Sara Holdren

“White’s production understands this in a way that the show’s first New York run didn’t quite access.”

“Ultimately, when this kind of scale manages to bring with it both genuine humor and beauty, I'm pulled toward enjoyment.”

“The roots are deep, the canopy wide, and the song in the leaves, especially in the hands of an ensemble like this one, always worth rehearing.”

“It’s sad to hear them pour themselves out in service of something so fundamentally trite.”

“In a moment when sublime silliness can, in its very studied triviality, provide a spiritual antidote, they’ve been the best drunk slumber party companions a gal could wish for.”

“As it is, the show comes off lumpy and soft, with the inelegancies of the text left exposed and its sharper points insufficiently filed.”

“It’s one of the many faces of resistance.”

“What makes Joe Mantello's new Death of a Salesman land like a haymaker to the temple is the Beckettian space it creates both in and for the text.”

“Second Stage’s smart, acid-tongued revival of Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw — her plays are deeply, unnervingly not nice.”

“The play in turn makes us care for them, out there in all their recklessness on the edge of the night.”

“Mark Rosenblatt sets out to tease apart this kind of gnarly question in Giant, a high-stakes actors’ showcase of a play that becomes all the more prodigious in light of the fact that it’s Rosenblatt’s first.”

“Instead, he twinkles through them, and his joy in the work is contagious.”

“Despite the cesspits of ­conspiracy-think that pollute contemporary politics, the specific paranoia of Letts’s ­characters — bugs under the skin, brainwashing, ­nefarious doctors in government labs — feels less blazingly relevant than comparatively quaint.”

“The song is such a ridiculous rush that it pretty much justifies the whole project.”

“Those last awful moments of anagnorisis, as Manville and Strong expertly time their performances to the diminishing seconds, are legitimately stomach-turning.”

“They are its finest and—in a moment where truth and reconciliation can feel like utopian fantasies—its most radically hopeful.”

“They don’t need a production to confine them further.”

“At least the show itself opens its arms fully, and delivers a warm, sturdy squeeze of a hug.”

“Somewhere on the fundamental level, the show’s team is missing the point and making up their own, which might not grate as much if the substitution weren’t so flimsy.”

“Is it also so unrelentingly absurd that it’s hard to be mad at?”

“For a show with such a potentially powerful symbol at its core — a man trapped in the rock, singing as he’s crushed by America”

“Belflower’s play hits as hard as it does because at its heart, fighting their way through one hell of a junior year, are the kind of heroes we actually need.”

“Here, Warren’s performance is the only thing to truly soar.”

“With Good Night, and Good Luck, Clooney and his collaborators give a dignified and resonant answer.”

“The starry revival currently at the Palace Theatre offers a refresher — though not necessarily deep feelings of purpose or clarity.”

“Prophet as much as artist, Wilde could see the future in the instant, and Williams, Snook, and company charismatically and chillingly tap the immortality of his vision.”

“Operation Mincemeat isn't exactly blazingly clever—the jokes fly thick and fast, and they tend toward broad grin-crackers rather than breathless zingers—but it overflows with good humor and heartfelt commitment.”

“There’s still a sentimental solipsism in Redwood, an uneasy aspect of emotional tourism smothered in a broadside of throw-pillow truisms on connection, growth, and healing.”

“Now that production, with director Knud Adams and the whole of the original cast and design team, arrives on Broadway like a welcome guest, a hopeful presence in a moment that feels like a particularly dismal party.”

“It’s got a simple center, with some fun and some heart to it, but the commercial stunt of the whole endeavor is pointed and unavoidable.”

“Ultimately, Swept Away’s most compelling elements exist around its center rather than within it.”

“If you find yourself cruising the streamers at night, sipping chamomile tea and searching for Sliding Doors and Sweet November and French Kiss, then Maybe Happy Ending is waiting for you.”

“One could be forgiven for walking away from this show’s two (and a half) hours’ traffic thinking that maybe Romeo and Juliet is kind of mid after all. Such is the enervating effect of so aggressively clickbaity and uncurious a production.”

