Scott Brown

“In whisks Cherry Jones’s Amanda, and the spell is cast.”

“Rodgers & Hammerstein's (and Beane's and Brokaw's) Cinderella is as solidly entertaining a commercial proposition as they come, featuring one of Broadway's finest ensembles and what might be its couple of the year.”

“Hoffman meets that challenge fiercely, dressed to perfect disadvantage.”

“Everyone and everything feels too far apart in this Mecca; actors can’t seem to get a firm grip on one another and nothing ever feels the least bit urgent.”

“One could accuse this Godspell, with its slightly corporatized sleekness and unmistakable sense of salesmanship, of undermining the show’s homespun garage-rock charm.”

“Follies is the disease and the cure in one package: I’d advise you to catch it.”

“There’s a remarkable story here, but you’d be forgiven for missing it: The writers certainly have.”

“Turgid with its own emptiness, this unctuously charmless show is proof that nothing from nothing somehow equals less than nothing.”

“It's an often uproarious, spiritually up-tempo satire not just of Mormonism, and not just religion in general, but of (no kidding) Occidental civilization itself, in all its well-intentioned, self-mythologizing, autoerotically entitled glory.”

“Seldom has a more romantic finale been more rationally, stealthily staged–the impact sneaks up on you.”

“Elling has just enough edge to keep itself from falling into a sugar coma; the story’s already mild politics have been muted to a murmur in this adaptation.”

“That’s A Free Man of Color: It’s not a map, or even an atlas, but a huge, misshapen, distracted globe, one that even a theatrical Tamburlaine like Guare can’t quite figure out how to bestride.”

“The talent onstage is so lavish it overwhelms our comfortable pieties with pure showmanship, conjuring your applause in waves, then quietly placing an asterisk after each bravura number: Did I just clap for … a shuck-and-jive?”

“A Christmas Story is what happens when rare respect for source material meets utter sincerity and unimpeachable talent.”

“It would probably work better as a fast and furious 90-minute, intermission-less concert without the interludes.”

“Gross is the evening's highlight, with his flawless lacquer of disdain broken only by eruptions of mania.”

“Gross is the evening's highlight, with his flawless lacquer of disdain broken only by eruptions of mania.”

“Gross is the evening's highlight, with his flawless lacquer of disdain broken only by eruptions of mania.”

“Gross is the evening's highlight, with his flawless lacquer of disdain broken only by eruptions of mania.”

“This latest remount feels strangely hunkered down in itself, even as geysers of absurdity erupt willy-nilly.”

“Metcalf supplies the gravitation that holds it all together, even as her immense centrifugal energy is, simultaneously, working to fling it all apart.”

“It’s uncynical and forthright, like its subjects, and when Hall finally gets into the sticky question of exploitation—are the pitmen truly artists?”