Terry Teachout

“Alas, it’s a wholesome, family-friendly dud, and with a running time of two hours and 35 minutes, it’s too long to take the kids.”

“My quibbles are nothing more than that: I’d gladly see ‘Flying Over Sunset’ again right away.”

“Theatre Company is putting on ‘Trouble in Mind’ in its 740-seat Theatre with a deluxe cast led by LaChanze and Chuck Cooper, and the results are glorious to behold.”

“The result is a show that, despite its considerable musical and dramatic strengths, feels more like a well-intentioned lecture than a fully realized work of musical theater.”

“Ms. Loomer has turned what might have been a dry-as-dust documentary drama into a taut, compelling piece of theater.”

“Me, I found it leaden with earnestness.”

“Ambitious though it is, ‘The Inheritance,’ whose two installments run for well over six hours, is at once sentimental and static—far too much of it feels like a novel being read out loud from cover to cover—and the parts that work, poignant though they often are, fail to redeem those that don’t.”

“The audience at the preview I attended last week definitely liked the show as is, and it should be funny.”

“Everything that first-class acting and directing can do for a play has been done for ‘The Height of the Storm,’ but none of it, I fear, matters very much in the end: It’s still an empty vessel.”

“Would that Mr. Lloyd's production had been able to loosen up 'Betrayal,' but it smacks of portentousness.”

“The audience loved ‘A Life,’ but I found it intolerable, and I spent the last half-hour longing to hurry home and watch a Humphrey Bogart movie to wash its sickly sweet taste out of my mouth.”

“That doesn’t mean the show itself is any good—it is, in fact, horrible—but it’s definitely big.”

“Arin Arbus, who gave ‘The Skin of Our Teeth’ a lively and imaginative staging at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience in 2017, is making her Broadway directing debut with this production, and the results are no less effective.”

“What we have here, then, is a refreshing piece of intelligent, mostly unpreachy entertainment, a commodity that’s grown steadily harder to find on Broadway in recent seasons.”

“After 'Hamilton,' 'Hadestown' is the best new musical on Broadway, period.”

“No matter how you feel about the Clintons you’ll likely find it a once-over-lightly disappointment.”

“No amount of high-class craftsmanship can conceal the fact that 'Burn This' is a smiley-faced variation on '”

“Not only do Curly (Damon Daunno) and Laurie (Rebecca Naomi Jones) have no romantic chemistry—I assume they aren’t meant to—but the show now ends not with an explosion of joy but in a pool of spilled blood.”

“All these caveats notwithstanding, there can be no such thing as an ideal ‘Lear,’ and the best parts of this admittedly uneven production are so distinguished that you should make haste to see it if you possibly can.”

“Such is the case with ‘What the Constitution Means to Me,’ which is not without merit but is no more a masterpiece than Tarell Alvin McCraney’s ‘Choir Boy,’ another recent hit that clangs the bell of cozy progressive sentiment.”

“Would that it were even half as good, but this ‘Kiss Me, Kate’ is bland and unimaginative.”

“‘Be More Chill’ is one of the strongest new musicals of the past decade, a charming, astutely crafted tale of neurotic post-millennial geeks in love whose appeal is in no way limited to those whom it portrays.”

“But unanimous critical enthusiasm sometimes means there’s less to a show than meets the eye, and having seen ‘Choir Boy’ after the reviews came out, I can’t claim to be altogether surprised that it’s a paper-thin piece of work.”

“The result is a grotesque caricature of Lee’s novel, one at which anyone who loved ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ as a...”

“As jukebox musicals go, though, this one is a badly broken record.”

“‘The Prom’ will make you laugh—I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard at a new musical—and it will also fill you with the toasty-warm glow of unchallenged righteousness.”

“Together they add up to a show that made me feel as though I were fighting off an overwhelmingly powerful anesthetic.”

“More than two years after same-sex marriage became the law of the land, ‘Torch Song’ is looking more like a commercial comedy about a nice Jewish boy and his impossible mother—and a pretty good one, too.”

“This revival, directed with uncommon grace by Lila Neugebauer, is a close-to-ideal enactment of what might just be Mr. Lonergan’s most gripping stage play to date.”

“They’re not dead yet—in fact, a new one just opened on Broadway.”

“Not that ‘Pretty Woman’ is terrible—it’s just mediocre, albeit to a mind-boggling degree.”