“There’s no doubt that Lloyd’s Sunset dazzles in the beholding, though the farther you walk away from it, the more you may find yourself feeling like poor Joe Gillis — remembering the thrill but no longer able to feel it, somehow both stirred and empty.”

“It’s not painful, but it’s far from revelatory.”

“Although the singing by both sets of Webb Sisters is tuneful and sweet, and there are the seeds of something more truly affecting in their story, the world they’re inhabiting is a kind of trompe-l’œil illusion.”

“Oh, Mary! is hilarious and, underneath the mayhem, both structurally rock solid and sneakily moving.”

“Somewhere, Scott must be cackling.”

“And it is, unhappily, an example of how all these things can fail to cohere into something powerful.”

“Though Morgan is plenty perceptive about character, there’s something cool at the center of Patriots that begins to chafe as the play nears its end.”

“Sadly, I also had a better time there than I did during the performance itself.”

“Stereophonic is at the Theatre.”

“Suffs provide a split portrait of two moments in time.”

“Lempicka the woman was unquestionably fascinating, flawed, and fabulous; Lempicka the musical often goes flat.”

“Clear away the schmaltz, and there are bodies in space stretching and twisting toward something strange and sublime, bodies that pulse with e. e. cummings’s fervent cry: ‘Damn everything but the circus!’”

“Herzog finds something much deeper, much more tender, and much less individualistic.”

“Speeches like that one were built to shake audiences up, but nearly two decades on, and in this production, Doubt feels conspicuously steady.”

“Yet there’s a savviness to Prayer’s construction that makes it ring false.”

“The air is so clotted it’s barely breathable.”

“In the Broadway landscape of 2023, Spamalot turns out to be oddly well positioned to lure people in with the promise of the quotably familiar, then blast them in the face with a confetti cannon full of THEATER (and literal confetti).”

“But no actor can make a show work when a play is so set on phoning it in.”

“Friedman and her ensemble render the show exquisite.”

“Instead, it’s bright, generous, and forceful, and those currents carry the day.”

“Fast, fierce, and big-hearted, the show crackles with the verve of its central performances, and the play, at 62 years old, feels wittier, braver, less careful, and more caring than much contemporary writing.”

“This is a show hell-bent on making sure that you have fun, laughs, good times at any cost.”

“Henderson’s Walter belongs on Broadway, and it’s a pity it took this long for the production to transfer.”

“The show isn’t flawless — there’s an audience participation section that feels underbaked, and I question the choice of a venue like the Armory, with its patina of wealth and its solid block of well-dressed audience members seated facing the action but well apart from it.”

“And, really, the third act is the whole reason to go.”

“This production doesn't just honor Shange's work; it amplifies it, finding new frequencies in familiar words.”

“That one’s a cold cocktail frankfurter, I’ll tell you that.”

“The Vivian Beaumont is a big house to sign over to a musical so dramaturgically inept, so lacking in connection, philosophy, or fire.”

“The Great Society is a lumbering, spiritless mess.”

“She, at any rate, is an artist at the height of her particular storm.”

“It’s not even very interesting.”

“By contrast, while McDonald and Shannon are both fun to watch, their turbulent chemistry alone doesn’t sustain McNally’s somewhat overstretched play.”

“It’s also—thanks in large part to Alex Brightman’s spot-on performance as the incorrigible titular ghoul—a pretty fun time.”

“And as directed with plenty of pop and fizz by Rupert Goold, and driven by the compelling performances of Bertie Carvel and Jonny Lee Miller, it’s both playful and thoughtful.”

“The stormy climax of All My Sons still packs a wallop, but the road to it is long, painfully dated, and — though we don't like to admit to basic failings in our canonized playwrights — marked by some truly frustrating logical potholes.”

“And it feels like some of these things, some of the time.”

“But all the moments don’t really add up.”

