His mortal thread is cut, and Durand spends the rest of the musical being moved around inertly in what might be the most impressive deadpan performance in history. He's staggeringly still: Y…
In one of the quirkiest, most morbid and somehow loveliest musicals to hit Broadway this season " even Floyd Collins' dying spelunker plot seems conventional by comparison " Dead Outlaw, dir…
As adaptations of popular, already-established franchises continue to pop up on Broadway, it's thrilling to see original, truly one-of-a-kind productions like Dead Outlaw rise up to meet the…
The musical has many​ diamonds in the rough. They're just not ​p​olished properly by Cromer's staging, which is awfully haphazard and diffuse for a typically sure-thing …
Durand delivers the most indelible performance of the season as McCurdy: motionless, flat-eyed and unblinking as he stands upright in a wooden coffin for much of the show, reduced to a rifle…
Look out, Jonathan's back! Tony Award® winner Jonathan Groff (Merrily We Roll Along, Hamilton) returns to Broadway this spring as Bobby Darin, the legendary singer whose short but remarka…
Yet Groff is still swimming, right to the end. Dismayed as I was to endure so much else, I have to admit he's giving one of Broadway's best performances. The post Jonathan Groff Channels Bob…
With a terrific full band right on stage the entire time, we are transported to the streets of East Harlem, Vegas, and even Portofino thanks to versatile nightclub scenic design by Derek McL…
Naturally, though, it's Groff's energy and charisma that anchor Just in Time. The brilliance of the show's opening is that, by creating a staged-concert atmosphere from the start, it frees u…
Director Alex Timbers and the book writers fail to go beyond the concert conceit, and never give us a real portrait of Darin or leave us with a clear idea of what we are supposed to think of…
Groff, assisted by a terrific trio of singer-dancers (Christine Cornish, Julia Grondin, Valeria Yamin) who back him up through the years and many, many fashions and dance styles, is tireless…
When Groff is singing and dancing (stunning choreography by Shannon Lewis), "Just in Time" absolutely dazzles. It doesn't matter if what's happening on stage ever makes you think of Bobby Da…
Groff is undeniably great at bending a crowd around his little finger, and he's working with an audience that's delighted to be pandered to. He spends much of the show weaving through that c…
The melding of personas successfully transmutes Groff's exceptional charisma and earned goodwill into the tale of a past celebrity most of the audience could not identify via photo. But it a…
The audience is situated in a sumptuously imagined, sparkling silver nightclub with multiple stages and a brilliant band in back. Groff spiritedly darts around the room, jumping on tables an…
Gilbert & Sullivan's pirate ship docks in New Orleans in this jazzy-bluesy vision of the crowd-pleasing classic, in an outrageously clever romp sizzling with Caribbean rhythms and French…
Except for the central performance by David Hyde Pierce, marvelously underplaying the tongue-twisting Major-General, the production has a sweaty quality, bordering on frenzy, that's hopeless…
This "Pirates!" (mind the punctuation) isn't particularly modern (adapter Rupert Holmes doesn't take it that far), but it is a major Broadway staging " and oh so general. The post 'Pirates! …
More than that"it is Pirates staged with wonderfully energetic aplomb by director Scott Ellis, wittily choreographed by Warren Carlyle and expertly performed by a dream ensemble. In keeping …
Rather than a slave of duty, Pirates! is the servant of too many masters: Gilbert & Sullivan, Dixieland jazz, milquetoast liberalism, and the tourism lobby New Orleans & Company, whi…
If the cast seems instructed to play just a tad broadly, and hit the jokes a touch to hard, and the second act runs a bit too long, well, the overzealousness does little to dampen the overal…
There might be a few bumpy waves in this piratical adaptation, but the booty is well-worth the effort. Even though it is unlikely to spur a trend of Gilbert and Sullivan revivals, this produ…
The continental leap dusts off the 145-year-old operetta and gives it an energetic oomph of swing and ragtime music, and the stage is brightened up by hot-sauce pops of purple, yellow and fi…
Until Pirates!, "Dear Bill" from Operation Mincemeat was my standout sung performance of the Broadway season; but Hyde Pierce's rendition of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" n…
The delightful foam on the grog here is his being backed up by Scott Ellis' outrageous direction of a flag-waving chorus that carries out Warren Carlyle's foot-stomping choreography to milit…