“Unfortunately, the play isn’t any good, though that won’t matter, since it fulfills the first condition of success on Broadway: It tells the members of the audience what they want to hear, and nothing else.”

“Ryan Murphy's staging of 'The Boys in the Band' succeeds completely in bringing Mart Crowley's landmark 1968 play back to urgent, uncompromising life.”

“The play comes through with bright clarity and makes, as always, a thought-provoking impression.”

“What saves 'Summer' from complete mediocrity is the singing of LaChanze, Ariana DeBose and Storm Lever”

“To those who have never read a Potter novel or seen a Potter film, ‘The Cursed Child’ will make no sense at all.”

“You’re never going to see a finer revival of ‘Travesties,’ so catch this one while you can.”

“Until then, the show is a miraculous fusion of sentiment and craftsmanship, and even the finale can be made to work by a smart director who isn’t afraid of heartfelt emotion.”

“This revival is entirely worthy of a play that may come in time to be seen as the best thing Mr. Albee ever wrote.”

“Roy Cohn is played by Nathan Lane, and his presence is its most distinctive element...Elliott’s cast, Lane and Garfield excepted, too often has trouble getting out in front of the hectic visual action...Watching this production, it’s easy to forget that 'Angels' is a conceptually big play that calls for an unexpectedly small cast...”

“On the other hand, I’m a critic, not a producer, and it’s my duty to report that they’re backing one of the most mediocre musicals ever to come to my attention.”

“Rarely have I spent so entertaining a night at the theater—or witnessed so touching a tribute to a departed parent.”

“The result is a show that is all frosting and no cake.”

“This small-scale show is fine enough to fill you with fresh hope for a genre that has lately been running on fumes.”

“I esteem Mr. Akhtar for writing a big play about a big subject, but ‘Junk’ is too slick to be fully satisfying.”

“The Roundabout’s revival, by contrast, rattles ineffectually around the 40-foot-wide stage of the company’s 740-seat Theatre.”

“Modest though it is, 'Prince of Broadway' looks and sounds fabulous...The weak link is David Thompson’s book, in which Mr. Prince’s cliché-prone first-person reminiscences are placed in the mouths of the actors, always to unilluminating, momentum-killing effect.”

“The result is a punishingly intense evening of theater that will leave you shaken—and should leave you thinking as well.”

“Lucas Hnath’s ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ comes perilously close to filling that bill.”

“The special beauty of this revival is that it is as comprehending of their shared plight as is the play.”

“It is the real thing—a traditional, fantastical Broadway show—independent of both the animated film and the 1956 film with Ingrid Bergman, which are said to have ‘inspired’ it.”

“This one makes the worst of them.”

“You won’t be even slightly sorry you saw it.”

“The problem with 'Amélie' is that it feels more like a theme-park ride than a musical—and not a very good ride at that.”

“No matter what mood you’re in when you arrive at the St. James Theatre, you’ll go home grinning with delight.”

“Yes, it’s entertaining enough, but nothing like the deckle-edged hit it wants so desperately to be, and the reasons why it fails to come off are worth a close look.”

“While ‘Miss Saigon’ has a can’t-miss plot—it’s as potent today as it was for Puccini—the score, at least to my ear, is unendurable.”

“Ms. Field's Amanda is a tour de force of controlled desperation, a woman who refuses to admit that her dreams have turned to dust.”

“This revival isn't perfect, but it works—the play comes through clearly and strongly—and Ruffalo and Shalhoub are more than good enough to offset its forgivable flaws.”

“But ‘Away’ is, in cold, hard point of fact, a gushily sentimental piece of theatrical yard goods that makes every mistake a musical can make.”

“From this moment on, the cliché tap is shut off and every character in ‘Significant Other’ becomes touchingly real, the way they should have been all along.”

“Unlike the film, whose script is as pointed as a freshly honed ice pick, Mr. Lloyd Webber’s ‘Sunset Boulevard’ has no more cutting power than a butter knife.”

“‘In Transit’ is far too slender a reed for her to make anything distinctive out of it.”

“'Dear Evan Hansen' is a musical through and through, the best one to open on Broadway since 'Hamilton,' and if you weren't one of the popular kids, it'll make you feel like you're watching yourself when young.”

“The acting is consistently unsubtle and unfunny”

“Better than 'The Normal Heart,' I'd say, but not nearly so well as 'Angels in America.'”

“So it’s a grievous disappointment to report that this much-anticipated revival is slack and lackluster, a case study in how to get a good play wrong.”

