‘Mary Jane’
Rachel McAdams makes her Broadway debut in Amy Herzog’s play about an impossibly upbeat mother caring for a gravely ill child and navigating the byzantine health care system.
From our review:
[Herzog] is not interested in locking down meaning. Like all great plays, “Mary Jane” catches light from different directions at different times, revealing different ideas. On the other side of the worst of Covid, “Mary Jane” feels less like a parent’s cry for more life than an inquest into the meaning of death.
Through June 16 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
A family drama that ‘feels like it’s a healing.’
‘Mother Play’
Paula Vogel’s tragicomedy is a showcase for Jessica Lange, who plays a ferocious matriarch to a sister and brother played by Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons.
From our review:
Nearly parodic in her feminine grace, [Lange’s Phyllis] is also as hard as buffed, polished nails. Phyllis is in some ways a monster, but Vogel doesn’t traffic in monsters. As a writer, she understands that people do terrible things for unterrible reasons — out of love, out of fear, out of loneliness.
Through June 16 at the Helen Hayes Theater. Read the full review.
critic’s pick
A show that all the critics love.
‘Stereophonic’
David Adjmi’s rock drama, with songs by a real rocker (Will Butler), follows a 1970s band (not unlike Fleetwood Mac) on the cusp of fame through the prolonged, drug-fueled process of making a new album.
From our review:
A fly-on-the-wall study of how people both need and viciously destroy each other, “Stereophonic” is a fiery family drama, as electrifying as any since “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Its real-time dissection of making music — a collaboration between flawed, gifted artists wrangled into unison — is ingeniously entertaining and an incisive meta commentary on the nature of art.
Through Aug. 18 at the Golden Theater. Read the full review.
critic’s pick
A mother-and-daughter love story to sing along to.
‘Hell’s Kitchen’
This jukebox musical draws from Alicia Keys’s own coming-of-age story and hit-filled discography to paint a portrait of a 17-year-old girl becoming an artist.
From our review:
“Hell’s Kitchen” has earned its place on Broadway: The revised show is thrilling. … [The principal actors] excel in different styles but never feel at odds with one another or with the score. … The movement pulses with life and is fully integrated into the show’s overall aesthetics, but it’s the attention to detail that’s memorable.
At the Shubert Theater. Read the full review.
A buzzy revival that rips the skin off the original.
‘Cabaret’
Rebecca Frecknall’s revival, first seen in London, features Eddie Redmayne as the macabre Emcee of the Kit Kat Club in 1930s Berlin, on the edge of economic and spiritual disaster.
From our review:
Frecknall’s staging … is spectacular when in additive mode, illuminating the classic score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and the amazingly sturdy book by Joe Masteroff. But too often a misguided attempt to resuscitate the show breaks its ribs.
At the August Wilson Theater. Read the full review.
Singing the suffragist tale in song.
‘Suffs’
Shaina Taub’s musical traces the heroic and sometimes dangerous campaign for the American women’s right to vote, from 1913 through ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
From our review:
By the end, it feels like a rally, complete with mottos and banners — which, depending on what you want from a musical, isn’t necessarily a criticism. “Suffs” is … a good show and good for the world. I even shed a few political tears. But to be great, a musical (like a great movement) must grab you by the throat. “Suffs” too often settles for holding up signs.
At the Music Box Theater. Read the full review.
A classic Black take on ‘The Wizard of Oz.’
‘The Wiz’
The Tony-winning musical re-envisioning of “The Wizard of Oz” gets a makeover in Schele Williams’s new production.
From our review:
This Dorothy and her adventure, like the overall direction, is bright and tidy but falls short in character. The animated backdrops of Oz often have a cutesy, over-glossed Pixar-movie feel. … All of which is to say that “The Wiz” is a pleasant, serviceable time at the theater, but as a new production of a musical with a legacy of bringing Blackness to one of Hollywood’s and Broadway’s favorite fairy tales, it’s less satisfying.
Through Aug. 18 at the Marquis Theater. Read the full review.
‘Chekhov with everything, except the main thing.’
‘Uncle Vanya’
Heidi Schreck brings a smooth, faithful yet colloquial new version of Chekhov’s classic to the stage with a starry cast that includes Steve Carell.
From our review:
If Vanya is properly no hero in this amusing but rarely deeply affecting production, it’s because he’s no one at all. He despairs and disappears.
Through June 16 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Read the full review.
’80s nostalgia courtesy of Huey Lewis.
‘The Heart of Rock and Roll’
Big hits and lesser-known tracks are shoehorned into a jukebox musical with a generic plot about a guy figuring out which of his dreams to chase.
From our review:
“The Heart of Rock and Roll” is not so much a Huey Lewis (and the News) musical as the Huey Lewis of musicals: not taking itself too seriously, doing what it does well, and just happy to be on Broadway. … Its easygoing good spirits are bolstered by solid craftsmanship, and it’d be silly to turn up our noses at that.
At the James Earl Jones Theater. Read the full review.