancholy tableaux, narratively weak and musically monotonous.”

“But the show's clanky structure and single-minded insistence on uplift, whitewashing her heroine's crimes, make it a bit of a bore.”

“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.”

“The blinding revelation of Stephen Brown-Fried 's production is that Henry VI , a round robin of intrigues, tribalism, backstabbings, loveless political marriages, frivolous wars, populist rebellions, and acts of torture, is the uncanny mirror of the present day.”

“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.”