“What makes 'Oh, Hello' work so well is that Messrs. Kroll and Mulaney have created a pair of genuinely funny characters who are more than mere collections of tics and catch phrases.”

“It is, in fact, blush-makingly trite, a portrait of a 42-year-old blabbermouth who stalks a never-married 75-year-old butcher and lures him into the sack.”

“It’s slick, synthetic and soulless, a musical full of robotic jokes and devoid of genuine romance.”

“The result is a piece of storytelling that is as haunting and enthralling as a half-remembered dream.”

“They held my attention when nothing else did, which was usually.”

“As a result, the entire second half feels like an epilogue, an hour-long dying fall, and by the time it’s over, the sense of letdown is palpable throughout the theater.”

“Still, ‘Tuck Everlasting’ realizes enough of its ambitions to be watchable, and Casey Nicholaw’s staging is full of quiet delights, though his swirly choreography, especially in the show’s climactic ballet, is bland.”

“Even so, his acting crackles with physical energy and comic life, and it won’t take long for you to shelve your doubts and buy into his performance.”

“No such luck: It’s a tourist-trap rom-com that has little to offer but Ms. Mueller and her fine supporting cast.”

“‘American Psycho’ is slick, sleek and empty, a one-joke show that drowns its message, such as it is, in red sauce and fake emotion.”

“Ms. Stiles and Mr. Daniels are both superb, and their performances alone make 'Blackbird' worth seeing, even though you may well leave the theater feeling as though you need a long, hot shower.”

“Martin's name weren't on the marquee, it wouldn't have gotten anywhere near Broadway.”

“He’s attacked ‘The Crucible’ with a steamroller, turning Miller’s 1953 history play about the Salem witch trials into a slow-moving study in extreme tedium.”

“Perfection needs no commentary, so I'll make it short and sweet: Theatre Company's revival of 'She Loves Me' is ideal.”

“I’m sorry to say that Forest Whitaker has failed to beat the odds in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Hughie.’”

“I left the theater feeling that I'd just spent two whole hours there for no good reason.”

“If laughter is the best medicine, then ‘Noises Off’ is surely capable at the very least of curing double pneumonia.”

“This production, intelligent and imaginative though it is, falls short of the mark, and the reasons why it does so say something revealing about the appeal of the show itself.”

“Mr. Doyle’s scaled-down, ruthlessly cut version makes the best possible case for ‘The Color Purple.’”

“Well, it turns out to be a strongly wrought story of considerable moral complexity, one that will hold your attention all the way to the brutal end.”

“Nor is there any other reason to go to ‘Misery,’ which has nothing else to offer save for the chance to get Mr. Willis’s autograph after the show.”

“What I find most puzzling about Mr. Van Hove’s method is that when you scrape away the sauce of self-regard, what you find underneath, here as in ‘The Little Foxes’ before it, is a staging that gets to the point of Miller’s play with near-naturalistic directness.”

“It is, however, of no artistic value whatsoever, save as an object lesson in how to write a really bad Broadway musical.”

“Broadway's latest greatest-hits album, 'On Your Feet!: The Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan,' is what the subtitle promises...”

“Any way you gnaw it, though, ‘Thérèse Raquin’ is a dreary hambone that once was shocking but is now quaint, and Helen Edmundson, whose sole previous Broadway credit was the inept 2007 stage version of ‘Coram Boy,’ has done no better by Zola.”

“'Sylvia' is one of the very best small-cast comedies of the past quarter-century, and this revival, directed by Daniel Sullivan, is so funny that I can’t see how it could fail to ring the box-office gong... Mr.”

“This production might have been worth seeing had it been done off Broadway—or by an all-male ensemble. As is, it's not quite worth the price of the ticket.”

“Light on tragedy and heavy on comedy—at least in this version—it’s an infallible vehicle for two aging stars who can lay on the charm.”

“That’s how good this revival is.”

“It is, however, almost perfectly awful, and I think it’s safe to say that the fault belongs to Douglas Hodge, the director, who apparently supposes that the right way to stage ‘Old Times’ is to camp it up.”

“It ranks among the most emotionally charged renderings of a musical to come to Broadway in the past decade, one that all who love the genre should rush to see.”

“‘Hamilton’ is the best and most important Broadway musical of the past decade.”

“Gabriel Barre's sumptuous staging not infrequently creates the illusion that there's more to 'Amazing Grace' than meets the ear.”