The Clyde Fitch Report

“This seamless transfer from Chelsea to Broadway gives us the season’s first dose of potent theatrical magic.”

“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.”

“If you see this Hello, Dolly! — and that’s won’t be easy with $40M in advance sales already in the bank — you may very well think it’s the best musical ever written.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“So the show has that strong, gale-wind force of a closer, but is it enough to forgive what’s gone before?”

“Then, as now — with director Marianne Elliott bringing her revival from London’s National Theatre to Broadway nearly intact, with Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter and Nathan Lane as Roy M. Cohn — the playwright achieves a heavenly piece.”

“McTeer gives a great performance.”

“Of the many bright stars on the Bright Star stage, theirs may be the brightest and starriest.”

“Yet this is an odd play to revive without adaptations, either in the text or in the staging.”

“In terms of this rock ensemble, however, it can easily be said that lightning does strike near enough to satisfy large portions of the show’s potential audience, particularly those who appreciate a modest story about recapturing abandoned dreams.”

“What can be said is that it’s like the Groundhog Day on which it takes place: worth experiencing over and over (and over and over) again.”

“Overall, Pretty Woman is storytelling detritus, and never the right scale for the stage.”

“I also wonder whether this drama (or is it a tragicomedy?) has ever been accorded a more elegant presentation.”

“Sweat is a first-rate achievement.”

“Washington’s magnetism cannot force us to feel that feeling, and if it doesn’t exactly leave us ice cold, it’s no more satisfying than watery gin.”

“Perhaps it’s needless to say that Moore’s hoot-and-holler, directed by Michael Mayer, preaches to the converted — it’s what a friend of mine calls an ‘echo chamber experience.’”

“Moments are evoked, but ultimately this is a young man’s view of an older woman’s story.”

“Director Joe Mantello has crafted an exquisite waltz of a revival of Edward Albee's 1994. Pulitzer Prize-winning Three Tall Women.”