“And Michael Mayer’s revival of Lanford Wilson’s 1987 play Burn This is pretty dang good — mostly because, playing the human furnace at its center, Adam Driver is straight-up great.”

“It’s also exhilarating because it really places Schreck in a different kind of legacy.”

“But underneath its sparkle is a theatrical monotony that drags the whole thing down.”

“The zippy, delightfully devilish Be More Chill is the latest tale of teen angst to convert crippling self-doubt and frustrated desire into the sound of music.”

“Sorkin has written a new play, and it’s characteristically taut and nimble, fluid and funny, with plenty to meditate on and argue about.”

“But there’s something flat about van Hove’s production.”

“It’s big silly fun, with a sly wink and a warm heart.”

“American Son is a dreadful play — and it’s not alone.”

“There are some genuinely touching moments between him and Urie, but there’s also, as in Torch Song over all, a lot of hit-the-mark hamminess.”

“Even in the sensitive hands of its actors, especially May and Allen, it’s an affecting play, but not a revelatory one.”

“In the end, it will all come down to her judgment — as individual and fallible as anyone’s — and despite the applause for Jim that I kept hearing around me, I found myself thinking, wishing: Publish it.”

“It knows its business, hits its marks (or, as the players say, ‘pots its shots’), and, all in all, makes for a daffy good time.”

“The badass British actor Janet McTeer, for all her innate playfulness and power, can’t save this reincarnation of the Divine Sarah.”

“It’s the kind of lifeless clunker that makes your heart go out to its actors, who are hooked up like defibrillators to a body that, no matter how much energy they pump into it, can’t be revived.”

“In so widely navigating around any real issue, its escapism starts to feel a little craven.”

“If the premise of Head Over Heels sounds a little nutso, that’s because the show is a lot nutso, in the most delightfully daffy, exuberantly heart-open way.”

“Wolfe’s revival feels full of untackled problems, unmet challenges, and untapped dramatic energy.”

“Sullivan’s ad-cliché-inspirational production certainly enables such a response, but I challenge the notion that faith in Christ is actually what Saint Joan is about, or that it’s what keeps artists returning to her story.”

“A whirlwind of highbrow showmanship. But what keeps it from being pretentious is the sincere explosive joy with which it’s constructed...Stoppard’s writing is generous in its virtuosity...”

“That’s what’s currently happening in the Lunt-Fontanne, and thanks to the swift, smart construction of Summer, which neither overburdens its material nor overstays its welcome, it’s a pretty damn good time.”

“The Cursed Child is a remarkable and fitting addition to the Potter canon.”

“While the cast is first-rate and the balletic, high-octane choreography by Justin Peck is often thrilling, O'Brien and his designers have opted to take a comfortable amble down memory lane.”

“Elliott’s shadowy, shifting production—somehow both spare and spectacular—is proof that Kushner’s play is that rarest and most thrilling of creations: a piece of theater that’s immediate and immortal.”

“But Escape to Margaritaville is about as much fun as buying a dud hermit crab as a pet.”

“And when he dives into the words and worlds of Lardner and Wodehouse, Stories by Heart is pure entertainment of the most ancient and appealing kind.”

“Here is death: slight and bird-boned, gray-haired and sharp-eyed, wearing a blood-stained pink T-shirt and sensible shoes, still deeply, dreadfully in love with her old friend’s husband, still feeling inadequate in comparison to that friend, still full of longing and sorrow and life.”

“The revival of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's 1990 musical transforms Circle in the Square into a Caribbean paradise, with Michael Arden's staging creating an immersive experience that feels like a celebration.”

“In attempting to walk the line between classic sexual intrigue and contemporary political resonance, The Parisian Woman falls flat on both counts, delivering yet another lamely apologetic, latently self-satisfied slog through the worldview of an ostensibly liberal white dude.”

“It’s been a year of real-life horrors, and there’s nothing like a world in chaos to spawn rampant self-seriousness among theater-makers.”

“Such foibles feel minor relative to Latin History’s abundance of humor and heart.”